Author: Legendary

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Intermediate Writer’s Workshop Returns!

Greetings Legends,

We are happy to announce the return of our Intermediate Writer’s Workshop. A new quest begins: to empower and inspire the next generation of writers. Our intermediate workshop is for students with some writing experience – whether from our Dungeon School program, or elsewhere – and are welcome to submit one short story upon registering for the workshop. 

Classes will be hosted in the Bespoke Legends’ Imaginarium

Intermediate  Writers‘ Workshop
Dates : Sundays March 12th – May 21          
Excluding : April 23
Time: 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM

Students will build the world for this campaign using their work on assignments, all of which will be woven into a single overarching meta narrative in a setting that grows alongside the students’ work. 

We will begin our studies by delving into Character and Conflict, followed by World Building and Plot, and a climax studying Structure and Themes. We’ll be looking at these elemental forces that drive a narrative and how to leverage Dungeons & Dragons (and other RPGs) to streamline this process.

Meanwhile, the role playing game component will bring their work and writing to life in front of them, as our gaming experience explores a world built from and peopled by their work.

Participation in assignments is semi-mandatory (at least half of all assignments), but group workshop time is optional. Students are welcome and encouraged to bring their own dice, books, writing materials, but will be provided with any gaming supplies they need.

No previous experience with role playing games required.

Please contact us at BespokeLegends@gmail.com for further information or details.

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Endless Blue by Foundry10

Marine Sciences Role Playing Curriculum

Foundry10 is a Seattle based education research organization that has a wide variety of experiments into alternative learning models. In fall of 2021, I had a the honor and pleasure of being a part of their pilot classroom test of their table top role playing game based marine sciences curriculum, Endless Blue. The game’s plot focuses on the recovery of Amelia Earhart’s long lost aircraft, allowing the players to take on one of a variety of roles to explore the deep sea, rescue wildlife, and preserve the marine archeological site. The book Foundry10 has available on their website for Endless Blue contains a number of plot hooks for catching players interest. I selected the three most location dependent and used those as a module-style framework for introducing the more sub-plot appropriate hooks. I added a cantankerous captain to give the players someone to unify against, as well as a love triangle, and an anime smuggling ring to pull in specific players’ interest. Using Endless. Blue in the classroom was easy. Where the game or the story wasn’t a player’s cup of tea, the science would usually pull them in. The result was a weeklong adventure that brought to bear social media management, oceanography, and lab skills both simulated and actual.

This was the second project I’d gotten to work on for Foundry10, and was gloriously close to my heart. Using simulated experiences as framework for generating student engagement, and converting that engagement into learning, is at the heart of our Dungeon School program. This was my first chance to apply my decade of experience using role playing games in the classroom using someone else’s curriculum. My usual focus on writing and art was replaced by a tour through the regular classroom teacher’s notes for the class and my dusty memories of long ago marine science and south pacific anthropology classes. As an added bonus, the game mechanics themselves are simple, innovative, and player progress focused, making it easy to adapt to classroom management and curriculum delivery.

There’s a lot to love about what Foundry10 is doing with this game, but I have a special place in my heart for opening our imaginary foray into the south pacific with a land acknowledgement. Placing this right at the front of the book showed me that Foundry10 has appreciation and respect for the peoples who will inevitably end up being represented to some degree in the future play throughs of this game. My understanding is that they have and will continue to include indigenous peoples of Polynesia in the review of the content and intentions of this game.

The character creation process is remarkably straight forward, with the skills and attributes both combining in clear and intuitive ways within the fields of expertise, but also providing interesting secondary skill options to round out a character or fill skill gaps in the party. Everything else fell to the captain I added, who provided support when needed to keep things moving. Equipment, which necessarily plays a tremendous role in the game, clicks into the mechanic as smoothly as skills.

The fields of expertise themselves do a pretty good job or capturing most of what Foundry10 has listed amongst the possible marine science careers on their website. They also do an excellent job of modeling the many roles and skills it takes to make marine science expeditions happen. A power couple Photographer and Science Communicator proved as instrumental to our success as the Ocean Engineer’s piloting and Oceanographer’s lab work. I wouldn’t mind seeing ‘Mermaiding’ add to the list of available skills, though I’m not sure what exactly it might bring in gameplay.

The mechanic has a significant de-emphasis of physical skills and abilities, which speaks to its focus as an academic simulator. The lack of mechanical, ‘physical’ conflict makes it difficult to leverage a more traditional combat focused model of role playing games, but I think this is a huge advantage to the intention of the game. Without fighting as a mechanic for resolving problems the players are forced to try to analyze their difficulties, and communicate their needs and interests. Even then, we were still able to include some action sequences – leveraging the Submersible Piloting skill when a player wanted to ram a falling wing segment to prevent it from falling on their archeological site, and its cephalopod inhabitants.

The game really came to life when I incorporated the daily topics and overall curriculum structure from the classroom teacher. It was a revelation to be able to twist the narrative around what the students had learned that morning, or fit the activities that afternoon. We were able to perform PH tests, examine rock and mollusk samples from comparable sites to those in our narrative, and identify actual shark specimens in class to determine if they would pose a threat to our imaginary octopus friends. There was even a real time zoom visit with Foundry10’s marine science submersible team aboard the Nautilus, allowing the students to imagine even more vividly the experiences their characters were having.

I always like to draw on white boards so that I can make it easy to understand exactly where the character’s are and what they’re seeing. In Dungeon School this clarity usually comes in the form of models and miniatures, but I didn’t have time to assemble and destroy a model Lockheed Elektra (though I would have loved to) for this class. The modular nature of the narrative structure and the player led nature of the exploration made it easier to draw on the fly anyway.

I picked the Palmyra atoll as the location of the crash site because there was a wildlife refuge there, allowing us to tie in a sub-plot of rescuing an injured reef shark. The most exciting part of this was that it sparked a wave of player led research into the legal status of the site due it being, not only a potential national historical landmark, but also to determine what the consequences of disturbing the family of octopi they found living in the wreckage. When pirates tried to steal a part of the wreck while the players were distracted by the reef shark rescue, their research reached a fevered pitch as they worked to determine which local, federal, and international agencies could be brought to bear (or at least named to threaten the pirates).

The height of the narrative to real science experience for me came on the final day when gentle study of live samples of the octopi captured in the airplane wreckage revealed that they had an extraordinarily high density of chromatophores. We then moved to the classroom where dissection of squid specimens allowed us to study real chromatophores in action. There was even a squid paper model building activity for students who chose not to participate in dissection.

It was a privilege to teach and learn with these students as we encountered this new kind of education together. A truly adaptive, hybridized model of simulated experiences that brings remote reality in the field into contact with imaginary recreation of those experiences, and real classroom experiments performed on samples taken from the places we were pretending to visit. This is a new kind of educational gaming, leveraging play to inspire students to learn by doing.

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Roleplaying Non-human(oid) Persons

Animist Perspectivism in Roleplaying Games

     At their root, roleplaying games operate on a divisive, labeling model of reality. Worlds are parsed into categories that can be used to balance their mechanical expressions. The good ones have embedded in them the notion that the rules can and should be thrown away under certain conditions. Communication is one of the places where this not only should happen, but must. When applied to language, the power of game mechanics to isolate abilities into categories spirals into useless fractal geometries of skill-trees and specializations in obscure dialects. There are games where that’s awesome. Dungeons and Dragons is not one of them. Fifth Edition provides a fairly restrictive set of language options for the sake of game play, but role playing demands a deeper, more palpable world. The presence of ancient languages, or even antiquated, or extinct forms of Common, Elvish, or Dwarvish is a start, with dreams of racial and regional dialects promising that most useful source of conflict in history and myth: miscommunication.

     Reintroducing miscommunication into the game is implied by spells like Divination, Contact Other Plane, or most deliciously of all, a poorly worded Wish. There’s a place in the role of the Dungeon Master for using selective confusion as a tool to tantalize the explorers, fascinate the interactors, and raise either the paranoia or the hackles of the fightclub. Where things can become truly fantastic is with the application of hallucinatory environments, poisons, or illusions, to say nothing of any time your adventurers might spend in a place like Limbo, or deep in the wrong side of the Feywild. When reaching for the character of the creatures encountered in such locales, the story calls for a somewhat more radical departure from linear modes of communication like conversational speech. This is where we can borrow notions from animism and perspectivism to inhabit a place of otherness from which a storyteller can convey the experiences and world views of creatures far beyond ordinary human experience. To bring the fantasy to life.  

     The term perspectivism was coined by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to describe the far more ancient notion that any information one encounters is subject to, and limited by one’s perspective. For the purpose of inhabiting alien modes of being, we’ll be inverting that notion by examining a situation or scene from different points of view than or own. Arguably this can and should be applied to any NPC your players are interacting with, but is even more important when portraying something as deeply ‘other’ as a seven millennia old dragon, or as fleeting as the insights of a fresh bloomed flower. Animism is the notion that every animal, object, place, even ideas or stories are persons, that they have a perspective, a way of moving through the world. Arguably any animal with a Wisdom score has some agency, identity and thus at least some measure of personhood. Or expressed more mechanistically, any creature with a Wisdom score can make Perception checks and therefore has a perspective. A sword carried, or a farm lived in by ten generations, that has a name, of which legends are passed down is more than just an object, or a place. When players use spells to interact with these beings, from Speak with Animals to Object Reading, there is no reason for the answers to be stated in plain, clear human words.

     Breaking down communication even further, we come to question words themselves as necessary carriers of symbolic information. From cries, cheeps and growls of excitement or alarm, to a stick-insect trying its damnedest to say ‘stick’ to a bird’s brain more loudly than it says ‘insect’ to the bird’s belly, the whole forest is speaking. This immeasurably broader world of communication comes alive in the work of anthropologist Eduardo Kohn, who’s concept of sylvan thinking provides the perfect ground for leveraging perspectivism and animism to bring the magic of roleplaying games to life. The meaninglessness of sylvan thoughts to humans is an artifact of our perspective, the assumptions of language, culture, society and history, those funhouse mirrors that make garden soil ‘dirty’ and nuclear power ‘clean’. To climb inside of another creature’s skin, all you need to do is let your self shift into the place from which it labels the world, the locus from which it finds meaning.  When roleplaying that creature, remember their locus of the meaning is their locus of personhood. Where Kohn might use the example of a jaguar, we shall turn to a more D&D specific apex predator, The Illithid.

     The Illithid ‘word’ for humanoid-brain would almost certainly translate etymologically as ‘food’. To an Illithid, a humanoid is not a person, it’s meat. Mindflayers survey their slave pits with the same self satisfied sense of accomplishment that farmers a few thousand meters overhead would survey market-ready hogs wrangling for position at a trough. An attack by adventurers is one of the dangers of allowing such savage animals to run free. Illithid levels of racism, while a wonderful narrative mirror for most modern societies, is the kind of warped perspective that, historically speaking, humans are perfectly capable of, but is far enough from most humans’ thoughts to be a jumping off point into weirder territory. The most significant difference when imagining the world from the Illithid point of view is their use of telepathy.

     Telepathic contact is the most rudimentary of abnormal sensory experiences. It seems unlikely that telepathic language structures would rely on something as nebulous and ephemeral as a ‘word’ to contain symbolic meaning. With an Illithid’s ability to transmit thought, elaborate arrays of interconnected feelings swirl violently into an image of blood on teeth, fragmentary memories of pain. A childhood injury, but expressed through the experiences of the receiver mapped over the message of the transmitter. Some telepathy may seek unity, but Illithid leverage their power to crush and control, meaning what they send out is more likely to project as intricate tapestries of empty labels and emotional cocktails for the receiving mind to struggle with, ultimately filtering it all through their own perspective. A cunning Dungeon Master can wrap the intent of such a creature around imagery drawn from the target character’s backstory, pulling both the character and it’s player deeper into the fabric of the story. When encountering such a terrifying, alien presence, the more of that fear-experience bleeds through into the players, the more real and evocative a dungeon master’s imagery becomes.

     Not all cultural lenses are so twisted, however, most forms of telepathic contact can and should play out in less invasive and hostile ways. Most telepathic experiences character’s have are fairly ordinary in the mythical sense, spirit voices, demands from gods, illusions and the like. Every character is likely to interact with each of these types of experiences in a different way, much as hearing voices would result in shamanic training in some cultures, exorcism in others, or medication and even imprisonment in the most barbaric societies. Cultural values taint perspective. Gaining enough perspective on oneself to see the lenses warping one’s own point of view is one of the greatest gifts roleplaying games can give.

     At its most simple this kind of otherness can make the more mundane elements of the game bloom as well. The quiet murmurings of a warlock’s patron, half forgotten spells and vicious secrets, seeming to grow up from the hiss of wind through leaves. A Paladin feels the hand of her god upon her shoulder as she prays before rushing into battle, the thrum of angelic hymns echoic silently through her bones. Everything flashes to white with a mind crushing shock, as a wizard’s familiar winks out in his thoughts. Telepathic experiences should always be highlighted in some way, through the use of sensory miscommunication. Calling sounds silent, leveraging pressure without touch, blinding light that’s invisible, a skillful dungeon master ensures the otherness of the narrative experience is enough to transport the players and elevate the experience of the game.

     When the beings in question become truly alien, however, there is a delightful point beyond which simple labeling language completely collapses. This is where the only option left is to invoke the high strange. Synesthesia, deliberately warped metaphors and even the use of something like a screen memory can drag an audience towards understanding a deeply alien being’s motivations.

    Synesthetic imagery is as simple as cross wired sensory language, like a wet, dim light that rushes in, flooding your chest with suffocating fear; Or a the sound of rainbows laughing, sweet tinkling spatterings of giggles that run together down the side walk to beaming puddles; Or darkness that stretches out so far and fast it draws you with it, spreading you across that infinity of inky nothingness so thin you shred. Synesthetic imagery leverages mislabeling to transmute a recognizable experience into a strange one, a shift in perspective.

      Warping metaphors operates on the same principle: She is the sun, whose darkness damns your final rasping breath to loneliness. A mountain of man rumbled towards us from the horizon, though as he came closer, his height was unchanged, leaving him just tall enough to look you in the eye if he stood on a molehill. Unexpected meaning forces an audience to think for a moment, from which they typically either leap to an hilarious conclusion, or shift their perspective to work out where the spirit, or insect intelligence, or psychic monstrocity is coming from.

     ‘Screen memory’ is a term that refers to imagery drawn up from a subject’s memories to overwrite traumatic sensory stimuli. This kind of imagery needs to be something the players can understand, not just their characters. The whole group must be able to have more or less the same conception of what the dungeon master is describing, so as to juxtapose their human understanding with the alien one. For example: The asteroid-nests of space-based telepathic insects are being knocked out of orbit by the miles long corpse of a star dragon that’s been sucked into a planet’s gravity. When the insects come to defend the nests and the players manage to hold off on attacking long enough to attempt communication, they all experience a single startling shock of pain. Together the characters experience a wasp climbing into their beehive, it’s stinger wet with the blood of countless guards. The wasp lumbers forwards, ripping open the nursery cells of larva, slaughtering the infants within. The bees inside the hive swarm, piling atop the wasp and stinging it again and again until it dies and the remaining larva are safe. The players are, of course, the bees swarming, the wasp the vast ultra-dracolich still barrelling towards the planet, scattering everything in its path, asteroid-eggs and all.

    Beyond even the most tangentially related visions cobbled together from the collective subscious of player character childhoods, there is the insane, sublime and typically annoying non-sense of anti-communication. Beings whose communications cannot fit inside of human(oid) thoughts, may come across as a pulsing thrumming that ripples reality, imparting disjointed information alongside precognitive visions, or an intermittent ringing in the ears, buzzing secrets in a tiny, mosquito voice. The simplest manifestation of this is babbling, or with a slightly more focused set of chaotic noise a glossolalia that almost implies meaning. The most accessible example of this kind of near-sensical imagery is J.J. Abrams’ show Lost, which uses cryptic nonsense as a kind of structural, breadcrumb-cryptoglossa to draw the audience deeper and deeper into an illusory web of meaning.

     No matter how far down the rabbit hole surrealist narration spins, it’s important to maintain a solid baseline of coherent information upon which the group’s collective understanding of what’s happening in the game world can rest. While the mechanics are a passable bedrock, a thread of meaning, a pinch of rationale, or a splash of logic is necessary to anchor madness addled minds to the shared reality of the story. Going gonzo with descriptions works best once the players have a sense of the ‘ordinary’ version of the world their character’s inhabit. There also needs to be a place for the characters to arrive at again, hopefully with a new point of view on the ‘ordinary’ elements of their world, ideally with at least some of their alien experiences remaining at least a little weird and confusing. Ultimately the story is the only thing that really needs to survive a brush with the incomprehensible intact. The characters, their worlds, and even their players can be changed, with the story there to support them.

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A Storm of Locusts: Cloud Kingdom Chaos (Day 5)

Looming before our heroes, the forward walls of the cloud giant’s fortress rises some fifty feet above the misty islands upon which it rests. With treasure sold off and fresh supplies stocked, our heroes spent some time considering the best approach to the walls, eventually deciding to head straight towards the center at what seemed to them, ‘ground’ level. Alas, invaders had penetrated the inner sanctum of this ancient place and the guards had little trust in their hearts as they tried to keep their watch with the din of their masters fighting desperately to repel the invading swarm of giant locusts that had descended on stone cast down by the taller-than-the-sky bank of inky black storm clouds pouring over the face of the world to consume the cloud kingdoms themselves.

After taking stock of the looming walls ahead, our heroes break into teams to ferry allies across.

Slowly, cautiously, the crossed to the nearest spit of cloud, offloading allies to what they hoped was a safe approach to the fortress.

A brief negotiation with the guard, who would only speak to someone who spoke giant. Hadarai tried to be diplomatic, when the guard wanted a simple answer. Vague threats from the rest of the party in common (which they thought the guard didn’t understand) moved him from suspicious to paranoid and he swung a knot of wood on a rope above his head that gave off a thrumming whistle sound. Cloud sharks came bounding up from the misty mass, to lunge for our heroes.

From the masses of cloud above, mist bodied chimera lumbered forth, dragging themselves from the vaporous mass and coalescing with defiant roars.

Meanwhile below, Hadarai, atop his tamed cloud leads the party against the cloud sharks bearing down on where they were boxed in on their tiny spit of cloud.

Behind the mighty wall the eldest of the cloud giant king’s sons battle valiantly to defend the Star Spire from the strange being who descended from the heavens alongside the eldritch storm. 

High above the melee below, the druids (Wolf and Frigga) carry allies over the wall in the form of giant eagles. This resulted in the instantly infamous “dwarf-bomb” maneuver. To be repeated as often as possible.

 Meanwhile, the battle against the cloud chimeras spun away from the cloud-spit, out amongst the carnivorous clouds whirling in the vortex formed outside of the fortress by the huge storm clouds towering over head. Hadarai urged his tame cloud to rile up the others.

Hadarai slashes at the cloud chimera

The cloud giant princes are not fairing well.

As our heroes begin to cross over the wall, they encounter the strange, insect like creatures for the first time. Long manipulator limbs tear at cloudfolk bodies, shredding them into the surrounding misty fluff. Huge sets of wings hum through the air as the insects flitter about the wall, the starspire and the slowly princes.

Having once again spread themselves thin, with a second conflict blooming behind the wall, things begin to look dire.

 

Ralph and Thor face off against the cloud sharks. A little fancy footwork almost saves the day, but…

A few missed steps and our heroes are falling to their doom, over a mile below, along with one of the sharks.

Wolf swoops down in the form of a giant eagle, while Ralph pushed away from the cloud shark, hoping to stay clear of it’s snapping jaws.

Hadarai saves Ralph using his tame cloud, then flies away with the eagles, leaving the cloud shark to evaporate on impact with the distant ground.

The rescued and their rescuers arrive at last amongst the teleportation stones floating amongst the anchor clouds that undulated in place gently above the hardened face of the cloud itself. Thirian, Thor and Korathank take stock of the battle below while Wolf circled high above the scene in her giant eagle form, calling back to her allies with piercing signal cries. This actually played out as table talk, which I allow for reasons you can find here.  What would they have talked about in the seven hours tramping through the plains of cloud other than strategy for surviving what lies ahead and who could do what?

The elder of the cloud giant brothers is pulled down by the enraged insects, his younger sibling held at bay by the telekinetic powers of the others.

Their father stood atop the back of the fortress, using all of his power to hold back the unnatural wall of cloud that slowly subsumed the vast man.

At last the whole party of adventurers found themselves behind the wall and facing the psychic insects that have descended on the gleaming tower in the center of the cloud giant fortress. A single stalk of gleaming golden stone, Al called it a Starspire, but what precisely that meant, none of the characters could say. No one made their History check alas.

Our heroes rush to the aid of the surviving cloud giant prince, teaming up to take down the first of the insects.

While the insects above are distracting lifting the cloud giant prince away from his rescuers, Thor gets the drop on them!

The insects stole minds and threw objects and allies alike about with their telekinesis, but our stalwart heroes were relentless in their bid to end the invasion.

In a furious battle that left more than half of the party unconscious or dying, the last of the alien insects were slain. But the black powers of the looming tempest were not finished with the remaining creatures who tried to retreat.

When several players cast summoning spells at the end of the battle, the dark, liminal forces pulled down by the wall of storms still crashing against the cloud giant fortress, brought forth the mighty Cloudthulu! The fell entity’s consciousness having been somewhat focused on our heroes since his cleric, Korathank, foolishly told the mountain guardian of his service to the ancient one.

With the cloud fortress cleared of the alien insects, and their meddling with the star spire ended, the rains drowning the world evaporate, but the looming mass of inky black cloud still presses forwards…

Will our heroes be able to activate the starspire and reach the heavens where the cause of the fell storms yet lurks?

We’ll let the dice decide, next time in:
Dungeon Camp 2018 Week 2, Shadow of the Star Dragon

 

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Cloud Giant’s Gate: Dungeon Camp (Day 4)

After rappelling down from the cloud the guardian of the peak had placed them on, our heroes made their way across the vaporous planes to the edge of a gap between cloud banks. A gap at least 100 feet across left a channel through which dozens of smaller clouds flowed on a strong breeze from the west.

Eight layers of fluffy clouds rushed by at speeds varying from 50 feet per turn to 15 feet per turn, depending on the size of the cloud. Our heroes, bound to one another by 45 feet of rope between each, began a long and treacherous game of leap frog in the sky.

Taking a long moment to consider their options, our heroes try to organize the party by size and strength, with Hadarai, the ranger I generously suggested take ‘Sky’ as a favored terrain, in the lead.

I drew a height map and talked the players through their options after doing a narrative description of the mountainous cumulus banks rambling up into towers ahead of them. It was an eighth of a mile to the towering cloud walls. The purple hashmarks are roughly ‘ground level’ on the planes of cloud. The stacks above rise as high as 120 feet overhead.

Hadarai guessed that there would be a village or town of some kind about where the blue X marks are on the left and right hand sides of the map. Our heroes argued at length about which way to go, whether the river of passing clouds was the safest route.  They even considered staying right where they were to rest instead of making for a village, several of them were very low on hit points after all…

The 28 mm river of clouds.

And a zoom in on that part of the map.

Unfortunately the smaller of the clouds rushing by were a carnivorous variety not native to the material plane, and rare in such tremendous numbers.

Every step on the bloodthirsty clouds left red prints behind (made with a hand mixed dye on pulled cotton clouds)

Those already wounded had the worst time of things, though their allies worked hard to aid them.

Missed leaps and ropes pulled unexpectedly taut began to take their toll as the carnivorous clouds circled hungrily.

Which clouds were safe and which weren’t became quickly obvious, first because the blood stains were so easy to see.

It became evident (by process of elimination) that the carnivorous clouds were (thankfully) only the smaller ones.

The ropes drawn between our heroes proved both their salvation and nearly their doom as they alternately saved those who missed their leaps or were dragged down by the attacking clouds.

Those at the end of the line had the most trouble with taut safety lines and enraged, ravenous clouds.

A few helpful allies and a timely casting of the spell ‘Fly’ rescued the operation, as swarming clouds managed to capture Al, who fell unconscious into the clouds below.

The last desperate survivors sprint, leap and fly to escape the clouds, which seem unwilling to move beyond the shore of the vast stratocummulus the players had finally cross to.

 

Friga discovers that ‘Destroy Water’ will annihilate a carnivorous cloud instantly.

Hadarai anchors the rope, utilizing his ‘Sky’ Favored Terrain ability.

 

After a ‘theater of the mind’ style visit to the cloud village atop the vast rolling plains of mist, they stand upon the shore opposite the great Cloud Giant fortress. Within a tower rippling with lightning, beyond which a wall of dark, thunderous cloud towers from the peaks below to the wrack the stars themselves.

Can our heroes find a way to penetrate the mighty fortress and discover the source of the scourge of rain born floods that threaten to drown the world?

We’ll let the dice decide, Next time: A Storm of Locusts: Cloud Kingdom Chaos (Day 5)

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Enter the Sky: Cloud Kingdom Chaos (Day 3)

 

Who doesn’t love loot?

The lust for power and wealth outweighed half the party’s common decency. While Al, Thor, Thirian and Korathank tried to sing a dwarrow funeral dirge for the honored dead, Ferran hacked open the large chest, while Hadarai smashed a barrel against the wall. Wolf perused the books on the shelves, while Korathank held back, trying to urge patience to her more excitable comrades before deciding to join in the prayer.

Of course the unquiet dead were enraged at those who would not only disturb their rest, but their actual funerals! Whiskey burst from the broken cask, along with the festering ghost of a maggot riddled dwarrowknight.

Apologies and joining in the funeral service apeased some of the ghosts, but the ancestors did not make it easy. The suddenly frigid air froze the lungs (Con save) of some.

Enough of our heroes managed to finish the dirge that the spirits were able to find peace. The ghost of the dwarrow chief even bequeathed his armor and blade to Thor in gratitude.

This is also the day we began learning to paint miniatures. We used a selection of reaper paints and learned how to add a base layer, and for campers ready for more advanced techniques, got to talk about washes, glazes and dry brushing.

Constructing and using a wet palette is one of the most important parts of this curriculum. Being able to keep color blends fresh is a valuable skill.

Waiting between layers of paint isn’t always easy for every kid, but luckily there’s a lot of in character near death experiences to keep them distracted.

 

Behind the book cases a secret room is revealed, with a gate key set into the wall, a puzzle meant to be opened by the intitated… unfortunately the books were mostly destroyed in the struggle with the ghosts. When Wolf tried to activate it, everyone in the treasure room was frozen inside a block of ice.

Wolf was trapped in the secret room with the puzzle. Korathank and Ferran were trapped outside of the cave on the cliff face. Everyone else suffered the torments of the uninitiated as several wrong sequences of gemstone keys were tested.

This puzzle was improvised based on the gem stones that were rolled for treasure after the ancestor spirits had been appeased and Thorin had agreed to be the blood protector of the mountain, and was welcomed into the clan of the dwarrow they had respectfully buried. One of the chests contained 2D6 gemstones worth 750 gp each. I rolled 4, so I made them elementally themed in my description of how they were carved. Then when it came time for the puzzle to open the way forwards into the cloud kingdoms, I thought it would be more fun to work with what I rolled randomly to have in the cave.

I figured each gemstone rod would fit into a slot and that it would have an effect on the runes chiseled into the heart of the mountain above the key slot. When the ruby was put into the first slot, for example, flames would dance from the runes. sapphire in the second slot would then weep hot tears. diamond in the third slot freezes those tears to ice. (as noted in the left hand column) When the fourth stone was inserted, a horrible effect befell those trapped in the treasure room based on the elementally themed logic of the inputs.

In the first example.  We start with Ruby (fire), which is then quenched with Sapphire (water), which is then cooled by Diamond (air), which is then made solid by Emerald (earth), thus freezing everyone in the room in a solid block of ice.

In the second example, Ruby (fire) and Sapphire (water) went the same, but Emerald (earth) was made more fluid and loose, but then dominated by it’s opposing element (air), which reversed the gravity in the room, forcing wolf to climb from the ceiling and hold the gemstone rods in their key slots by force.

When at last they had survived a high speed electrified whirlpool of melted ice, which thembecame an electric whirlwind,which became a shocking storm of steam, they found the correct combination (in order by alchemical density, starting with earth because it’s a dwarrow temple).

As they made their way from the temple to the mountaintop, our heroes faced the guardians of the peak, another form of creatures who had once already tested their mettle.

One by one as they meet with the towering beast standing before the now shimmer quartz monolith that dwarfs even the huge Elder Wolf.

Yet, not all went smoothly. Korathank the Paladin stated proudly that his master Cthulhu had sent him on this quest. The Elder Wolf was not pleased.

Meanwhile, Al was furiously recording all the various permutations and runes to be found in the tomb and the traps to be found there.  Ferran stuck around to steal the gemstone rods before making an escape.

The Elder Wolf had no patience, but (with a Natural 1 on a check against Korathank’s ridiculous Persuasion check claiming Cthulhu was an okay guy) chose to grab for Ferran first. While the guardian pulled Al and Ferran up through the stone itself, Korathank dove through the rapidly closing crystalline portal.

While Al was answering the guardian’s question as to why he sought passage. (Curiosity, of course! I’ve never been there, so I’m going.) Ferran snuck through the portal. When they arrived on the other side, Korathank and Ferran both found themselves under terrible curses, as the granite that covered the crystal slowly burrowed it’s way into their bodies. (Cursed: disadvantage on Dex checks and saves for Korathank, Con for Ferran)

Now that our heroes have made their way into the cloud kingdoms proper, will they be able to reach the source of the trouble in time? or even survive the journey?

We’ll let the dice decide in:
Cloud Giant’s Gate, Dungeon Camp (day 4)

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Belly of Stone: Cloud Kingdom Chaos (Day 2)

Within the vast mountains, beyond the reach of Dwarrow or Eagles, our heroes face a band of water wolves, who leap straight from the slime stained creek that runs backwards and, as they soon discovered, loops back onto itself.

Hadarai (woodelf ranger) and ‘Wolf’ (woodelf druid) struggle beneath the current, held fast by canine teeth dug deep into their limbs. Ashore, their allies rally, pushing back the smaller wolves, while Friga (dragonborn druid and giant white wolf fig) tries to stare down the Elder Wolf.

As the battle rages on, the stream is revealed to have transformed into a loop somehow, drawing a nearly drowned and bled out Hadarai back to where his allies can save him. Yet the transformation boggles our heroes, who struggle to understand, even as they struggle against the wolves…

As the pack collapses under the party’s counter offensive, the Elder wolf roars in Frigga’s borrowed wolf face and chases her down the tunnel in a blind rage, ultimately cornering itself between those she’d thought slain by her pack, and those ignored at her flanks…

With Friga taunting the Elder Wolf, the rest of the water wolf pack fell into disarray and was picked off swiftly, leaving the surrounded Elder to attempt a vaillant stand, and then to flee.

Before resting the adventurers split into teams to explore the tunnels (darkvision, wild shaped dire wolves and torch bearers respectively), making certain there were no more foes to be found, and discovering a new side tunnel, leading to a new whirlpool. Assuming this was a portal, they set up camp in a dry patch at a bend in the creek.

After working out who would take which watch, we broke for lunch and boffer sword construction.

Our boffers are made with PVC pipe, pool noodles, rounds cut from foam pads and duct tape. IFGS rules.

 While everyone else slept, Frigga prowled the tunnels in her wolf form, discovering that the water wolf pack’s scent grew stronger when she stalked widdershins and stronger clockwise. What’s more, her allies were gone when she made her way back around once, though she found them again when she went back the way she had come. There was a great deal of speculation about what this meant, but ultimately came to naught. Ferran had gone out exploring as well, trying to leave marks which vanished from the walls, and going so deep into the spiral that he lost track of time and space. Somewhere in the depths, the side tunnel leading to the whirlpool, led instead to a impenetrably black wall. Ferran saw a glimmer of his fingers reflected back from the surface before they touched. The wall burst, letting out a wave of water that filled the tunnels, flinging Ferran at the front as it spiraled up to sweep the party from their camp into a newly formed dead end. Quick thinking ‘Wolf’ transformed into a dolphin and began to ferry everyone to the whirlpool, which now spun inwards at the center of the flooded chamber.

While ‘Wolf’ was able to get all of her allies to the portal, their armor and weapons were left pinned to the cave floor. Anything that could float was grabbed as best our herores could.

Not everyone made it all the way to the whirlpool, with a few awry strength saves leaving heroes swirling in the dolphin’s wake, where they snatched at gear, or made for the portal on their own.


Two by two the dolphin ‘Wolf’ pulled her allies to the portal, though the tunnel began to retract  as she did, almost crushing her as she reached the portal on the final pass.

The whirlpool fed through darkness and out a spout that spat our heroes one by one onto a narrow ledge above a cliff face. A tower of rock that jutted from the heights to stand above the clouds themselves.

The narrow ledge was host to a view of the distant slopes, some hundreds of feet below, and the span of thunderous, gray clouds that poured torrential rain across the plains.

In the deluge of bodies, two of our heroes nearly had the chance to take a more accurate measure of the cliff’s height (on the way down), save for the quick reflexes of their fellow travelers, Thriran (human monk) and Thorin (dwarrow fighter)

 

From left to right, Ferran, Al, Thirian, Thor, Wolf, Korathank, Hadarai, and Frigga, take stock of their situation at the top of the world.

As the party spreads out to explore something about the carving of the stone steps reminds him of his ancestral home, or the deep temples, dug millenia past. A natural 20 of a history check has him scurrying up towards the peak to confirm his suspicions.

Another natural 20 on a nature check, and Thor realizes the structure atop the peak looks more like a crystalline mass coated in a layer of granite! A third natural 20 (that set the whole table to shouting) on a religion check, and we rush to the pathway beneath the spire to find…

A hidden chamber, filled with the bodies of dwarrow, slain in battle. Thor insisted that the dead be laid to rest and prayed over before anyone dares to touch the chests, or bookshelves…

 

Alas, the rest of the party wasn’t feeling so patient. Will they simply reap the rewards of their cunning dwarrow friends findings? or will they reap the wrath of vengeful spirits of the ancestors?

We’ll let the dice decide in:
Enter the Sky: Cloud Kingdom Chaos (Day 3)

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The Inn at the Top of the World: Cloud Kingdom Chaos (Day 1)

The skies are aboil with lightning, the thunder constant as vast continents of vapor clash against one another. All nations and peoples below suffer the consequences as the chaos in the cloud kingdoms reshapes regions with landslides and floods of proportions thought long relegated to myth.

Above the banks of refugee clouds that sail ever lower to avoid the storm of storms, Eaglespoor Perch stands on the crossroads of the old Imperial roads and the tracks of countless trappers and miners that call the lofty peaks home. The giant eagles that roost amidst the surrounding peaks control the trade routes skyward, to the Cloud Kingdoms themselves, yet none will venture into the looming banks of inky black clouds.

The first thing we do is learn to make characters.  I talk to the players about the story that’s coming, the title and the starting place.  Then they tell me about why their characters would be in that place, and together we weave together a beginning.

Then the hard part starts. The first time through building a character in an RPG can seem daunting for some kids. I’ve always loved doing it, and still use it for a character analysis system when I’m trying to organize thoughts around a new work of fiction, so teaching it is fun for me too.

The most important part of building a character is having a chance to see how the numbers show up in the game, when the action is really happening. So after everyone has got their race, class and background sorted out, abilities set, proficiencies noted, we’re off to high adventure!

The common room of the Eaglespoor Perch, somewhat less lively than usual without the eagle’s deck in operation.

Survivors of the Apotheosis Institute, the idle curious, and fortune hunters find themselves sharing a roof, and perhaps a quest.

What may have otherwise been a quiet evening had settled into the Eaglespoor. Dom and Myrt had finished serving dinner, though dueling bards had kept the guests lively and (more importantly to Dom’s thinking) ordering ale. That several bands of adventurers at once didn’t seem like a coincidence, and Dom was happy to adjust his prices to match his concerns. It also distracted him as his bouncer kicked out a local woman whose husband had died in the mines. An incident also missed by the adventurers as they made for the bar to fill their empty bellies.

The majority of the Legends who answered the call to discover the source of the chaos in the Cloud Kingdoms chose to share the inn’s main bunk room.

One spent quite a bit more to ensure his privacy, the better to confer with his dark patron in the long night before the journey up, and above, the mountain.

A camper who arrived late, found their character still making for the inn, only to happen across Cerran and her children just in time to rescue them from wolves.

 

 And so night settles over the inn, as ‘Wolf’ (Woodelf Druid)  kept watch over her new found allies, and Korathank (Halfelf Paladin) pushed himself to the limit to carry Cerran and her children, Amli and Fellden up to the inn.  Luckily, the druid heard the crying of little Fellden and then the grunting of Korathank struggling up the last few feet of the ragged cliff face with the family clinging to his back.

Korathank, semiconscious from blood loss and exhaustion, managed to push the wayward family up into the courtyard in front of the inn.

While ‘Wolf’ rushed the injured Paladin and terrorized family upstairs to their room, the pack that had hunted them up the mountainside sized up the inn…

In the bunk room, our heroes learn that Cerran had been trying to talk to Dom for quite some time. With a bit of healing magic, the family were fast asleep.

In the morning everyone gathered at the bar, taking extra care to sneak Cerran and her children past the bouncer. Myrt was horrified to see Cerran and stormed out back to clean the eagle deck, while Dom first thanked our heroes for saving his friend, but for letting him know what had been going on behind his back.

It didn’t take much convincing for Tomack to be the one doing the bouncing as Dom threw his former employee out, sending him skipping across the courtyard like a stone.

Meanwhile, the guard arrived to ask about a wolf corpse that had been discovered down the trail and were as horrified to hear about such an organized pack as they were thankful to have some already dealt with.

After a solid breakfast (on the house) and a bit more gossip with priests about the nature of what might be causing the floods, local mavens about how all the roads were blocked, and at last a young merchant calling herself Sam, who first offered to deliver a letter for Ferran (Warlock), then asked if they would be interested in the reward being offered for any information leading to the reopening of the cloud kingdoms and an end to the flooding and destruction.

A contract was produced, wisely tested for magic and trickery by several canny players, all of whom signed, though there was a bit of a conjuration spell upon the parchment. When they had all signed, the masked bard, who had been dueling with the satyr flutist the night before, tumbled atop a nearby table and pulled duplicate contracts from his calico coat.

The contracts sighed, the masked bard flipped the table Sam had been sitting at to reveal a teleportation circle drawn on the underside. (a back door to the mountain peaks now trapped beyond the lightning wracked banks of cloud that loomed above.

The masked bard spun through the air and leapt through the portal, calling for our heroes to follow, only after they had begun to jump through after the man did anyone realize they had forgotten to ask him his name.

 

One by one our heroes come shooting out of an inverse whirlpool, which rises up as it swirls and which water flows away. The Paladin quickly lights a torch, as most of the band is blinded in the dark. The bard’s mask gives off a faint glow of visible light itself, though it glows like a bonfire to those with. drakvision

Draw by the sounds of our heroe’s haphazard splashing through the underground river, water wolves come diving up from the flow to drag the unwary beneath the water, and dig teeth and claws into those who remain above.

The huge white wolf is Friga (dragonborn druid), trying first a little diplomacy, then intimidation as her allies get pulled down or cornered.

Will our heroes escape the fetid dark and nashing jaws in the strange tunnels beneath the mountain?

We’ll let the dice decide in:
Belly of Stone, Cloud Kingdom Chaos (Day 2)

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The Ratcatcher’s Revenge 5/30/18

Our penultimate session begins with the dragon chasing our heroes down the hall, followed by a small legion of invisible, puppet-armor assassins. At the end of the dormitory hall, in the dean’s private study, Deamon Chord awaits their attempt to escape via the Statue Gate. Outside the windows one observant student spotted a displacer behemoth pacing the grounds. Fear rose in all their hearts at this news, for the ferocious regenerative powers of the creatures has so far proved unstoppable…

Alamazoo the celestial beetle and his swarms of vassal scarabs attempt to slow the charge of the enraged dragon.

The dragons breath sent scorching hot beetle corpses sailing down the dormitory to pepper our heroes and their foes alike. Alamazoo’s celestial light was seen to flicker and spark as he collapsed beneath one of the beds.

With their celestial allies scattered like coals from an overturned brazier, our heroes dash between the towering puppet-armor, whose whirling blades broke through more than one hero’s defenses.

The ophidiman fighter was picked up by the dragon and flung down the hall, falling unconscious for the third time during this escape.

A few straglers try to catch up, pursued by the thundering steps of the puppet-armor and the skittering of invisible assassins creeping around the sides of the room.

Meanwhile in the office, two students previously knocked unconscious are being dragged by the head to Deamon’s work bench, where he donned shoulder length white gloves. He placed his hands on the halfling sorcerer’s chest and pushed them inside his body, without a trade of blood or harm. A moment later, he pulled out a small crystal that had been embedded under the halfling’s sternum.

One by one, those already captured are dragged to have strange crystalline objects removed from their chests by Deamon and his eerie gloves. When asked what the crystals are he only answered: “The price of loyalty.”

The second victim woke up during the procedure and tried to question Deamon. The rogue in question was convinced the extractions were meant to be helpful to them somehow… Deamon would say so, but the players will likely not.

With the last of our surviving heroes making their way into the office, the battle becomes fierce, as the limited space, and still locked cage around the Statue Gate, prevents actual escape. Will they be able to break the heavily enchanted cage and escape Deamon’s clutches at last?

Next Time: We’ll let the dice decide.

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Accursed Currents 5/29/18

Somewhere in the depths of the eastern sea, the tattered remnants of the Elder Shark’s spirit body disintegrate as the warped currents that had supported it’s incredible  mass unravel along with it’s flesh. Within that whirling slurry of shark, our heroes struggle to save Gorvinahth, the Statue Gate, while surviving the onslaught of the enraged Elder Shark.

The rival masses of flesh still churn the waters as those impacted Contagion, wrestle with those that still hold some measure of the Elder Shark’s true essence.

As she passed from consciousness, Gorvinahth had one last Meta Mechanical action. The players chose Aid, which brought the sharkfolk pirates and their leader Lorenzini back into the fray. The blue-figurined forces spread out across the area under the players direction.

In the heart of this chaos, with one ally already trapped inside the Elder Shark, the barbarian manages to take hold of one of the war sharks and swing it around like a club, shattering it’s spine against it’s own god.

Lorenzini chases the Elder Shark around, trying to reason with his god, as it continues to call upon the power of the sea to slaughter all who dare to disrupt his power. The sharkfolk pirate captain persisted in begging it abandon it’s rage, for the heart is set free and the oceans can return to balance.

As it circle the area, the Elder Shark again used its summon ability to bring forth a wave of elder water elementals.

In the background, the elder elementals spread out as the Elder Shark circles around for another attack while the sharkfolk spread out to defend Gorvinahth and our injured characters.

Meanwhile, the sharkfolk partner with the druid in his fanged fish form to bring down one of the stealth sharks, while the rest surround the surviving war shark.

The sharkfolk turn on their own as needs be. Caught up in the Elder Shark’s blood lust and rage, their cousin cannot calm himself and when one of the pirates dies, the rest claim vengeance.

Lorenzini (face down after breaking off of his stand) slammed into the war shark, finishing it off and sending it spinning away into the depths.

With a single session left, our heroes are nearly routed: pinned down, or eaten alive, mortally wounded, or barely standing.

The wounded defend the unconscious amongst the promethean mechana as their survivng foes circle ever inwards.

Meanwhile, in the Elder Sharks belly, the war cleric and barbarian struggle to escape while facing the last of the Megamegaladons essence.

But they’ve taken hold of the Statue Gate, and hope to activate it, before the Elder Shark strikes again. Will they be able to triumph? Who will survive?

Next Week in the Accursed Currents Finale: We’ll let the dice decide.