Pony Day

My two favorite ponies made this week.

As seen in the episode "Luna Eclipsed", the counters to Princess Celestia's Royal Guard, are the Royal Guard of Princess Luna

From the episode "Sweet & Elite", a pony of high fashion, Prim Cut

Ferrous Fortune-Hunters: Session V

Game time, fairly short session. It got delayed by Mary oversleeping, but there was sufficient activity that everyone leveled. Adam, as usual, slaughtered like no other. Pat showed off the unholy terror he is capable of unleashing when in melee. Mary showed off her usual heavy amounts of psychotically violent tendencies with overt greed. Jon, not sure what to do with him. His rolling is amazing, on a level more severe than Adam's in the opposite direction. On top of the fact he chose a specific build (Illusion-based arcanist) with exceedingly low combat quality unless you have solid tactics, which he doesn't have and barely acknowledges his non-combat strengths.

Either way, on with the summary!


Nightfall was on the horizon, and the party climbed down to begin reconnaisance of the logging camp. Analee and the innocence demon disappeared, and the refugees were given some food and told which way to go. Once they reached the camp, they split up and stayed at the fringes until nightfall so they could get a good estimate of the numbers they were facing. Jon almost got spotted by one of archers, but Adam gave him the suggestion of creating the illusion of a deer to convince them it was a harmless sound. As it turned out, there were roughly fifty guards and well over 200 refugees enslaved.

There was a 30' wide pit circled by a 50' sequioa tower, a private log cabin, four barracks, and a storage building. There were constantly three archer guards on the door to the tower at all times, and at least one patrol of five guards even during the evening. Analee, wearing her innocent dress, and the innocence demon came up to the camp openly and were admitted into the captain's private cabin.

With Adam's direction, they snuck in under the cover of illusion as simple guards, hammered pitons into the doors of the barracks, and threw makeshift molotovs (lamp oil, roughly as alchemist's fire). The archers were more or less taken care of, while the party high-tailed it to where alot of the large stumps were for cover. A patrol headed for them, did some damage, but got killed somewhat quickly. Enough chaos was caused so that the party was uninterrupted doing this, and then Adam followed suit with stunts and the like to shoot some of the burning guards back into other guards, actually getting them set on fire.

After a few rounds of shooting fish in a burning barrel, the captain of the gaurd appeared and commanded the land sharks to attack the party. He was wearing the cape that signified him as a guard for the Black Lotus Eaters, which verified the information from the refugees.

After a bit of arguing, I let the sharks stay above ground when they did their jumps to try and bite them. Pat was taken under right off the bat, and the other two kept missing sufficiently and failing to maintain their hold on Adam when they bit him (really damn high Escape Artist rolls). They unleashed a terribly high amount of damage, enough to actually kill the remaining two within three rounds.

The captain of the guard showed himself, holding a waraxe over a barely conscious party member still being held in the mouth of a shark, threatening to end him there if the party didn't show themselves within two minutes. Meanwhile, the innocence demon was on the roof of the private cabin preparing the materials for smores (setting's equivalent).

The party snuck from the back to try and get into the private cabin through a window, only to be stopped by a nervous Analee, who revealed that the man was like an ox after all the poison he took and he was very nervous about the demon. Mary tried to convince her to let them in so they could just stab in surprise, but Analee said that he was the only thing keeping the shark from going into a blood frenzy and eating their friend right then and there. Thinking quickly, Adam gave her a black lotus blossum and gave her a message to relay to meet them in 10 minutes personally.

He met them, threatened to kill him anyway, and the guards were sufficient to take them out if he alerted them. The captain seemed unfazed at the threats that the party was good enough to kill him before the guards could react fast enough, and offered them a chance to go away scott free if one of them agrees to a one-on-one duel with him in an hour. Reluctantly, the pary agreed, with the very heavy plan that Mary would duel and Adam would suddenly unleash a flurry of arrows into the captain so that he will die.

Before they began this plan, the demon appeared again in full-grown woman form, begging and pleading with the party to stop the killing and violence. She had a streak of gray hair that wasn't there before, and showed a massive bite mark on her torso that was still bleeding. As the party wasn't swayed by this (trying to argue on the state of slavery), she reluctantly offered to end the situation if they agreed to stop killing.

With a flurry, she became a large hag-like nightmare whose touch disintegrated the ground like eggshells and flew through the ground. Holding the shark like a rag doll, she forcefully pulls Pat's character out of its jaws and throws him to the ground (hurt, but still alive). She begins to slowly grab random guards and rend them limb-from-limb, causing even more havoc.

Suddenly, the door to the tower flies open and a true Melnibonean arcanist steps out and imprisons the demon in a wall even it cannot readily burn through. The party gets into a defensive stance, only to discover that the arcanist to be understanding and cordial. He tames the demon into the form of a little girl with treats and new clothes, treating her as a loving father, commenting that she was under the effects of scapegoat magicks (tied to something and taking all pain/suffering in its stead).

Initially, he applauded the binding talent on Jon's part, who soon revealed that he barely knew anything of the demon or even why she was bound to them. Regardless, he encouraged them to care for her and to contact him if they found any further information that could lead to breaking the scapegoat spell on her. He seemed genuinely concerned about the suffering she was going through because of the spell, which had given SO much pain that even an innocence demon couldn't shrug it off and was storing it as a defense mechanism. Handing them a feather that can somehow relay a message to him, he then agrees to release the refugees, claiming that he got enough wood for his needs.

The party then leaves quickly, grabbing a few of the sequoia-wood bows and mauls wielded by the fallen (quite a penny on the open market, for the wood alone). The captain of the guard is obviously disgruntled, and vows to hunt them down as soon as the demon isn't around to protect them.

Pony Day

Today is of particular note, Sanada's begun to create custom miniature ponys. So far, she's created and posted the following:

Each are wearing show accurate outfits from the Grand Galloping Gala, in order from left to right: Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie.

Look out next week for Applejack and Twilight Sparkle.

Ferrous Fortune-Hunters: Session IV

Very short session today, due to Mary oversleeping (I worry about that sleep schedule of hers sometimes), and having to head home early to care for her S.O. Probably a good thing, as we were shy Adam for the day because he forgot that Sunday was game day and made plans with other people for the day (and wasn't given too much choice to change his mind once he realized the conflict).


The party, having seen the devastation of the heavy logging in the area, were about to just shrug and walk away. They managed to see a trio of chained men stumbling rapidly towards the path they were walking down, and waited to see what they had to say. Screaming, they begged for safety and the like, a mysterious woman seemed to jump out from the trees to try to help the strangers out of concern. She pleaded Jon for his healer's kit to bandage them, as they had bleeding callouses on their hands and were quite exhausted (as well as the beginning of malnutrition).

Terribly confused, Jon gave the woman his kit so that she began to bandage them, and Pat noticed that four guards where marching towards them. The refugee trio begged for safety and cowered to the side of the path when they heard that the guards were coming, repeatedly lamenting that they were all dead and that 'he' would send the sharks.

Once the guards got there, they grinned happily and the lead one declared that the party's gear would sell for a good chunk of change. As they charged, Analee appeared out of the bushes and practically eviscerated the guard that was lagging behind. The rest of the party dealt with the remaining three, having suffered heavy wounds, and one of them surrendered.

Tying down the surrendered one, Mary demanded information, but failed to intimidate him sufficiently for any help. The guard quickly went unconscious from the pain when she began removing toenails, which made the strange woman from earlier leap to his defense and not wanting any unnecessary suffering to happen, even using the remains of her bandages to start fixing the damage already dealt to the guard. By this point, Jon noticed (due to his arcane training) that the woman wasn't even human, and showed signs of being a demon. He called it out on her, managing to convince her to tell him what she was.

Not terribly convinced, the woman said she was an innocence demon, a type of chaos demon that exemplifies innocence and retains such no matter what atrocity is levied upon them; be it emotional, physical, or even intellectual she will be untouched almost immediately after the deed is performed upon them. Their natural state is that of a small, happy girl that is blissfully ignorant of even the most rampant sin. For a full-grown woman who is painfully aware of such pain is...weird, to say the least.

The demon got nervous talking about what she was, and ran into the woods out of fear, where Jon simply tracked her down and found a little girl (with the same style/color dress as the woman). The girl offered a flower to him, and asked if he had any toys. Jon, confused as the tracks of the woman stopped there and the girl showed even more signs of her demon nature (to his trained eye), led her back to the camp to see if she remembered anything. As she didn't, he didn't quite know what to do.

This was all interrupted when one of the prisoners, having had the locks on their chains removed earlier, suddenly used the chain as a weapon and beat Mary into unconsciousness. Acting quickly, Pat jumped behind him and cut him down within six seconds, letting Jon work to fix Mary.

The other two prisoners were confused, as they didn't expect one to be a spy, and began to worry that 'the boss' would now send his sharks after them. This was proven to be true within half an hour, when the little girl demon was playing with some sticks to make a wreath and a 20' long shark leapt out of the ground and bit down on her.

Within seconds, it came up again and spat up a bloodied girl and began to circle the rest of the party. They tried their best to damage it, but after Mary stabbed it in the eyes, it sank back down and didn't come back up. As this shark wasn't desperate, they knew it was would likely wait a few minutes for its healing to fully repair it and then return (hit and run tactics are their preferred). The refugee/prisoners, Jon, and Pat began to climb trees and wait while Mary contemplated tying a body and 'going fishing'. When the shark never arrived, they began to talk from their arboreal hiding spots.

Analee discovered, from the refugees, that there are at least several dozen guards (if not more), and over two hundred slaves working the logging operation. The leader of the camp was a black lotus guard that was without his arcanist master, which implied he was either a rogue guild member or an imposter, as the refugees knew nothing of any superior to the camp leader. One of the early things they were forced to do was to construct a windowless, single-door tower that the leader did not ever enter and recently began to post guards to make sure none enter or leave it.

Curious, the party began to plot on how to deal with these facts, especially since Pat now wants to know what's in the tower and the refugees want their bretheren to be freed.

Boss Fights

In terms of plot, I occasionally run into concerns on making any particular villain too powerful for their role, which crops up when trying to maintain a challenge with the party. I also worry about how to handle a villain that logically has the means to get himself raised, or some of the consequences if the villain actually had a life outside its lair. 

That's only a little bit of thought on plot considerations. Probably the most difficult aspect for me is the actual mechanical considerations. 

Past the low levels, a party of level appropriate characters can bring considerable force to bear without even using any teamwork. This makes 4v1 fights a challenge to design, as an 8th level party can easily dump over 100+ damage in a single round, making many lucky to survive two whole rounds. If action-denial or similar is used to much effect, then our boss is basically hoping for a good initiative to actually do anything. Finding anything that can survive and act for an entire three or four rounds is almost the same as finding something that can one-shot a character. 

The longer they last, the faster they can kill, which makes upgrading a boss difficult because a linear lifespan increase is an almost exponential damage output. 

Then there's the option of toning down the boss and giving him friends to help him, which can get cumbersome if ill-designed. You need to take into account that you need to plan well for this, because you can just as easily end up punishing yourself by making the boss not as big. As a rule, players are going to team up and focus fire on the boss. This is surprisingly easy with spells and bows (or flying melee if the minions aren't airborne), making the presence of minions superfluous in terms of actually extending the boss's lifespan. 

We return to the same problem. Putting a nametag on the villain makes their insurance premiums skyrocket, and life-expectancy is directly proportional to CPR (characters per round). I have contemplated using this in my games... 

Boss Template: Triple hit points, raise saving throws by +4. Increase CR by 2. 

It's a means of adding padding to the Rocket Launcher Tag that is D&D, theoretically allowing me to still have a boss that has an actual lifespan without as much worry about one-shotting anybody. However, it suffers from not really addressing the flaw of one-dimensional strategy, and those who don't enjoy throwing numerical combos don't have fun doing it an extra round or two.

One option that holds a lot more potential is giving the boss only medium offense but good defense, while carrying around a good size posse of minions that have low offense and VERY low defense. When you can one-shot the skeleton that does 1/3 the damage of the necromancer, then it's in the party's best tactical interests to save the necromancer for last if it takes so little as four attacks to take him down. However, a party is not usually that tactically minded and there exists A LOT of psychological traction to put on the blinders and focus fire with extreme prejudice, and this is assuming that the party can even see the offense/defense ratios between boss and underling.

Even then, with D&D in particular, it is common for character builds allow for extremes in damage output and not always in a very distributed fashion. The ones that do high damage do twice that of the low damage dealers, if we're lucky (I've seen a five-fold difference). Amongst those high damage dealers, some spread it out over three or more separate attacks while others dump it all into a focused all-or-nothing attack for the round. The survivability of the necromancer and his skeletons are going to vary wildly depending on which character's attacks are made as the baseline. If I use the lower value attack as the baseline, then the higher-damage character will have incentive to use his attacks efficiently on the necromancer, because the higher damage will be wasted on skeletons. If I make the necromancer require four attacks from the big hitter to go down, then I'm back to the original problem of finding such a creature that can survive four of those; the power-hitter of my 10th level game does ~120 per round, and I know of no such monster with 360+ HP that won't eat the party for breakfast.

Mini-Module: Shrinking Room

For use in any of your dungeons. Obviously, it is something that you adjust according to the needs of your campaign, but it's originally designed for one of the more pulpy D&D genre gaming.

If you're stumped for reasons why this dungeon exists, working under the assumption you need a reason for it to be there, feel free to use this random table for it.

Reasons for the Shrinking Room (d6)

1. Door is a malfunctioning portal to the microverse, maybe it can be repaired

2. Temporary storage closet, the door on the other side will reverse the process

3. A wizard was cursed to have everyone near him feel as small as he did, his corpse lies buried beneath the floor while the magic continues, the process will reverse once you move 20' beyond the door

4. The mushroom emits magical spores. Killing it will undo the effects of anything shrunk in the last 24 hours

5. It is a prison for a giant, ancient, sentient, & evil bacterium that has been shrunk several times. If the magic is undone, the reversal will release it upon the world. Undoing the magic is as simple as finding the stone carvings in the room as marring them significantly

6. In the back of the mouse hole, there is a portal to another room/wing of the dungeon that also reverses the shrinking magic

A1. Shrinking Room

A plain and simple cubical room of aged, cracked stonework, 10’ on each side. Spiderwebs, moss, dustbunnies, and mouse droppings are almost everything of note in the room. On the opposite wall is a stoutly reinforced wooden door, and in the center is a mushroom with a tiny sign sticking out of it with two words written on it, “EAT ME.”

Any who enter the room will shrink to 1/70th their original size, making the average human one inch tall and the room 700’ in each dimension while shrunk. The door’s shrinking property functions only one way, and going through a second time will cause the character to shrink into nothingness, forever lost. Every twenty subjective feet there is a 10’ wide crevasse where the stonework has separated, going down between 10’ and 20’.

Halfway from the door to the mushroom, there is a large trapdoor spider that will attack the party from one of the crevasses. There are seven others; one over the exit door, two in two different ceiling corners, three inside the abandoned mouse hole guarding a single gold piece, and another between the mushroom and one of the corners on the floor.
Three roving packs of small dust bunnies roam the room, attacking anything except spiders and will not approach within 6” of the mushroom or any spider. Each pack is 80 strong.




The mushroom in the center will attack anything that comes within it’s 6” reach. There is small text on the bottom of the sign reading “one side will make you grow larger, the other will make you grow smaller.” Eating from one side of the mushroom will make the character grow to their original size, while the other will cause them to shrink into nothingness.

The coin from the mouse hole will grow with player if it’s carried with them, but it weighs 15 tonnes in total. If any part of the coin is broken off and subsequently enlarged, the remainder will not enlarge.


1E D&D
Dust Bunny - AC 8, MV 3”, HD 1hp, #AT 1, D 1-3
Mushroom - AC 7, MV 1”, HD 6, hp 63, #AT 4, D 1-4/1-4/1-4/1-4; two simultaneous attacks against the same character equal entanglement and force a save against poison or be unconscious for one turn
Large Trapdoor Spider - AC 4, MV Nil, HD 4+4, hp 28, #AT 1, D 2-8, save vs poison at +1 or be killed with a bite

3.X/Pathfinder
Large Trapdoor Spider - Use giant black widow hunting spider


Mushroom - Use violet fungus with 20’ reach, no movement speed, and camouflaged to look innocuous (Perception 20 to recognize)


Dust Bunny Swarm (CR 2)
N Tiny (swarm)
Init +6; Senses Low-Light vision, Scent; Perception +8
Defense
AC 14, touch 14, flat-footed 12 (+2 Dex, +2 size)
HP 16 (3d8+3)
Fort +4, Ref +5, Will +2
Defensive Abilities swarm traits
Offense
Speed 25’
Melee swarm (2d6)
Space 10’; Reach 0’
Special Attacks Distraction (DC 12)
Statistics
Str 2, Dex 15, Con 13, Int 2, Wis 13, Cha 2
Base Atk +2; CMB -; CMD -
Feats Improved Initiative, Skill Focus (Perception)
Skills Acrobatics +6, Climb +10, Perception +8, Stealth +14

Pony Day

Today's ponies are another of Sanada Ookami's creations on E-Bay.

Another member of the Wonderbolts, Soarin'.

The premier fashion pony in Equestria, his boutique holds the latest in pony coutre, Hoity Toity.

Ferrous Fortune-Hunters: Session III

It was an interesting night, and a bit on the slow side, as usual. I'm a touch worried about the general cohesiveness of the party, as Pat and Mary are paranoid psychos that stay with the party as a whole simply out of plot. Heck, Mary is dangerously paranoid, though that could very likely be painful metagaming on her part on top of a healthy level of paranoia. Heck, the Jharkorian and Pan Tangian (Adam and Jon respectively) are the most stable members of the party; where Jharkor is a nation not unlike Cardassia, and Pan Tangians are psycho pirates that deal with demons on a cultural basis.


After their little rondeveau with the hopped up lotus eaters, they left town shortly thereafter, not running into anything out of the ordinary for about four days. On the fourth day, while Analee (the dairy farmer girl) was relieving herself, she screamed for help and the party moved out to see what was wrong. There they encountered four hostile, flying sharks ('native' creatures of chaos) who were pacing around her.

After a bit, they took down the sharks, though they didn't think too hard on the fact that sharks in my setting tend towards hit-and-run tactics unless they're very hungry. With a bit of work, they now have quite a bit shark jerky for their journey.

While traveling, they begin to notice a lot of sloths hanging from the trees. Minor interlude, sloths in my setting are more or less normal except for several items. One, they only live in a forest of seqouias to the northwest of where the party is. Two, their reproductive cycle is a biyearly process where they become incredibly aggressive and feed off combat until they burst off a larvae within half a minute. Three, they are creatures of life and positive energy, and their venom (only really produced when 'reproducing') actually heals victims.

The party travels a couple more miles and begin to hear the sound of a plodding storm of steel on wood, without any footsteps amongst them. They hide behind some trees while surrounded by a score of sloths (small clumps of flowers blooming directly beneath them). Within twenty seconds, a cow-sized ball of ooze bristling with weapons and shields and armor bursts out of the trees and leaps onto Mary's horse. Not wanting to be anywhere near it, everyone except Mary leaps onto their horses and moves away. Mary goes toe-to-toe to get it to release her horse, which is promptly killed and absorbed into it.

Something about this very intense scene ignites the entire horde of sloths, who break out into a berserker rampage and descend upon every combatant and start clawing and biting like crazy. The party is fine for this, as their venom completely negates the damage they take. Meanwhile, they're unloading all sorts of ranged attacks at the very busy ooze creature, who gives out a 60' cone of shrapnel just before it dies under a pile of violent sloths (immune to poison, so it doesn't get healed).

Feeling a bit weird from the events, and a bit disappointed they can't milk sloths for their venom after they budded a larvae, they pack up and leave. After three more days of travel, they come upon a large plot of ordered land with the trees in neat rows and seemingly used as a farm, along with a giant pillar of smoke coming from the hill. Since they realize a massive storm is coming their way, they decide to attempt ask the resident for shelter.

Behind the hill, they discover a large man (6'8") tending to a blindingly bright bonfire (yes, during the day) who claims to be a disciple of a Lord of Law (specifically the one of Light). He asks what they want, gets informed of their reasons for being there (simple travellers) and allows them to spend the night in his home. He demands that they leave all of their belongings in a stone box out front and no weapons.

The party does so, except for  Mary who wants her stuff to be kept on her mule in the stable and proceeds to expertly hide five daggers on her person. Once inside, he provides them with fresh sloth meat and water. Analee breaks out some of her travelling cheese after getting permission to bring it inside from her pack mule, which  Mary makes the excuse to follow and watch her.  Mary makes up some cheesy excuse to stay a bit longer to dig through Analee's bags, where she finds two masterful kukris dripping with exotic poison. Our little snoop hides the daggers elsewhere and asks Adam's character to 'look at her bow string'. There, she shows what she discovered and begins to be very paranoid indeed. Note, she made extra certain to verify that the daggers were masterwork. Of course, she's passing on eating any of Analee's cheese.

After showing and telling Adam her discovery, they go back in and proceed to sleep, with Mary wanting one of the primary four to stay up and stand watch in the living room (the host provided simple bed rolls for all). Just before they began to bed down, however, a stranger began to beat on the front door while the storm raged outside.

The host, Chanter his name is, answered and gave him permission to stay the night as well. The stranger was a simple laborer heading for the seqouia forest for a logging job. Mary and Adam are a touch skeptical, but he seem simple enough, and Analee provides him with some cheese and leftover sloth meat. He acts and seems simple enough, staring awe-faced at the tales of danger the party has already been through, eventually going to sleep like the rest of the people.

Several hours later, the stranger gets up wobbly and then bolts outside in a raging storm to begin retching like a madman. The party awakens, curious as to what happened, had Pat and Jon examine the retching man (they have medical training) while the other two already figured it was poisoning on Analee's part, so they question her after checking their bags (the shield of chaos had been relocated from Adam's stuff to the stranger's bags).

It doesn't take much cajoling, as Analee is almost certain  Mary  is just waiting for the tiniest of excuses to kill her and she doesn't have much chance against a house full of people and running in a bad storm. She tells them she's a spy for the Yellow Night clan (a guild of assassins that honor the Lord of Nightshade and the Lord of Daffodils), who had heard of the Lotus Eater's vision and knew that whatever they were after is something they shouldn't have. One of their nightshade caste had tried to follow earlier (Adam's stalker back in the first town), but it showed they were too canny, so they sent Analee instead (of the daffodil caste). She recognized the stranger as a civilian mercenary sent by the Lotus Eaters to obtain anything valuable, and her orders are to kill them on sight (or at least make sure they die).

Oh, the poison used on the Lotus mercenary was a highly concentrated form of daffodil poison that causes near fatal levels of vomiting, which our arcanist friend was able to help make sure he would actually survive through. Chanter, the host, curtly informed the party that as soon as the bad part of the storm passed they were to leave post-haste.

Pony Day: Fancy Pants, Fleur di Lis, & Granny Smith Filly

A three-fer today for ponies, because they're appearing on E-Bay as the last pair did. Our first one is the couple that is the height of high society in Canterlot, Fancy Pants and Fleur di Lis.

And a personal favorite of mine, Granny Smith as a young filly. Her zap apple jam is worth waiting in line for days for.

Ferrous Fortune-Hunters: Session II

Today's session was fairly short as far as actual progress is concerned, because we got heavily sidetracked often and lengthily talking about our other gaming activities. We were also sans Mary(had to do day-long laundry).

I'm glad I've learned to not get frustrated with players that aren't into the RP aspect of the game, because if they enjoy it I shouldn't gripe at them all the time for not 'getting in character'. But let me tell you, Pat and Jon are emotional zombies in the game world practically. Violent, anti-social, awkward zombies of destruction...:)

And now, for details of the session...


They finally reached town to lay low for a little bit for a day or so to rest before they skip town. While in the bar, Jon deciphers the contents of the Grave King's grimoire, and discovers five seperate rituals and incantations...
* Ritually remove a victim's face, allowing you to later wear it as a mask and magically seem EXACTLY like that person in every way, down to picking up mannerisms and minor personality quirks
* Manifest a small boat, made out of dead men's fingernails
* Temporarily animate a statue (up to like 30' or 40' tall) that can also swim through the earth, for the sole purpose of relocation
* Ward an area from the presence of inevitables (incarnations of Law) sent out to bring justice to the caster
* Enchant a highly wrought figurine of moonstone to ward the bearer from the corruptive influence of otherworldly forces that might twist and 'change' the character

Meanwhile, our friend Pat and then Adam examine the journal of Vargaas for details of the strangely untouched magical city. While doing this, a noble and two cloaked bodyguards enter the tavern and take a central table, which prompts the bartender to act nervous and begin opening windows. All three have nearly pitch-black cloaks, with a sheen of emerald or ruby colors (ruby for the guards, emerald for noble).

After a bit of prompting, followed by collected knowledge on the part of Adam and Jon, they figure out that those patrons are members of the Black Lotus Eaters. They are a guild of sorcerers and their bodyguard slaves who collectively consume bits of black lotus for the enchancement of their power and visions. Few want to tangle with them, as they are a group of druggies with mystic power and hopped-up bodyguards and all.

While the noble sniffs a small amount of tea, the two bodyguards take a small sip and promptly spit it out and they dump the rest on the floorboards with some sawdust (to prevent overdosing). The people in the tavern leave them alone, and Adam does the closest thing to getting downwind of them, which puts him by the window near where the vomiting is done. While there, he begins to a hear a tinny grunting sound outside, prompting him to begin investigating. The sound is emitting from a puddle of yellow vomit. Poking said puddle provokes a rising bulge, further investigating revealing a well-made buckler given a semi-mirrored sheen and the symbol of an eye with eight arrows sticking out of it. The shield also seems to emanate an aura of dark energy when not looked at directly. Not wanting to get attention, he cleans it in a trough and hides it in his bag, then goes to bed to sleep off the booze with the intention to discuss it with the party on the morrow. Pat's character follows suit shortly, leaving Jon with his grimoire and checking notes a bit late into the night.

While reading, and about to go to bed himself, the lotus eaters seem to get down from their high and the noble walks over to him. Sitting before him, he begins to tell him that the flower will be his and that he cannot hide it forever. He informs him that his vision is but only a metaphor, but he knows enough that he (Jon) has it and that his people must have it. He creates the illusion of a beautiful, sandy-colored field of wheat with a single iridescent daffodil growing, then leaves with a warning that they will not rest.

Confused, and sort of weirded out, Jon sneaks up to his room and sleeps uneasily.

That morning, Pat is accosted by a group of locals who begin to start the celebration now that one of the heroes has risen from bed. The prisoners set free by Adam got to town and gave enough information to identify the slayers of the Grave King, who had beset the land for decades. Shortly thereafter, the rest of the party stumbles down and get dragged into the celebration (lots of booze handed to them).

Eventually, they're able to drag themselves away from the festivities long enough to confer on some of the weirdness from the prior day, name Adam's buckler find. After minor research, but mainly from each other's memory, they realize that this is a Shield of Chaos. Basically, it's a physical manifestation of part of an ancient Lord of Chaos who revels in the heat battle, unleashing/reflecting raw chaos every time it is struck in the heat of battle. There also exists lesser shields, which didn't have the same breadth of randomness or the power of the true Shield of Chaos, and in fact usually stuck to a single theme of effects.

Curious as all get-out, Adam tells Pat to shoot his best at him, utilizing his Deflect Missile training (he can deflect one arrow at a time with perfect accuracy). With a bit of coercion, it deflects off the buckler, creating a conflagration of flame to surround Adam and forcing him to roll on the ground to minimize the burning. With a smile, and temptation to test it more, he stores it away at the sound of knocking.

A young farmer girl (looks 17, actually 22) with wheat colored pigtails and a sunny disposition has brought a basket of cheese, bread, a couple pieces of fruit, and some wine for the heroes. While providing the food to the heroes and basking in their presence as only a teenager could, she eventually blurts out the desire to see adventure and wishes to follow the party to be a part of it all. Not really certain they would be able to convince her or stop her from following, they reluctanly acquiesce.

While Adam picks up a few supplies from the store (namely more arrowheads and fletching), he notices that he's being followed by some cloaked woman. With a few deft turns, he loses the follower, sneaks around to appear behind her to ask why she was following him. She attempts to say she wasn't following, gets an uncomfortable silence at Adam calling BS, then hurriedly swings a hidden kukri at him. Not surprised, Adam deftly dodges and tells her that he'll kill her if he sees her again, who takes up the offer and disappears into the crowd.

After a bit, they finish packing and head north for a caravan stop-over to get long distance supplies. While they travel Adam tries to show the girl at least a modicum of self-defense, noting that she's hiding the fact she's much more skilled than a simple farmer should be in both tridents and daggers, but doesn't try to broach the subject out of caution.

Once they reach the town and take a break at a local tavern, they notice the trailing edge of an almost pitch black cloak with a minor ruby sheen from a secluded booth along with a minor whiff of black lotus scent, which gets them nervous and proceed to sneak out of the bar to get the hell out of dodge. Just as they reach the stables with their pack animals, a black lotus eater guard is holding down the farmer girl (named Analee) while his boss sifts through the party's stuff.

As the noble is still coming down from his high, he reacts harshly and tells the guard to take care of them while he fails to mind control Adam (with an entirely too high of a roll to resist). The guard stabs into Jon's arcanist, his high making him a bit too bloodthirsty for what he was doing, noticeably wounding him in the shoulder. Jon panics and creates the illusion of a duplicate running in one direction while he runs in the other.

Adam steps back and swiftly plugs three arrows into the now very dead guard. The noble/arcanist gets desperate and calls on dark energies and unleashes a very large bolt of energy that damages Adam as much as the sword did Jon (which is alot and wasn't a solid hit either). Of course, this was a very desperate measure, as the party killed him in the next round.

They take some of the better things, such as a pouch of drugs and an intricate lockbox with a single black lotus blossom. Adam drops the guard's bloodied shield on the table of the one guard inside the tavern, telling him not to follow.

I end the session with the party hearing the giggle of a small girl in the darkness, unable to fully track where she goes when they begin to see her.

After Sundown: Persona non Grata

There is a system I go to for modern horror roleplaying, and that's After Sundown, which is essentially the Wold of Darkness game made better. The social system is particularly unique and intriguing. I've run a couple campaigns in it thus far, enjoyed by all. But I'm not here to give a review on the system, but instead a couple NPCs I've made for the game for a friend about to start their own campaign.


Aži Dahāka
   "Yes," the seemingly young Iranian man affirmed, his gloved hands working through the cadaver's entrails. The room was stark clean, chrome and white dominated everything but the desk. The desk was clear of papers, but had a large aquarium where exotic scorpions skittered about.
   "So the two snakes from the shoulders was true as well?" I inquired. It still came as a shock just how old some people, to use the term loosely, could be. Ambassador Aži was normally quite busy, and getting him during the twilight hours of his mortal job was the only time he was able to have enough of a mind to do something as mundane as answer my questions.
   With a snort and a sigh, "I'm purely yours I will tell you. That 'telephone game' I hear of is correct. My name means 'dragon' in the old language, and I can multitask much better than a man. They call me 'man with many brains', and it gets twisted." While speaking, he continues to look into the corpse as he rummages around, and out of the corner of my eye I can see a handful of scorpions gathered around a pen and wrestling with it. Their struggles are leaving pen marks on the form, and then I notice it's creating a barely legible scrawl.
   "My reign was also changed, as I only ruled for four hundred years. This was before the Silence, so I didn't hide my nature. I kill some people, yes, but no more than any other king back then. But the legend of my body erupting in scorpions and insects, that is true. What is also true is a Marduk named Fereydun bludgeoned me with the prophesied weapon of my defeat and tied me up in a cave. They got which cave wrong too, but I think that was on purpose, so I am not found. That was long ago, I do not care about then any more. Now, I care about human medicine and I care about immortal medicine." His analysis complete, he throws away the sterile gloves and walks over to the doctor's scrawl on the desk, the scorpions skittering up his sleeve as he grabs the papers.
   "Now, I give you much tonight. I have told you of my past, I have given you the script of the words that heal." He held out a hand, and I handed over to him a length of metal corkscrew, obviously ancient yet firm in construction. For the script, the Rati was worth losing.


   A1400 year old Persian (Tajik), and is the original evil king of Iranian legend. Appears roughly as a Tajik man in his early 20s. His body is filled with winged scorpions. When he was excavated by miners four hundred years ago, he spent some time as a tyrant and a warlord, bitter from his over half a millennium of imprisonment. Time has pacified him, and has taken to refocusing on his scholarly pursuits in ways beyond war. He seeks to understand his own biology, and keeps a secret lab on the facility that was built when the building was thirty years ago, while also working as a high-ranking forensic pathologist.

He is a Mi-Go of some age. He is introspective, ruthless, and has an ambition that is easily swayed by fear of constraint after centuries of imprisonment. In combat, he will default to making his opponents run away, 

Stats: S: 2; A: 3; I: 4; L: 5; W: 4; C: 8; Edge 4; Potency 3

Skills: Combat 4, Drive 1, Perception 6, Stealth 5, Survival 3; Tactics 6, Persuasin 6, Bureaucracy 6 (Government), Empathy 6, Intimidation 4; Medicine 6 (Forensics), Operations 2 (Repair), Research 5 (Library), Sabotage 5 (Disabling Stuff)

Backgrounds: Iranian History 4, Chemistry 3, Biology 6, Cauchemar Commune Politics 6, Local Law 4; Infernal Finances 6; Supernatural Medicine 6; Ballistics 4, Forensic Pathology 6, Local Drug Gangs 5

Powers: [Mi-Go] Small Witness, Body Colony, Abyss of the Body, Patience of the Mountains, Attract, Supernatural Senses, Telepathy, Magnify the Swarm; Dampen Senses, Learn the Heart's Pain, Thaumaturgical Forensics, Dismissal, Psychometry, Siren Song, Summons, Aura Perception

Resources: Language 2 (Persian, French), Science 2 (City Forensic Lab), Secrets 3 (Burnt Limbo copies of books from the Library of Alexandria), Destiny 2 (Ratir), Assets 5 (*is* a major Syndicate functionary)

Pony Day

Yes, I am a Brony, a male fan of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon show. I personally know Sanada, who makes custom MLP figures, and I will periodically show some of her work. They're something I feel must be shown to the world, especially since her work is so underrepresented on the internet. Such days will be called Pony Days, and I apologize in advance for those uncomfortable with such, but I assure you, it will not be the sole thing about this blog.

Today's pony is a twofer.

Spitfire, a member of the Wonderbolts, who are an elite team of pegasi that perform aerial acrobatics. This is one of the ponies up for sale on Ebay.

Next we have Big Macintosh, big brother of the Apple family. A pony of few words and a big heart, also on Ebay.

Ferrous Fortune-Hunters: Session I

Iron Heroes, I'll speak of it's foibles another time. For now, just let it be known that I wanted to run a game. I had players who were interested, and so, it began.

This is their story.

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Due to popular vote after a narrowed list of three choices, the game will be set in the world of the Elric Saga. The time period is approximately 50 years before the book's tales begin, and the characters are all human, essentially.

The cast consists of:

Mary: Man-at-Arms who is essentially an Aragorn style ranger, master of stealth and Florentine two-weapon fighting.

Adam: Archer extraordinaire, whose tactical prowess combined with uncanny luck with the dice promises much death raining down upon the enemy.

Jon: Arcanist and master of mental arts, and possibly the only arcanist-type I've seen who isn't putting his soul out to the lowest bidder.

Pat: Executioner, silent and deadly to anyone who bothered to get an anatomy

Everyone was still getting used to the system a bit, so they didn't take full advantage of what they could do, though Adam's bow superseded alot of this. Also, because it was new, nobody had even come up with much of a name or background or even why they wanted to get started on the adventure. Their ultimate opponent was someone that called himself Torir, the Grave King and servant of Chardras the Reaper (Chaos Lord). He terrorized the local countryside and was a sorcerer of some note. Prophecy foretold that the night of the Blood Moon was the point in which Torir's power was at its weakest, and our semi-associated party made way to follow a secret tunnel to attack him at this time.


Mary pulled out some 'vengeance for killing my mother' excuse out of her butt, while Adam used the 'hired to kill him' one, as did Pat. Jon heard rumour he had a particular tome of interest for his motivation. Only Adam and Mary actually knew each other and came together, while the other two were comparative strangers that will end up sticking with each other out of safety. Once they decided they weren't enemies, a dozen bandits came upon them, and were promptly slaughtered. Jon did an amusing tactic of making one bandit look like him and then grappling to confuse their identity, while Pat had some fun shoving them off a 10' wall for some damage. However, Adam held the light here, by personally killing 7 of the bandits.


The entrance to the tunnel opened afterwards, whence they descended and plumbed its depths, eventually coming upon a large chamber holding a 40' tall statue of the Grave King holding a sword over his head that led up to a trap door. There were various other entances that led to the catacombs, but were bricked up. As the party got ready to climb up the statue, spry zombies began to pour out of the trap door and unleash arrows and an attempt at some going melee. In the end, the party jumped down (barely got to the feet) and simply peppered them with arrows from safety, relying on their attack bonuses to still hit them despite the noticeable cover with the zombies. They fell like flies, 6 of them solely taken care of by Adam himself, the other two plinked and knocked into a 40' drop to finish them off.


Once they climbed up, they got ambused by a particularly vicious ghoul at the trap door, but shortly took care of him. They found themselves in the necropolis of the Grave King, right in the middle of the castle's courtyard. Since there was a party taking place, and the guards expected an outward assault, nobody noticed their arrival. Jon managed to bluff a few of the passing guards that he was simply a reveler getting some fresh air, while the rest of the party hid like wraiths.


While sneaking towards the primary building, one of the real revelers, a drunken silk merchant, burst out and thought the party to be guards and demanded he be escorted back to his quarters. They humoured him, and then ransacked his bedroom for anything interesting while he slept like a rock, using some of the costumes they found (and Jon's actual Disguise skill) to blend into the party.


As they discovered, part of their advantage in any real combat was that the party had a local torturer (who dressed in Melnibonean hand-me-down fashion) using a red hot poker on some captured people, so there were many screams in the background anyway. Of course, they killed the torturer something fierce when he recognized the group, but hopefully an intimidate check kept the prisoners screaming for cover. Once inside, they were able to evade notice with the costumes, passing through various silk curtains in the place. At the far end of the chamber was the Grave King and three concubines, who due to poor rolling on my part, didn't notice the party for what they were. This proved to not be a true benefit, as Mary very suddenly went hostile, initiating combat.


The first round, Adam got a critical hit and spent all his tokens, thusly doing 76 damage in total; fortunately my villain was tough enough to survive that and subsequently roll the 10' stone wheel off his dais and over the archer. The concubines turned out to be werewolves (gifts from the King's patron), and focused on the archer. Mary and Pat charged up the dais and did a combined total of 15 damage this round. Jon pulled out the stops and charmed the three concubines in one spell (not very resistant). Once the second round was finished, guards started investigating, Adam finished off the Grave King and Jon pumped more magic into his charm to make the concubines fanatically loyal to him for a minute.


Commanding the concubines to attack the guards, while setting fire to some of the silk curtains (which were hanging all over the damn place), the group got the heck out of dodge and down the tunnel. Of course, they grabbed a small lock box from under the Grave King's throne and anything valuable he was wearing. Once in safety, they discovered a peculiar book that wasn't part of his occult collection, which seemed to be a journal of Vanteel Vargaas (this setting's equivalent to Marco Polo). The journal spoke of a mythical city that actually managed to survive the onslaught that turned the entire nation into a massive desert known as the Sighing Sands.

Assessment
Mary was a bit tired, which was to be expected with her sleep schedule as of late. Pat was his usual ultra-quiet self. Adam, as per usual, dominated the combat scene for this adventure. One bit of a change though, Adam actually seemed to feel guilty being so utterly more powerful than the party. I suggested attempting to take advantage of various debuff stunts to help with the problem, and I myself hope the party isn't too annoyed with his position.