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was still getting used to the system a bit, so they didn't take full advantage of what they could do, though Adam's bow superseded alot of this.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.
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.
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