Last night I ran my mythic adventure for the ex-Serpent Skull players and had a blast. One of the players could not make it unfortunately (I had chosen an encounter specifically with him in mind) and he advised me by text. I am one of those annoying people who has their phone on silent most of the time and very rarely looks at it so I missed the text and moaned about him all night. Sorry +scott desmond I will beat my head against a wall for all the nasty things I said.
Anyway, we took up the game in the Estrovian Forest just after the group had spoken to the Mythic Ancient Green Wyrm Becharest. The group had agreed to bring Becharest the head of the Fomorian Queen (I have the new Bestiary and have many new creatures to try out!) in return for information about Torag’s stolen hammer. The actions of the players so far had brought the forest to a perfect balance of neutrality and everything was as it should be. Hence a Gremlin known as the Grendel was produced and began to track the players as it was they that had brought about the neutrality.
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| Seleca paid an arm and leg for last nights game… |
You see, a little over a week ago I got Bestiary 4! Woot! And having thumbed through the pages once or twice I was keen to try out some of the creatures. The Grendel was one of them and I am embarrassed to say that I used it in a very un-mythic like manner. There was no story build up, no real warning, just the creature was on them. Seleca did move close and succeeded (with a 43 no less) on her Knowledge nature check and I did give her the big mythic spiel about how the creature comes about and that it is shrouded in myth and legend. In reality I thought this creature had a chance in a battle against Seleca and was vulnerable (in a way) to bare fist fighting. Hence this was the encounter I expected Kaleb to shine in (Scott’s character) but instead he was not in it at all.
The Grendel did do a number on the players. It walked all over Seleca and using it’s gruesome rend ability it ripped out her right leg and her left arm. It really was the ranged bomb attacks of Hank that started bringing the creature down as it spent many rounds with minor damage, but when the bombs came into play the creatures touch AC is awful and it took the brunt of a 9th level alchemist, 10th level master chymist. The creature threw Seleca away but because of his displacement elixir the creature did not lay a claw on Hank. The battle came to a close and the party realised then that they had no way of regenerating the limbs of Seleca. She had paid an arm and a leg in the battle…
This kind of derailed the plot that I had planned but I ran with it. After all I had thought about this in my planning and I had surmised that the party would head for the capital of Mendev, Nerosyan. Once there they headed for the Church of Sarenrae and had Seleca’s limbs reattached. It was a fair choice I thought, being that Mendev is locked in a war with the Worldwound demons that they had that capacity and likely regenerated many limbs of soldiers in the battle with the Demons. Whilst in the city the players got wind of a bard that had been plaguing them for a while now.
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| Gelik Aberwhinge on stage performing the Ballad of Cisco Original image by Storn A. Cook, legalese at bottom of the page |
The bard seemed to be turning up everywhere they went, normally before them and teaching other bards an epic comedy routine named the Ballad of Cisco. Cisco was Janthir’s name ( +Cam Mcloughlin ‘s character) before he was reincarnated as a fetchling. The ballad came about as the bard in the party (Gelik Aberwhinge) appeased the ape king Ruthazek with a comedy routine and had Cisco run around and be the butt of many jokes. Janthir hated Gelik with a passion and showed no remorse when the diminutive gnome met his maker in a giant ooze being dissolved to nothing so only a true resurrection could bring him back. When I took a step back and began to plan the overarching plot to this mythic campaign I decided that Gelik would actually play an integral role in it though.
So the group finally found out the Bard that had been plaguing them was actually still in town and decided to go and find out why he was reviving the one routine that Janthir hated the most. A black halfling overdone in tribal gear (looked nothing like a real native of the Mwangi) started to perform. It was in actuality Gelik Aberwhinge covered in an illusion and I actually had no intention of revealing this fact to the players for another 4 – 6 game sessions as I built the mystery up around the bard.
Now we get to why this post is called “Bloody Artifacts”. At the time we were also talking about epic damage resistance and how it could be beaten. Courtney was trying to find out if Seleca’s (her character) artifact sword Erome counted for epic resistance and I heard her mention the sword had true sight at will. Now, I could have been a bad GM and ignored this but I decided instead to allow this turn of events unravel my own plans. I took Courtney to the side and told her what Erome conveyed to her. The bard was actually Gelik!
This turn of events made for some bewildered looks from the players and some awesome roleplaying. They got Gelik (who was calling himself Kelige) to the table and played along with the charade but tried to drop information for him to reveal himself. Seleca picked up on something, some kind of uncertainty but the Bard never broke character. The players were dying to know what he was up to and there was a lot of consternation about what they would do and how they were going to deal with this.
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| Back to the design board for the Gelik plot… |
It made for a good night role playing. The group found that Gelik had given them the slip (he entered a broom closet, pretending it to be his room and Dimension Doored away) but had left something behind. They found in the closet a ruby that was likely sourced in the Mwangi Expanse that was an artifact. It had overwhelming Azlanti magic on it and seemed to have something at its heart that they just could not quite get a fix on.
So that is where we left it for the night. A conundrum to be sure. I have to rearrange some stuff in response to the new development and the players have to consider what they intend to do about this new information. It certainly came out of the blue for them last night. Bloody artifacts causing my plans to be unravelled! I thought I had a great comfort zone for a while before this information would be out. How Gelik is connected to this is yet to be seen but you can guarantee he is heavily involved in future games. Until then, keep rolling!
Image of Gelik Aberwhinge un-modified version is copyrighted using a Creative Commons – Attribution – Non Commercial – Share Alike 2.5 Generic Licence.