TFADAV, Part IV

or, The Further Adventures of Adelbert Vaksmann, Part IV.

Well, not matter how much he would like too, Adel can't fault Oren, the party's dragonborn meatshield, for ruining our chance for surprise.  When we last left that shining example of graceful balance, Adel, the party had decided to rest in the room with the scrying mirror.  The party's intellectuals, you know the wizards and cleric types, conferred about the wisdom of leaving such a potentially dangerous tool (the scrying mirror) there and the dangers of destroying said tool.  After much debate, they had Adel trap the room and we were on our way into the tunnel we had found.

The tunnel was not a very well built affair, with ill-spaced timbers propping up the tunnel almost as an afterthought.  But that didn't matter much, since a short distance into the tunnel, the party found itself in a natural tunnel.  Dim light and voices could be heard in the distance.

Shortly, the party came to a fork in the tunnel.  With Ky checking the tunnel to our right, Adel snuck down the tunnel to the left.  Now the last few encounters, the jingling dragonborn has been the downfall to our ability to surprise opponents.  This time it was all Adel's fault, tripping over his own feet (well, it was a natural cavern, don'tchaknow) and falling upon his backside with a loud thunk.

From inside the cavern, a nasty orc barbarian glanced up and saw Adel there.  Adel jumped up, grinned and backed back down the tunnel in a hurry, all the way back to the fork in the tunnel.  As the orc comes charging up the tunnel, party members step forward to engage.

Hearing commotion down the other tunnel, Adel decides to assist Ky, the female elf, as she is the only member down the tunnel.  However, as Adel comes to assist Ky against the hobgoblin, he finds that the nasty little guy isn't interested in fighting, just making googly eyes at Ky.  Being the evil little enchantress she is, she then proceeds to roll a crit and rip the hobgoblin's still beating heart from his chest and laughing stomp on it with her boot.  Well, not really, but a critical was rolled and the poor nasty was felled by the one he thought he loved.

The fighting progressed onward, with the Hand of Bane joining in the battle in the far tunnel.  Much cursing and banter took place between those party members facing the Hand and the Hand.  It seems that, prior to Adel joining the party, the party had faced the Hand of Bane before and the Hand had embarrassed the dragonborn and had taken the party's lunch-money, so to speak.  And unfortunately, the Hand was still giving poor Oren a hard time.

While one half of the party was dealing with the Hand, the other half was confronting an Orc chieftain of some sort.  Unfortunately, the space was confined and it was becoming very difficult to maneuver.  The chieftain was having difficulty landing a good blow due to Adel getting in his face and blinding him with his rapier, but every time we thought we had started to beat him down and he got bloodied, he'd heal back up.

However, the battle does continue on.  We had to pause about a 1/2 hour earlier due to the DM's recurring problem with his router resetting his IP address.  Or at least, that is what I think the issue is, I'm not really up to speed on connectivity issues.

The further adventures of Adelbert Vaksmann, Part III

We've had a few issues with our Sunday night game over the last few weeks, illness, visitors, hardware difficulties and software issues, but last night we had a full party and outside of one or two crashes, we had a full, fun session.

Tonight found the party in the room that housed the hell-hounds, where the party had ended the prior session taking a short rest.  Adelbert was about 75% of max hit points, but had all of his daily-ies, so he wasn't terribly concerned when he checked the door opposite of the entrance to the current room and found that it was both locked and trapped.  With Zeril, the Deva, poking him to go faster and being a general nuisance, Adel goofed somewhere (not sure how bad, the DM uses a tower and I wasn't privy to Adel's roll) and received a needle to his cheek and the poison was enough to bloody him.

Adel finished removing the trap and unlocking the door and let the others lead the way into the adjacent room.  Within a few feet of the door, black curtains hung from ceiling to floor and a terrible corpse-rotting stench emanated from the room.  Oren, our dragon-born warrior, strode into the room, followed by the pain-in-the-ass Deva, Zeril.  Zeril feeling brave stuck his head through the curtain and saw a room with four mirrors, an altar and a statue of a well muscled human.  Zeril immediately withdrew his head and exited the room, complaining of a weird feeling.  Those watching saw a misty essence in the shape of Zeril tear away from him as he exited the room and then the essence disappeared through the curtain.

The party then debated if we should enter the room.  We reminded ourselves that we had told the ghostly Duke that we would not disturb anymore crypts except in the removal of the orcs and cultists in exchange for the undead leaving us alone.  Despite the hell hounds presence, the party decided that the room probably didn't have anything to do with orcs and cultists, not wanting to chance distrubing the ghouls again.

We re-entered the main hallway again and proceed to continue in the direction we were originally travelling.  Adel was leading the way, trying to peer around the corner with Zeril poking and proding him to hurry up.  We made the turn and realized the hallway was sloping upwards and we started to worry that we missed the entrance to the lower lever when we saw a door up ahead on our right.

Seeing weak light and hearing some noise, Adel opened the door, sees a long hallway and crept inside.  Suddenly Oren comes storming through the door, pushing Adel aside.  Oren turns into one of the crypt alcoves where some light is coming from and runs into some Hobgoblin minions.  Next thing, bugbears and orcs come streaming out of the doors further down the hallway and battle is underway.

Due to the narrowness of the hallway, Adel spent most of the combat watching the action, but did find a chance towards the end to sneak in and get a whack at a bugbear.  When the last one finally fell, we searched the room at the end of the hallway and found a mirror-esque type device whose reflection showed the room with the black curtains.  While the party contemplated the meaing of the mirror, Adel and Kys were searching the crypts and a tunnel was found.  Therefore the party decided to take an extended rest before proceeding down the tunnel.

So, that is where we left it.  The DM said we'd pick it up at the decision so we could check for randon encounters during the extended rest.

Ashes of Middenheim, Prolouge Part II

No session last night.  We'd had one drop, our unplayed apprentice wizard, due to course load at school, one drop because they didn't want to spend money to upgrade their Fantasy Grounds software, and one couldn't make it due to work.  So with only one making it last night, we stayed on and chatted a bit waiting to see if the two that had expressed interest, but hadn't contacted me to make characters would show.  No dice, so I packed it up for the night and went to bed.

We'll try again next week.

Ashes of Middenheim, Prolouge.

I haven't GM-ed a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game since the early 90s, which of course was 1st edition WFRP, not the 2nd edition I'm currently using.  Additionally, this is my first foray into GM-ing any game on Fantasy Grounds II.  And since I've got back into gaming about 3 years ago, this is only the third game I've run, two being one-shot Traveller adventures.

In order to make sure I am up to speed, both with the RPG and Fantasy Grounds, I am running the initial scenario that comes with the 2nd edition rulebook which preludes the separate campaign, Ashes of Middenheim.  So far the party consists of  a dwarf hunter named Grimbor Ironmane, a human thief named Bastien Beckenbauer, and another human Erasmus, a militiaman.  We not really sure how these folks got together, but we know why:

All of you grew up listening to stories of the Great War Against Chaos. The Tale of Magus the Pious and his victory over the armies of chaos is well known. While there have been wars and threats in the 200 years since, there has been nothing on that scale. Until now. This year Chaos Lord Archaon invaded the Empire with five mighty armies. They swept down from the Chaos Wastes, ranks filled with mutant warriors, nightmarish monsters, and power-mad sorcerers. Flagellants and other prophets of doom declared these the End Times. And as these armies pillaged and burned their way through the northern provinces of the Empire, it was easy to believe.

You've heard endless stories over the past few months. They say that Sigmar once again walked the earth. They say an army of wolves attacked the Kislevian city of Erengrad. They say the dead rose from their graves to defend the Empire. They say a mighty victory was won at Middenheim. They say a plague has choked the streets of Talabheim with bloated corpses.

You can only believe what is in front of your eyes. your are in the town of Untergard in the Drakwald Forest. A nine-day battle took place here, as Beastmen tried to force their way across the town's great bridge. They were rebuffed but the price was high. The town is in ruins and its remaining citizens struggle to survive. The Imperial army has long since moved on from Untergard, leaving behind only its dead. You've heard tell of more battles up north but the war here seems over. Or so you hope.

The players have been in town for a few days, just passing through, but stuck because of the bad weather.  They awake to find a commotion at the nearby plaza and upon investigation understand that a special announcement was planned among other rumors and such (all the players rolled terribly when it came to making their gossip checks, so a little help was necessary).  As the watch captain, the nominal leader of the remainder of the town's citizens, announced to those in attendance that the Baron of Middenheim had sent some bread and wine to the town, mutants attacked from across the river.  The watch captain and two watchmen, with major help from the PCs, quickly dispatched three of the mutants, making the fourth scurry back across the bridge and flee through the ruins.

As the excitement ended, word arrives from the town's main gate that they were also attacked at the same time, but were able to beat it back with minimal losses.  It would seem that the bridge attack was a diversion, but thanks to the PCs, forces needed at the main gate were not diverted to the bridge.  But bad news shortly followed, as Hans, a local woodsman that had been gone for about week, arrived with survivors from nearby villages and farms with news that a 200-strong herd of Beastmen were heading thier way.

After heated debate, the watch captain has decided to evacuate town for Middenheim, some 6 days away.  The townsfolk are told to enjoy what the Baron has provided, for in the morning, they are leaving at first light.  The PCs find themselves in the position to either help, or depart on thier merry way.

We also had a player make an apprentice wizard, but he wasn't available for Wednesday night.  And we are still getting interest by a few people, so maybe we'll have 6 for the next session.