CollegeGameWriteup
The Setup
The DM set out to create a "low magic" game. While there was incredible magic in the world, gaining access to it took work–quite a bit of work. We were a small group: Only 2 players and a GM at the start all sharing an apartment in college. We started as 5th level characters; Matt and I coming to the quick consensus that we would play rogues (heretofore called by our respective character names Sim, the chanter, and Aranel). Sim, the chanter, would always correct people who thought he was an enchanter. Aranel would be the face (high charisma and bluff-human female) and Sim would be in the inside man (sneak and lockpick-half elf male). While low on magic, we could spend a fair amount of GP on mundane equipment. Including a looking glass (telescope).
The Game
The game started with with Sim and Aranel in a town looking for work. One of the jobs we found was a caravan. It seemed like a good hook for adventure, so we signed up. The idea was to depart first thing in the morning. Sometime that night, we were awoken by the sound of huge explosions and chaos. We got up quickly grabbed our packs and headed outside to pandaemonium. The first thing we see is an epic battle between a powerful wizard in an archmage tower against, for lack of a better word, a blood-red sky. We're talking fireballs and lightning being flung back and forth, explosions and fire everywhere.
We're level 5 and we know that this isn't a fight we can win, so we join in on a bucket brigade to put out a nearby fire. We save the house and the family inside. Above our heads, the wizard's battle continued. We decide to head for the city walls some distance away in the hopes of getting some idea of what's going on. We climb up the barricaded city gates and Sim reaches into his pack for his looking glass, bringing it to his eye.
I'll never forget the description. Nightmares. A sea of devil-fire horses as far as we can see surround the town. Hell vomited up an army and it is here and we are lost. We quickly come to one option: Run. We need to run to the docks in the hopes that we can get into a ship and get out. We start to climb back down to the town and that's when we hear the screams. Looking out into the crowds, we see whirlwinds popping up. When they touch a person, the person falls to the ground either dead or unconscious--we're not sure. Our route to the port being cut off, we make a panicked decision to head to the wizard. He seemed powerful. Maybe he could help us.
We made it to the arch mage tower and we have a chance to examine a body that had been hit by a Whirlwind. It seemed that people were only knocked out, when they were touched. We worked our way up the stairs when the top of the tower is blow off over our heads. Then the whirlwinds start appearing inside. We're in the remains of the wizard's study with the winds closing in and we're running out of time. Sim decided to try his luck hiding. Aranel thinks this will certainly not work and tries to convince him that the best course of action was to climb out the window and down to the street so that we can try to get to the docks. The whirlwinds will be here any moment and we're running out of time. As a player, I didn't want to leave Matt but I didn't have much faith in the whole hiding plan. So Aranel climbed out the window and the last time she saw Sim that evening he was knocked out by a Whirlwind.
The DM said that the climb would be difficult. At only level 5, Aranel didn't have many points in Climb and it would take more than a few rolls to make it down the town. I start making checks: Success, success, success, fail. Aranel is 10 feet from the ground and slips and falls but successfully tumbles. She's one of the last human targets still up at this point and the Whirlwinds are closing in. She dodges the whole way to the port docks, making successful rolls. Then suddenly, a failed roll. She's knocked out in sight of the ship.
Some time later, Sim and Aranel awoke to find themselves on a slave ship in rags. It wouldn't be their lowest point. Their adventure was just beginning.
When we last left our heroes, they found themselves on a slave ship bound for some unknown destination. We were in a galley, seated on a long bench with other slaves working a massive ore. One of the slavers lashed us until we in the rowing. On the next bench up, we overhead a few of the slaves, older men, whisper to each other. "We only can do this once." "Are you sure we want to do this." "Yes, it's the only way we can escape." They begin to chant and suddenly two massive blue glowing hands grip the boat and break it in half like a toothpick. We were tossed into the wreckage of the ship and we swam to shore as dawn was starting to break.
As an aside, this is one of the things the DM did well in the adventure. We'd meet people on other adventures, sometimes they were parallel to our own but other times we didn't know. Were the old men trying to escape because they knew what we'd soon know or was it for some other reason. The DM said that when he saw the Poseidon Adventure as a kid, he was stuck by a scene where the main group heading to the bottom of the ship crossed paths with a group heading to the top. He always wondered about the other group. Did they make it? What were their adventures. As a player, this really helped make the game feel real.
We washed up on the beach and it dawned on us just how badly off we were. We didn't have our packs with us, so we had no food and no weapons only the rags on our backs. Beyond the beach, further inland, we saw a jungle. We moved into the jungle and soon found a freshwater river that we used to slake our thirsts. We were both rogues as I said, designed around city living, con games, and thievery. We weren't built for wilderness survival, so the trials of sustaining ourselves and finding shelter were difficult. Once we got a better footing on our personal needs, we found some heavy branches to use as clubs for defense and we followed the river northward. We walked for the better part of the day, As it was getting late, we made camp at the edge of a clearing by the jungle.
We had just settled in when we heard it: a whoosh, a buzz, a flapping? Then we saw them, three bird-like, cat-sized creatures--stirges. Properly geared, they wouldn't have been much of a challenge and while we defeated them it was a fight for our lives. Stirges of course are basically big mosquitoes and we both sustained quite a bit of constitution damage (down to single digits) in the fight.
The next day, weak and with low spirits, we set out up the river. Perhaps it was our bloodied and beaten conditions but we eventually found ourselves easily caught in a net trap and surrounded by orcs and goblins in leather armor. They bound us, spit insults at us, and took us to the burned out town where we started our adventure. The trap was set to catch any stragglers who might have escaped. Now the town was a prison camp. The citizen were being forced to dig under the church and we were new labor to join them. The good news is that our new captors healed our constitution damage and wounds as well as fed us. The bad news is that we were expected to dig. We did what they asked of us the first day while trying to get a sense of what was going on. No one knew what we were digging for. They only knew that it was important and powerful.
As for the captors themselves, I don’t remember many details of who the leaders were or what they looked like. I can only remember it was a small group that appeared to be in charge. I remember that one looked very out of place. Everyone looked–well–evil for lack of a better description, but one was essentially the platonic ideal of a Paladin. Flowing black hair, handsome, charismatic, golden armor and rode a white horse.
That night, Matt and I, Sim and Aranel, made a plan. We had enough and we would escape. In the mines we'd find a way to make a distraction and we use that distraction to get out. The next day we were digging while trying to figure out how to best distract the guards. Were were about to put a plan into action when the slave next to me broke through a wall of some kind in the mine. The moment he did, he turned to stone. Everyone began to panic: the slaves and the orc and goblin guards. I used the opportunity to escape up into a small crevasse in the ceiling. Sim was going to join me, but wasn't able to hide effectively. He was ushered out with the rest of the prisoners.
As noted above, the party was split here. We both stayed at the table and had concurrent adventures Sim was led back to the prison camp in town. He was tired and frustrated and didn't feel like he had many options. Here I was sneaking and infiltrating. This was his wheelhouse. He was desperate and needed to do something. I don't know why, maybe because I was suddenly the inside man (or gal as it was) but he planned to start a prison revolt. Sim was initially going to be a bit of a loner. We'd teamed up for crime, sure, but we were a team and everyone else was a sucker. Sim as a character changed that day. Leading that revolt would start him looking out for the little guy--even if he had to stick his neck out to do it.
The mine clear, I was able to sneak out of the cave and into a nearby abandoned house. I remember that it was fairly upper class but it wasn't in the best condition. In what was probably once a banquet hall the table was a mess. Food was still on plates uneaten and rotting. At this point, and I'm sure you understand, we as characters were frustrated. We had been attacked, knocked out, enslaved, shipwrecked, drained, trapped, enslaved again, and nearly turned to stone. I looked at my character sheet. I had nothing. I asked the DM if I could find a knife or dagger in the room. Despite being a dining room there were none; it looked like someone had already come through and looted the silver. I asked if there was a fork, a spoon, anything. There was a fork. I took the fork and wrote it down on my character sheet. It was my first loot in the game, but certainly not the last. I had that fork for the rest of the game. It was a memento, a trophy, and it changed everything.
We left off with me finding a fork, my first real loot in the campaign, and Sim, Matt, starting to lead a slave revolt. Armed with a fork, I crept around a few of the nearby houses, using one of its tines to pick some of the locks and slowly arming myself with bits and bobs of potentially useful things. To escape, we'd need weapons and armor. All it took was a lone orc with his back turned. I stabbed his neck with the fork and availed myself of his short sword and leather armor. They were in ill repair, but they worked and were certainly an upgrade from the fork. The next building was a warehouse of some kind and I found a few more supplies, most importantly five clay pot fireworks filled with black powder. Meanwhile, Sim was starting a slave revolt.
He wasn't the most charismatic character, but he had heart. He played the beatings he was getting from guards for pathos and won over the slaves.
At nightfall, I made my way back to Sim. We came up with a plan to use the pots to blow our way to freedom. We released the slaves, fought our way out to freedom. It was another tough, bloody battle, but Sim was able to arm himself and we got most of the slaves out in the confusion.
Once clear of the town, we split off from the group and tried to figure out what was happening with the evil army and the dark magic beneath the town.
I'm hazy on what happened in the middle of the campaign after this point until the end. Here's what I can remember In combat I rolled 3 20s in a row. The orcs were on our trail and we ducked into an inn. We hid and our plan was to wait for them to come in and then we'd ambush. I was behind the door and Sim was behind the bar. Sneaking up on the first Orc, I rolled a 20 for backstab, the a 20 to confirm. Then on the next target I rolled another 20. It's still one of my best rounds of combat to this date. I was death and I danced through them.
Someone sent a Flesh Golem after us. We were never clear on who. It had our original packs and it was somehow using our connection to them to track us. We didn't have any magic items, but Sim used the last of the clay pots to bring a tower down on him. We learned from the DM later that the Golem was always following us and could have always returned. A new player, another friend, joined our group as a bard: Tharius (Probably spelled wrong), an elf. I can’t recall how he joined the group, but he had 18 strength and I think only a 16 or 14 charisma. One of the rules of the campaign was we’d roll Tharius and Aranel were protecting a wagon from a griffon and Tharius rolled a critical fumble and broke his rapier in the wagon wheel. The very injured griffon used this as an opportunity to escape, taking off into the sky beyond our reach. Tharius dropped to his knees, pulled out his lute and played a discordant sonic burst. Stunned, the griffon fell from the sky and from there we killed it quickly. Tharius took a feather from beast and put it in his hat and I took a talon.
Eventually the story led to a secluded village. The elder told us that the reason the town was destroyed was that something evil was trying to gain great power. The last thing it needed was being kept in the village, a little girl. We were told that the girl was actually a powerful gold dragon but was in hiding and we needed to escort it to a temple and get it to a certain alter so that it could change back. At this point, we were given our very first magic items in the game. Sim and Tharius received two twin crystal rapiers that conferred special bonuses when they flanked a target. I received boots and a cloak both of elven kind and a magic bow. Yes, the fact that the Elves didn't have the Elven stuff made me the source of some ribbing. There's a story to that too. The party also received a Bag of Holding. We set out and soon found the temple. Before going in, the DM told us that it was going to be difficult and that we could die. Of course this was always the case and it wasn't going to be capricious, he just wanted us to know that this was going to be difficult. Access to magic was difficult. As I said above, only after several sessions did we receive magic items. Resurrection would be difficult if impossible to come by. We entered the temple and fought our way through a few challenges, the worst of which was a Basilisk, which was defeat by running away from it and jamming the griffon talon under the door to keep it on the other side. Soon we made it to the alter chamber which we discovered that guarded by a Red Dragon.
Despite having magic items and being through many other tough spots, we weren't sure we could take the Dragon in a fight, so Tharius offered another solution. He would fascinate it and we will escort the child to the alter. This was probably the most dramatic round of gaming I've ever experienced. Tharius playing while we inched across the floor. Even with our careful movements, we could see the Dragon wanting to break as we moved past it. We made it about halfway when Tharius wasn't able to sustain the fascinate and the dragon suddenly realized what was going on.
Tharius and I moved to engage the dragon, while Sim decided that he needed to keep the girl safe, even if it meant that he had to put his body on the line. Sim took a full breath of fire to protect the girl Gold Dragon. (A reader might find this funny. Why? Because Gold Dragons are immune to fire. Sim, while mostly pure of heart and duty, didn't know anything about Dragons.) Tharius and I fought and eventually defeated the Dragon, it was a younger red dragon so it was far easier than it could have been. Sim took a dragon scale as a trophy and we restored the girl to her proper dragon form and we were rewarded with riches. That was the end of that campaign. We started another one, but never finished. It's hazy, but here's what I remember: Sim going into every bar and talking about how HE (single handedly was implied) killed the Red Dragon (Remember, I said he was mostly of pure heart). Then he'd plop the scale on the bar (Remember that some great unknown evil was looking for the girl and probably us).
We came across a strange mystical vender. He would ask us logic puzzles all the while saying "money is life" and "coin is life" We solved the first several very easily and we amassed a fair amount of coin and were feeling cocky before we realized that "money is life" probably meant that he would take a bit of our lives in payment if we failed, which we did. The wager had been for 10 gold or as we realized 10 years. No big deal for an elf, but for a human that was some hurt. Thankfully, we had a platinum to our name we paid it and only lost a year. We walked away after that.
After finding a set of Elven Chain mail, my character started to have dreams that my various Elven gear didn't belong to me and that I was being followed by someone who wanted it back. We also ran into a few semi-bigoted elves who had a real problem with me having that stuff.
We were given a job to recover a magical dagger in a tavern. When we got to the tavern, the dagger was stuck in the ceiling. I distracted the boarish oaf we were trying steal it from, and Sim used his Cloak of Arachnida to climb the ceiling and retrieve it.
I think we ended up somewhere in the range of level 10-14... The game ended as games end sometimes: mid-campaign and interrupted. We were investigating--I don't even remember, but it took us to the basement of a brothel called "The Red Silk." We woke to find that Tharius (Tharius’ player had dropped out at this point and it was just Sim and Aranel again.) had been called to join the Harpers and left with a mysterious note. We met up with a monk (whose hands glowed with a blue flame when he fought) who we wrongly assumed was on our side. He led us into a room and locked the door behind us. We were trapped in a room and we were readying ourselves for a fight with whomever was about to come through it. And that was it.
It was a great game with great friends and those memories--even though they weren't real--feel real. I still game. In fact I still game with the DM and Tharius. Sim moved away. We're still friends, but I don't see him enough to game. Part of me wishes that we could pick up that game again and finish it--whatever that means. Still there's something oddly comforting to think of them as in that moment forever: weapons drawn, wits sharp, and ready with an earned confidence for whatever is about to come through that door.