arcady
Nov 6th, '04, 01:10 AM
Cast:
Staeglio Verrenchi - Antiquities merchant hoping to cash in with his new role as a relic hunter for the Royal university. Highly superstitious after a mage's miscast spell artifically aged him twenty years.
Simona Benedetta - Water Mage tasked by the University to work with this team of relic hunters, despite her personal aversion to 'action.'
Sesto - Undead hunter, after failing seminary school he has been driven by his faith to ensure the Gatekeeper's will that none escape the cycle of rebirth. His particular knowledge of the heresy of immortality makes him a valuable asset in digging through the ruins of the ancients.
Baronet Marko - archeologist and university scholar, he forms the team expert and has been tasked with helping the team understand its findings.
Benito Verrenchi - son of Staeglio's sister in law, and apprenticed to the older man.
"unamed PC" - the player named this character "Spaghettios" and I am waiting on a real name. Air Mage tasked by the University to the team in the hope that he will uncover a way to overcome the mystical accident that left him mute.
The Premise:
The PCs work for the University at Coinic (http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Lomyr/coinic.html) in the Lomyrian Empire (http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Lomyr/Lomyr_intro.html) as a group charged with securing artifacts and lore of value. They have recently come off a expedition into the northern swamps, where they confirmed that a series of cairns did not in fact date to the pre cataclysm era but were merely markings left behind by tribal drakes during the wars of the Reformation.
Life is going about as usual for off time when they are summoned to meet with their patron, Mistress Carmelina Primali (http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Lomyr/coinicnpc.html#MistressCarmelina) and her page Agius at the Red Rose (http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Lomyr/coiniclocations.html#RedRose) Pub and Inn in Red Rock Circle, a district on the east end of the city.
There they are informed that during construction after a bakery fire in a nearby building a door with markings in the ancient tongue was uncovered behind the plaster walls of the basement. The guard has been dispatched to keep the area secure and the University, under the Duchess Gianya Dalyan of Coinic (http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Lomyr/coinic.html)'s command, has tasked the team with investigating and learning the nature of this find and whether or not it poses a danger to the city.
The Adventure:
We've had session one, and here follows a summary of the events.
Escorted by Agius the PCs approached the building and were led by members of the guard to the doorway. There Baronet Marko determined that the writing marked the building as having some connection to a royal geographer from the pre cataclysm era some three thousand years past. Curiously, the door seemed to be mounted upside down, and portions of the foundation of a building could be seen where the plaster had been chipped away above it.
Staeglio had Benito pick the lock on the door, and the team, minus Agius and the guard, entered into a small five by five foot foyer that was clearly upside down. Cloth tapestries had folden down and over, and when lifted revealed a portrait of a man and his dog - the man in a uniform of some kind and of an ethnicity more rounded and paler than that of a modern Lomyrian. None of the PCs at this time questioned why the tapestries had not rotted away in three thousand years.
Beyond a door on the opposite end of the foyer they found an upside down staircase leading down to what was once an upper floor. Spackling in the ceiling enabled them to descend without too much trouble and they left that stairwell into a large room with a strange wind that seemed to blow from the edges of the walls into perhaps the center of the room - they avoided that area however and so were not able to determine this exactly. They did discover that the wind instantly died from full strength to nothing at the exact boundary of the room.
Etched along the ground - the ceiling, was a six pointed and centrally dotted magical circle. "Unamed PC" was able to determine that the effect was as if an ancient mage had called the element of Air for working magic and then left it there - for three millenia. Normally the elements would have been grounded by now, especially in the absense of the working mage. Furthermore, leaving the elements at the ready is known to be very dangerous - it invites the attention of otherworldly beings, acting as something of an open gateway for them to enter the mortal realm. The symbol on the ground was the sort that should have been on the floor - which was up now, but when they tried to look up and confirm what was there now they found themselves unable to focus on that spot, and only aware of this fact through concentration. Something was always averting their gaze, keeping it out of vision.
With Staeglio doing much avoidance of the wind room and the mages, the PCs investigated the floor further - finding broken furniture, an office with some letters, a slave pen, and a map of the continent that was missing the great Bay of Lomyr - showing the Eastern Mountain range continuing on down over its place.
Everything was upside down, even the lighting sconts in the walls - which seemed to be internally fed oil lamps of some kind. Baronet Marko has begun to get a sense that the buildiing is angled as if it pointed slightly north east - such that it might point in the general direction of the Great Desert.
A trapdoor in the ground of one chamber led down to the next level up. In this new level upon entering they found a room with two rugs and four chairs, all neatly arranged, and lacking dust. They found the reason for this in the second chamber - a skeleton in a short kilt was busy sweeping the floor as a skeletal dog ran about at its feet, much as it might have in life.
Sesto immediately lept to the attack - the creatures being a heresy against the gods. After discovering that skeletons in Fantasy Hero are much harder to hurt than they are in DnD the PCs eventually managed to dispatch both creatures - largely as a result of Simona working with the elemental fluids in Sesto to give him an adrenal boost (Aid to strength).
At that point we broke up session one. About half the time had been spent in adjustments for finalizing character design, particularly with Benito who's player is completely new to the Hero system.
Session two will pick up in two weeks, as the PCs start to get to the actually wierd parts of this upside down dungeon crawl. :)
Staeglio Verrenchi - Antiquities merchant hoping to cash in with his new role as a relic hunter for the Royal university. Highly superstitious after a mage's miscast spell artifically aged him twenty years.
Simona Benedetta - Water Mage tasked by the University to work with this team of relic hunters, despite her personal aversion to 'action.'
Sesto - Undead hunter, after failing seminary school he has been driven by his faith to ensure the Gatekeeper's will that none escape the cycle of rebirth. His particular knowledge of the heresy of immortality makes him a valuable asset in digging through the ruins of the ancients.
Baronet Marko - archeologist and university scholar, he forms the team expert and has been tasked with helping the team understand its findings.
Benito Verrenchi - son of Staeglio's sister in law, and apprenticed to the older man.
"unamed PC" - the player named this character "Spaghettios" and I am waiting on a real name. Air Mage tasked by the University to the team in the hope that he will uncover a way to overcome the mystical accident that left him mute.
The Premise:
The PCs work for the University at Coinic (http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Lomyr/coinic.html) in the Lomyrian Empire (http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Lomyr/Lomyr_intro.html) as a group charged with securing artifacts and lore of value. They have recently come off a expedition into the northern swamps, where they confirmed that a series of cairns did not in fact date to the pre cataclysm era but were merely markings left behind by tribal drakes during the wars of the Reformation.
Life is going about as usual for off time when they are summoned to meet with their patron, Mistress Carmelina Primali (http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Lomyr/coinicnpc.html#MistressCarmelina) and her page Agius at the Red Rose (http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Lomyr/coiniclocations.html#RedRose) Pub and Inn in Red Rock Circle, a district on the east end of the city.
There they are informed that during construction after a bakery fire in a nearby building a door with markings in the ancient tongue was uncovered behind the plaster walls of the basement. The guard has been dispatched to keep the area secure and the University, under the Duchess Gianya Dalyan of Coinic (http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Lomyr/coinic.html)'s command, has tasked the team with investigating and learning the nature of this find and whether or not it poses a danger to the city.
The Adventure:
We've had session one, and here follows a summary of the events.
Escorted by Agius the PCs approached the building and were led by members of the guard to the doorway. There Baronet Marko determined that the writing marked the building as having some connection to a royal geographer from the pre cataclysm era some three thousand years past. Curiously, the door seemed to be mounted upside down, and portions of the foundation of a building could be seen where the plaster had been chipped away above it.
Staeglio had Benito pick the lock on the door, and the team, minus Agius and the guard, entered into a small five by five foot foyer that was clearly upside down. Cloth tapestries had folden down and over, and when lifted revealed a portrait of a man and his dog - the man in a uniform of some kind and of an ethnicity more rounded and paler than that of a modern Lomyrian. None of the PCs at this time questioned why the tapestries had not rotted away in three thousand years.
Beyond a door on the opposite end of the foyer they found an upside down staircase leading down to what was once an upper floor. Spackling in the ceiling enabled them to descend without too much trouble and they left that stairwell into a large room with a strange wind that seemed to blow from the edges of the walls into perhaps the center of the room - they avoided that area however and so were not able to determine this exactly. They did discover that the wind instantly died from full strength to nothing at the exact boundary of the room.
Etched along the ground - the ceiling, was a six pointed and centrally dotted magical circle. "Unamed PC" was able to determine that the effect was as if an ancient mage had called the element of Air for working magic and then left it there - for three millenia. Normally the elements would have been grounded by now, especially in the absense of the working mage. Furthermore, leaving the elements at the ready is known to be very dangerous - it invites the attention of otherworldly beings, acting as something of an open gateway for them to enter the mortal realm. The symbol on the ground was the sort that should have been on the floor - which was up now, but when they tried to look up and confirm what was there now they found themselves unable to focus on that spot, and only aware of this fact through concentration. Something was always averting their gaze, keeping it out of vision.
With Staeglio doing much avoidance of the wind room and the mages, the PCs investigated the floor further - finding broken furniture, an office with some letters, a slave pen, and a map of the continent that was missing the great Bay of Lomyr - showing the Eastern Mountain range continuing on down over its place.
Everything was upside down, even the lighting sconts in the walls - which seemed to be internally fed oil lamps of some kind. Baronet Marko has begun to get a sense that the buildiing is angled as if it pointed slightly north east - such that it might point in the general direction of the Great Desert.
A trapdoor in the ground of one chamber led down to the next level up. In this new level upon entering they found a room with two rugs and four chairs, all neatly arranged, and lacking dust. They found the reason for this in the second chamber - a skeleton in a short kilt was busy sweeping the floor as a skeletal dog ran about at its feet, much as it might have in life.
Sesto immediately lept to the attack - the creatures being a heresy against the gods. After discovering that skeletons in Fantasy Hero are much harder to hurt than they are in DnD the PCs eventually managed to dispatch both creatures - largely as a result of Simona working with the elemental fluids in Sesto to give him an adrenal boost (Aid to strength).
At that point we broke up session one. About half the time had been spent in adjustments for finalizing character design, particularly with Benito who's player is completely new to the Hero system.
Session two will pick up in two weeks, as the PCs start to get to the actually wierd parts of this upside down dungeon crawl. :)