Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

[arcady]

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 in the Lomyrian Empire 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 and her page Agius at the Red Rose 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'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.

[mangahunterd]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

Sounds pretty interesting so far. I really like the premise of the game. Make the characters treasure hunters for a University. It will be interesting to see how it play's out. As for teh "Unnamed PC" in our game if someone does something like that they are penalized until they either change the name or the character... try something like 4d6 of unluck....

[NightStick]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

I would strongly suggest that the "unnamed pc" come up with his own name quickly, at least before the other players "jokingly" nickname the charactor something that is humerous to them, but not to the "unnamed".

In our group, naming a charactor without much thought sometimes becomes a play on words...In one campaign, one of our players had a Monk named Assoul (az-ule), but if you play with the letters a bit, it becomes something of a ---hole.

You get my drift.

BTW - the campaign sounds very enticing! I will be watching for updates as you post them!

[irishspy]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

Years ago, one of the players in my AD&D 1E game could not come up with a name for her wizard. She finally wrote down "TBA" for "To Be Announced." Well, she never decided on a name, so the players decided for her. Since she was an Elf, TBA became "T'ba," which actually wasn't half-bad.

[Spaghettios]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

My name _is_ Spaghettios.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

Call him Leonardo DiCaprio until he decides on a final name.

[NightStick]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

My name _is_ Spaghettios.

 

What do the other PC's call you; Chef?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the sarcastically impaired....As in Boyardee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, I couldn't help myself

[teh bunneh]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

Sounds like a tres cool campaign, Arcady, with a nice set-up. Everyone working as treasure hunters for the University is a great hook.

 

If I were playing, I'd be full of all kinds of questions: "If this place we're exploring is supposed to be 3000+ years old, why does it have a working lock that we're able to pick, tapestries that appear to be in good shape, still-legible papers and maps, and furniture that doesn't fall into dust the second we touch it?"

 

I have my suspicions, so I can't wait to see how this plays out. Good jorb, looking fwd to seeing more!

 

Bill.

[arcady]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

They've asked some of those questions, but not all of them. They've not yet found answers for any of them.

 

Half of last session was spent in wrapping up character generation, one player not yet having a name for his PC is not all that bad given that.

[Spaghettios]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

Call him Leonardo DiCaprio until he decides on a final name.

 

Hey, I like that! Except... Leonardo DeCapitato

[tkdguy]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

If you like the pasta theme, here's the name of an infamous NPC I created: Alfredo Fetuccine.

[arcady]

Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla - session two

 

Session Two

In which, halfway through, I remembered that Damage Resistance was not a -bonus to- Defense but merely a conversion of defense to make it resistant, and thus the Skeletons only had a 2 PD against bashing attacks and 4 against slashing, and not 6 bashing, 8 slashing...

 

Unamed PC has become Spaghet of clan Ios... and taken a reputation for being odd in referring to himself by the nickname of Spaghettios... Oh well, this is the guy who in my supers game insisted on N-Ray vision blocked by cotton. You can't win them all, and he is the most 'devoted to hero system' player in the group, despite only only fourth edition. That came as a surprise to me, as I had previously thought he'd told me he'd only played homemade RPGs before joining our MnM game. With the player of Simona due to leave the country in January, Spaghet will be the only mage, and I need mages to make this work... The other players were all afraid of building mages when they learned all spells need a skill roll and side effects for failure (and in tonight's session, rough points in my magic system showed this concern had some validity).

 

 

The game picked up where it left off. The team had just dispatched an amazingly tough two skeletons - human and dog. It was time to move on.

 

Exploration of the chamber found three mother goddess statues. Two embedded in upside fountains, and one coming out of the cieling that was once the floor. Both Marko and Sesto were of the opinion that these statues may or may not be a heresy. There is some conflict in the church over this issue - are these pre cataclysmic references to Fahla, the mother goddess, backing the church teaching that modern Domyaria was founded by those who survived the Cataclysm for being faithful, or are they something else, due to the slight anthropomorphic differences? Staeglio suspects he could fetch a high price for them on the antiquities market, but also possibly expose himself to the Inquisition.

 

Going down another ladder, they find themselves on a level with three chambers. A pattern is beginning to emerge as two of the chambers of this level are on top of two from the last level. From this point on the entire complex follows that pattern - two chambers linked by an enclosed walkway - making an inverted pair of towers. The first chamber has more fountains, matching the chamber above it. Carved into these fountains are sexually explicit representations of pre cataclysmic gods - though perhaps they represent early understandings of Lustrala or Maestalhn.

 

In the second chamber of this level winged skeletons came to life and attacked the group. Midway through this fight was when I had the sense to think I ought to look up Damage Resistance and see if it was one of those powers I'd almost never used in the old editions of Hero, because these skeletons seemed awefully tough. On confirmation I looked at the hits scored thus far and ruled one skeleton down, one half down, and one uninjured. Before that I had only recorded two body taken by one of them - so it was a big difference. The characters supposed the skeletons to be the remains of birdmen, a rare race of people that the players are probably largely unaware of because mention of them is only left to a few places in the setting website. They live on floating pieces of land that roam the skies of Fahla.

 

These heretical abominations were thus dispatched to the afterlife, and the team searched a series of crates and sacks on the far wall. The room was a pantry, and the crates were full of Quinoa, food supplies, and even wine.

Simona began to wonder about the state of just where they were, noticing the air unusually dry for being below the water table and adjacent to a canal outside. In fact, it was as if this building were in a desert. She cast a spell to find all sources of water, and found her senses blocked at the cieling that was now a floor, and not extending to beyond the building on any side. Furthermore, the fountains they had passed showed water in the pipes - as if the building had only been flipped two hours ago and let to drain out despite the dry floors. Not only that, but the wine in the crates was pefectly good, despite this room likely having been here like this for at least the past three thousand years.

 

on to the third chamber, which rested under the second chamber of the previous level. Here they found something blocking further passage. Simona and Spaghet immediately saw the cause - the cieling trap door had a swirling mass of solid Air 1/8th of an inch (real not Hero) above it. Mage Sight told them this extended throughout the entire floor just under the plaster. That was confirmed when Staeglio took out a chisel and dug into the plaster. After a minute or so he found himself scraping plaster that made no sound and did not scrape away (he was unable to tell that he was scratching just a fraction of nothing away from the actual plaster - at seemingly empty air).

 

How to dispell this? Spaghet was quite convinced that he was looking not just at elemental Air, but a primordial connection to Air - as if this was a leak point for the plane of air mages theorized to exist. It's power was beyond comprehension. The team considered giving up, going back and filing a report with their superiors. One player even wanted to go an 'get the big guns' - bring in other NPCs to deal with it. Perhaps remembering my many complaints to the group over what I feel led to the near destruction of my MnM game in calling that games verions of the JLA -every freaking session- the others resisted the idea.

 

Finally Marko started backtracking, and suggested there may be a link between this barrier and the swirling mass of Air on the first level. He made his way down there and when the rest of the team did not stop him this time he stood in the exact center of that room. Everyone heard a sudden boom - like the sound a Taiko drum, followed by the sound of two beats on a hollow wooden drum. The Air effect was gone, and they could see the unseeable spot above them now as nothing but floor.

 

Sure enough, some levels down at the trapdoor, the effect was gone there as well. However, several of the team began to notice any wood or cloth they had collected had begun to rot. The wood began to look as if untreated wood from a tree left out for a year, and the effect was spreading. The place was no longer frozen in time.

 

Moving down caused quite a stir. Looking down the open trap door they saw more of the same - an empty room with no decorations. Sesto was first to go, and as soon as he was halfway in there he disapeared from view. The others called to him, and he responded that everything seemed safe, but he was asked to come up and make a report of what he saw.

 

What he saw was a world flipped back again. As soon as he had crossed that point he was suddenly moving -UP- a ladder and not down, coming to end of a ladder exit much like you have on a swimming pool. He saw a room with opulant furnishings, two doors, and several windows. Out the windows he saw open sky with objects moving rapidly across, and more towers in the distance as if in a city of towers.

 

Eventually all the group save Staeglio made their way down to what was up. They found that one door matched the tower pattern of before, and one led to an outdoor staircase which itself led down to a canal and a boat moored there. That outside door was blocked by another Air effect, and nobody ever considered trying to leap out a window. The building thus appeared to have its entraance on the second floor, perhaps to deal with frequent flooding of the canals - a problem common to the modern city the characters live in (Coinic). The objects moving in the skyline appeared to be people on flying carpets or flying by other means, and at least three dragons. Nothing Marko had ever studied ever hinted at dragons ever having been so common, so this was something of a shock.

 

The rooms in the two chambers were full of stuffed silk pillows and in the second chamber they found a spiral staircase going up, with the steps molded in gold. Benito threw some pillows down to Staeglio, who still refused to join the group.

 

While Staeglio removed the suddenly rotting goose feathers from his new silk pillows the other continued up to find themselves in a kitchen with food cooking on a stove - bread, quinoa, and soup. A young attractive maid greeted them in the ancient tongue, and Marko worked to translate her invation to join the master, who had been expecting them, for lunch.

 

She escorted the group up and led them over to a dining chamber. Looks outside the windows confirmed the building followed a two linked towers pattern, with each tower holding either a 30x30 foot chamber or a 20x30 foot chamber. The stairwell was on the outside of the 30x30 chamber, and the last ladder had been into the room with the doors on the 20x30 side. Before that the ladders had alternated sides.

 

In the dining chamber they found a middle aged man who matched the tapestries they had seen earlier and two young women with a family resemblance sitting to his sides around a large table. They were invited to sit, and as soon as the last of them a wind blew through the room from the entrance towards the man. As the wind passed light faded, day went to night, the room flipped, and the maid, daughters, and man all became ghosts sitting on what was now the cieling around where the table would have been had it not been on the floor that once was the cieling smashed in pieces from a fall. Windows outside showed moonlight. The ghosts continued mouthing in silence as if speaking to guests sitting with them, but Simona sense a growing sense of awareness of the living in them. In time, they would realize the team was there.

 

The team chose to backtrack, going two levels down to Staeglio to make a report. Interestingly, while the ghost level was now flipped, the kitchen and cushion level were still right side up, and the level with Staeglio was still flipped. In mid coversation Simona and Spaghet were hit with a powerful sense of Earth magic being used below them, on the kitchen level, as if someone had cast a spell, perhaps teleporting in.

 

A short bit of debate later, all but Staeglio moved down/up into the depths/heights of the tower. In the hallway between dining room and foyer of the level with the ghosts they found the ghost of the maid pinned to a corner of the floor that was now cieling by a molten rock. She had been 'flattened' there, as if now paper, but returning to three dimensions on her edges. She was beyond the mortal world though, her essense fading so that her soul could finally be reborn. In the dining room itself they found the father and one daughter crouching in corners, and another daughter ghost pinned in the same manner as the maid. Further, they heard a group of footfalls below them (as they were standing on the ceiling) in the next level up in the tower).

 

The ghosts were fully hostile and aware now, and attacked. I learned that ghosts in Hero are mostly stun hurting only creatures, unless they use their TK. Only the mages could hurt them, and both mages suffered failed skill rolls a couple of times. Simona knocked herself out when she ran out of Endurance and took a stun drop that allowed the father ghost to drain her. This was after a critical spell failure had done 2 Body to her. She healed the body, reminding me that in a note somewhere I had banned healing the damage from spell failure, but I was not sure where that note was and was not about to spring it on the players in mid fight. Rather I plan to think it over and see if I shall keep it or not. Spaghet managed to drain out most of his Endurance in two spell failures, but still managed to dispatch the last of the ghosts.

 

With that we ended the session after I told them they heard a team of people rooting through something below to above of them.

 

I need to find a way to get Staeglio to join the team. He has a moderate psych limitation of fear of magic and mages. I will post again in a moment with the group's "disads so far" to get comments on them and how I can liven up the game with them. I've told his player he needs to up the frequency of the magic fearing disad, as magic will play a larger role in the game that I at first thought it would. At first we thought we'd have a group with no mages and I was going to make a format with adventures that avoided much magic.

[arcady]

Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla - PC Disadvantages

 

I'm posting it as an external file, so that as I update it when they change them I don't need to edit this.

 

I gave players three sessions to get me a finished character, so they have one more session. I then am lenient on edits until I feel the game has 'found its mood' and the players know their characters.

 

So these are not all that final

 

[NightStick]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

Arcady,

Whatever happened to this campaign?

Did the group fall apart?

Did the charactors all perish prematurely?

Please give us an update?

 

 

I apologize if there has been an explanation elsewhere on this site, but I am trying to get caught up!

[arcady]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

It came to an end in August when I started graduate school.

 

The adventure I was posting here concluded, and the witch they had to fight at the top/bottom of the tower in the second adventure became their ally in a race to prevent a faction of dragons from using the recovered map to trigger a ritual that would tear the world apart by blending their reality with the one they found in the tower.

 

The tower reality, it turned out, was a world reversed in time. They lived backwards from the normal reality, meaning that they were going through what was once for the normal reality to era of the ancients. This tied into a number of other strange myths in the world about shadow people...

 

In the end, the witch, after revealing herself as a church inquisitor, assisting the PCs, put an end to the efforts of the dragons - or so it would appear.

 

But it was a little sloppy of an ending as it was rushed, while the lead up to it was dragged out longer than it should have been.

 

 

Presently I am off from gaming, and if I return it will likely be with a new fantasy world, or a canned setting - as my ideas for fantasy are shaped by very different norms from most gamers.

[NightStick]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

Arcady,

Thanks for the QUICK response - While I am sorry to hear that you are off gaming for now, I understand that gaduate school takes precedence.

It sounds like the this campaign would have been a real experience to participate in.

Thank You for sharing the tale!

Good luck with your studies!

[arcady]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

Not as fun as I might have hoped. It bogged down a lot in side events and dragging plot lines.

 

I tend to throw in all sorts of deviations, and I will go with and follow through any line my players mention, and often vice versa as well - so that if I mention some random NPC in passing the PCs jump down her and she becomes a central element of a new story line. Likewise, if the players ask me 1 question about an NPC, 20 answers comes in, and all of them get explored.

 

So what should have taken 3 sessions ended up taking about 6 months.

 

I'm not so good as a GM with drawing straight lines...

 

They keep coming out crooked.

[NightStick]

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

 

They keep coming out crooked.

 

But that is the point! Isn't it?

 

What I mean, Is that the more the road curves, the better the game becomes! IMHO!