Dark Eye Campaign: Let's see where it goes.

Hello Playground,
I wanted to share the campaign with you that I have the pleasure of currently GMing, don't get too attached to the characters cause there will be a complete overhaul. If there are questions about the system or the world ask it in the thread or via PM. General Information will be explained if it comes up. Generally The Dark Eye is the opposite of D&D, throwing a 1 equals a crit, a 20 is a botch. Skill checks are against three ability scores.

As an example you have Climbing that goes against:

Brave (are you brave enough to climb?),
Dexterity (to grab the right ledges)
And Strength (are you strong enough to pull yourself up?)

If you have points in Climb you can use them too balance if you rolled too high for one or several abilities.
Characters are:

Characters are:

Wehrmyr: A battle-hardened Golgarit (basically a knight-Templar, kind of secluded but very headstrong.) He is in Grünwalden in search of an anointed of Kor, who has not reported back like he should.

(Kor is the god of mercenaries and… not honorable combat. For them everything goes and they are kind of battle-crazy. They do bless newborn and dead people in war-torn countries but imagine a guy in blood-splattered armor that sprinkles a baby with some blood that he smeared of him holds the baby up and screams “A NEW WARRIOR FOR KOR!” They don’t have the best stand with the civilized folk.)

Wehrmyr is a big guy, with sun-kissed skin, very muscular and nearly always wears a cape with a sewn in silver Raven that should tell everyone that he is a Golgarit (Basically undead hunters from the church of Boron, the god of dead. Golgari is one of his ravens and the Golgarit's have named themselves after him.) Under that he wears a chain-shirt and his weapon of choice is a war-pick (Rabenschnabel in German, or Raven beak, that is of course immensely fitting because Boron's holy animal is a raven.)

Jago: A very young boy (around 15-16) who lives in Lowangen and is even a honored citizen that comes with some privileges (doesn’t need to pay if you enter the city.)
Jago is kinda short, has a lean almost skinny build, red hair and definitely knows his way around the up and downs of Lowangen. Be it the best hotel or to find someone to do some less legal activities, he is the guy who knows a guy or can find a guy who knows a guy.


Tarunja from Hernyrs tribe / finds the way: Tarunja is not good with most people, and her voice always sounds a bit raspy, like she overcame a bad cold. (She didn’t start in Grünwalden.)
Her skin has seen a lot of sun, over one of her eyes always seem to be a lock of hair. The other shines in bright green. She wears loose-fitting clothing and a bow over one shoulder and a quiver on the side. She always moves a bit hasty and always seems ready to either pounce on something or run away.

Miguele du Montazo: A noble from the very cultivated Horasreich, he searches his worth in the world because his childhood rival made something very great and he wanted to best her. Owns his own special carriage and three horses. (Yes he paid a lot for that in character generation.)

He looks like a typical flamboyant noble, his skin has a very light tone because he try’s to stay out of the sun when possible, he looks flashing, lean and good trained but not overtly so.


Adeptus major Korenda from Punin: An object mage, currently on the search of special materials that are either very hard or very easy to enchant. Has set up his base of operations in Grünwald.
For a mage he has very bride shoulders and a lot of muscle under his grey robes. He is very proud of his title (adeptus major, which basically means that he graduated mage academy. He will be a magus if he has 10 years of experience.)

Zerpratus di Corvetin: He is a cavalier of Rahja, a very good looking warrior, armor that accentuates his muscles and a sharp blade at his side.
Zerpratus is a very proud individual and rubs the other party members sometimes the wrong way.

Reo Trallo: A doctor that does the best he can to keep everyone healthy. Has lived in Grünwald for about a year.
Reo has long bright red hair that basically shines every time some light falls on it. He has a very handsome face and from all characters he is most likely the face of the group. He also always has a metal flask on him and often takes a smaller or larger sip regarding the situation.

Amene Melior: A gorgeous looking horasian woman with the longest legs in Aventuria. She is also a pretty good tailor.
Amene looks gorgeous, with her long shimmering black hair, the best clothes that always show more than a hint of skin and her long legs™.

Fernax: A dwarven warrior from the dragon slayer academy, he try’s to get around human lands, and of course thinks he can find a lone dragon to slay.

Fernax has a bright red beard he’s naturally very proud of and bright red hair, he is also a walking weapon stand with him having a spear-like dwarven spear for two-handed fighting, a short one-handed axe and a crossbow-like dwarven thing of hunting technology and a two-handed axe somewhere on his body, of course he also wears a chain-shirt nearly all the time.


The characters all start in Grünwalden, a little village in Tobrien (right know it’s in the middle of Boron or November and it’s getting kind of cold in the night.)

As soon as the session starts an anointed of Kor (Korstraad, a big burly guy with a lot of different armor pieces, most of them rusted and a wicked locking spear), together with Tarunja enters Grünwalden and warns the whole village that a huge army of undead is coming here and they can pretty much do whatever they want but he will make his last stand here, the more blood is spilled the better.

The villagers don’t take this really serious, but the player characters do. Wehrmyr asks Korstraad if he really want to die here (turns out Korstraad was the one Wehrmyr was looking for), after agreeing Wehrmyr proceeds to bless his armor and him so he will not rise as one of the undead, while Tarunja helps sharpen some sticks for an improved barricade.

Reo and Korenda proceed to rally the townsfolk but they fail miserably. They rolled really badly and the only one who wants to come with them is the old lady that runs the inn.
After the blessings Wehrymr also gives it a try, but the villagers are so fed up on this point that his words don’t move them much. (The malus after so many re-tries was too much, even with him being a more respected member of society.)

As a last resort they all try together to shake up the mayor, but also to no avail.
After that uplifting news they all begin the journey north to the fortress of Arkenstein, where there is at least the prospect of more safety.

I try to update regularly but won’t make promises. Also excuse my bad grammar, I’m from Germany and my English comes mostly from web comics and YouTube. (And P&P rulebooks.)

Thanks to Tarunja, they do find a nice spot to spend the night. Reo makes a really good supper from the provisions the old inn-lady has packed. (Like really well. They all left a compliment for the cook.) They stand guards in the night, but other than some night-noises nothing major happened. The next day is also uneventful but in the night they are attacked!
On his night watch, Wehrmyr wanted to call out another of his companions as the hair on his neck begin to stand up and he feels like a weight is crushing against his chest and the smell of foul water is in the air. In his Line of Sight jumps a big weasel, nearly 4 foot shoulder height, with chunks of his fur missing and blood running out of his mouth, his teeth bizarrely large, some of them broken he sprays some of his blood right in Wehrmyr’s eyes. He wards some off with his shield but his vision is still impaired (instead of him blinded). His battle screams wake up the other characters and they try to harm the strange demon-weasel, but there attacks don’t seem to be that effective against the monstrosity.

Wehrmyr is bitten by the weasel but much of the ferocity is diminished by his armor. He does manage a hit and his blessed weapon knocks the thing around. Korenda sees his chance and channels a ray of pure elemental fire unto the weasel and burns it to a crisp.
(Most demons, though not the really stealthy ones, generate a feeling of uneasiness and wrongness, they do not belong in this world and this is felt by most people. Wehrmyr was particularly affected, because he was an anointed of Golgarit and an undead/demon hunter. This particular demon was a Thalon a demon-servant of the arch demon of Ice, hunting even conscious creatures, such as humans and emotionlessness. The opposite of Firun, The god of cold and fair hunting, giving hunter and hunted equal chances and honoring the animal that you killed.)

Wehrmyr tells them this and they are all very uneasy, decide not to sleep this night and better go farther. They do manage to walk through the night and most of the day and arrive at Arkenstein. They got interrogated despite their ruffed look, but after realizing that Wehrmyr really is an anointed of Golgarith the guards hurry up the procedure and they drop dead sleeping. After waking up they check their surroundings. Arkenstein is a Fort. One big stone wall, one heavily guarded reinforced gate and one tower with some arrow-slits. Some farm-houses and fields are outside of the wall.
Instead of staying in the relative safety of the fort, they decide to go farther north to Perainefurten. (Peraine being the goddess of healing, harvest and fields, the town is named after her.) That was not according to my plan, so they miss that the Fort is being attacked by a giant demon-slime that pretty much would transform the heavy stone wall to lightweight, easily crushed sandstone.
The lady that had accompanied them found a little girl that she knew, the daughter of her 2.grade cousin whose name was Phexlieb. (Phex being the god of trading, making money, thievery and luck.) She decided that they could not have the girl stay here and take them with them. Another guy with a slight yellow-skin tone with the name of Gardelmund also wanted to accompany them.

Of course they took the refugees with them and would be going further west till they got to a river, where they could follow the flow of that to hopefully safely arrive at their destination.
They got some more provisions and took their leave. They eat some miles, though it was growing colder. The girl was carried by Wehrmyr, Tarunja and Korenda after she walked some good miles with them. They walked a bit into the night, till Tarunja found an abandoned bear cave. After an hour or two she awoke again, seeing Gardelmund who hold Phexlieb in his grip, trying to leave with the little girl. Tarunja pounced on him and bit in his shoulder, giving him no time to react (she actually tried to bit his throat, but missed a little bit.) The other’s woke up, beat him up and asked him what his deal was. He actually tried to capture the little girl to eat her. Of course that was unacceptable for everyone and he was swiftly executed.
The little girl took that surprisingly well and they arrived at a little fishing village that seemed totally empty, except some haunting music that came from deeper from the village… That of course prompted the players to not look into the mysterious happenings at all, because they were afraid of undead traps. (Of course their assessments were totally correct and they didn’t engage with the ghost village. I was a bit bitter about that, but they did react according to their characters and they were still on the run.)

They got some more miles in, totally fail they’re listen rolls and Wehrmyr is pounced on by a big metallic rat (nearly five foot shoulder length), with two heads, a scorpion tail and made from copper, nickel and other lesser metals. Wehrmyr realized that this steampunk rat thing was also a demon but couldn’t quite point out what exactly it could do.
The abomination didn’t get much damage from their attacks, but after an arrow had hit a certain part of the rat it stopped for a split second but continued its assault. But it seemed to leak a clear strange-smelling liquid.

Korenda used his chance and fired another fire Ray to the rat. The liquid catches fire and the rat exploded like a shrapnel grenade. Tarunja let herself fall down, Reo stepped behind a tree and Wehrmyr lifted his shield. Korenda was farther away than the rest, they all got a little damage, but not as much as they could have gotten. (They all made their Evasion or block rolls.)
They all took a deep breath but after a minute they heard rustling and metallic squeaking and a hint of copper on the sun. They quickly book it and ran away, but the very bad thing with demons it that they have infinite endurance and they realized that the mass of rats wanted to circle them in. They’re thoughts were racing and Wehrmyr had a flash of inspiration. (He could roll his demon-knowing check because of the dire situation) These were copper-rats (not that they are completely out of copper…) who enjoyed eating higher metals like gold, silver or diamonds. They threw some silver, but it didn’t help. The inn-lady cried that she could not let her fortune go… But realized that her live was more important than all the stuff she hoarded. She let her backpack fall and not just provisions but also some nice pearl-inlaid silver jewelry and other very expensive stuff did fall out. The rats jumped at that, bit themselves and tried to get more of the jewels. (Phexlieb was on Korenda’s shoulder most of the time.)

They lost the rats, made a short rest to check their bearings but the inn-lady couldn’t go further, the blisters on her feet has broken and she was running on raw flesh for the past few minutes. She was crying tears of pain and hopelessness and the other guys were pretty sure that she had to leave her behind. Reo made some bandages for her feet, to at least comfort her. And she just got up and was running again. They pretty much thought that it was a wonder from Peraine, probably because they were so mercilessly hunted by demons. They were just some days away from Perainefurten.

Tarunja spotted some orcs and a sickly looking, pale human, while scouting, ran back to the others and they reach the conclusion that it would be best if they circle around them (what they effortlessly do, even Wehrmyr who, despite being the most armored still has some points in Sneaking around.)

After some more hours of travel they finally arrive at Perainefurten, they see some stone wall segments (some of them have thick-thorny underbrush between them, to give advancing enemies less inclination to run through them) and behind that another wall made from sharpened logs, someone was riding to them, with some soldiers behind him and asked them to stop. Wehrmyr quickly realizes that this is an anointed of Hesinde (goddess of wisdom, intelligence and sometimes magic) who quickly checks them, is very happy that a devoted warrior is here and even realizes from what Academy Korenda is from, by checking his mage sigil. (Normally every mage has a tattoo or sigil that tells everyone that he is a mage, if you have enough knowledge of that matter, you can discern from what academy the person bearing the sigil is. Normally the sigil is in the palm of either the left or right hand, but they are exceptions.)

They were lead into Perainefurten by the anointed of Hesinde and witness two acolytes of Peraine (acolyte being anointed in learning) of Peraine holding a swine and another anointed of Peraine cutting a chunk of flesh out of the poor animal. It squeals in pain and tries to get away but wasn’t able to escape; the cut also doesn’t seem to bleed. After the chunk of flesh was cut away, the two acolytes let the swine go, where it ran a few feet and begin to look for food on the ground. The cut seems to close itself and the flesh even seems to grow back. That of course is one of the fabled swine’s of eternal ham, a wondrous immortal swine blessed from Peraine that regrows every flesh that is cut from it. They are often used in places where hunger ravages the land, mostly to give the people moral support (you can’t cut them all day, the flesh needs time to grow back and you can actually kill them if you mistreat them too much.)
The party actually gets the ham and Reo makes a fantastic meal that is so good that they actually get a bonus on their next roll. They check their surroundings and see that there are some refugees from Tobrien, some knights from another country, a building that houses some mages and some militia. They also find out that there seem to be more backup on the way from different countries. The inn-lady finds a nice little abandoned inn that is currently used for housing the wounded and run by an old widower and she makes arrangements that she and Phexlieb can work there. She gives each of the heroes one little trinket that she saved (an armlet made of bronze a necklace with a drop of silver, nothing major but they are still pleasantly surprised and they thanked the old crone warmly.)

They try to found out what they can do to help and one of the knights is missing a horse, because on the way to Perainefurten from the east (the party came from the south, in the west is the way to another country and in the north are mountains) they were attacked by a giant maggot that jumped out from a deep mud pit and pulled the horse down, the other horses were spooked and run away and the knight could make an escape. The heroes are not interested in that.

Korenda finds out that the mages are interested in the scraps he harvested from the metallic rats and they take them and try to make a usable weapon out of that, hopefully being able to make a weapon that could harm the demons, if not mass-producing them if they have enough material (cause most of the demons are resistant if not fully immune to mundane weaponry and making magic weapons is not easy in this world.)

They decide to rest for the night, just on the ground under the stars (not that they have much choice). For breakfast Tarunja grabs a rat and shoots a Pidgeon, so Reo could make Pidgeon filled with rat, filled with some spices they found along the way. They finished breakfast and they see some kind of commotion. Tremal von Dunkelstein is striding in town, a noble (with the title of baron) currently in charge of defending Perainefurten, they are some cheers, he’s waving… When suddenly a man is jumping out of the crowd, and lowers a crossbow at the baron. Korenda blinds him with a spell and the crossbow-shot is missing without doing further damage.

After the initial commotion is over the baron thanks the party and invites them to take a meal with him in the evening.
The party wanted to make themselves at least kind of look nice (well not Tarunja, but the rest) when Reo is stopped by a ravishingly beautiful red haired women who hugs him enthusiastically “We haven’t seen each other in ages!” But tells him there is so much to do and hopefully they will have time to catch up. After she’s gone he tells them that he had never seen this woman before but that she snuck a note in his pockets.

The heroes find a safe spot and read the message, that they should find a specific nearly empty warehouse and if they hear the saying “the wolf walks in praios rays” they should respond “but follows Phex’s trail”. Signed the wolfs trail. (Praios being the god of the sun, law and more often than not as the bane of magicians)
They are very intrigued by this but they decide that just Korenda should go inside the warehouse, with the others standing ready outside in case it’s a trap.
The party goes to the evening meal with the baron and even if he too only has meager supplies in a time like this they get a lot of good food inside them. (Especially Tarunja who seems to only stop eating if her plate is empty and even then just waits till it’s refilled, really straining the patience of the baron.) They do found out that the brother of Tremal, Jelnan von Dunkelstein has sided himself with the demonic forces that try to get Tobrien under their control and that he is put in charge of the non-humanoid troops (mostly goblins, orcs and such riffraff) surely because he is such like these beasts. (They don’t need to make a empathy check to find out that Tremal is very bitter about that topic.)

After a good meal (and Tarunja excusing herself because she definitely has to sleep off all the stuff she ate). Korenda uses the code word and gets inside the warehouse. There is several movement and some noises all which he can’t exactly identify because it’s too dark inside. He is informed that the wolfs trail has taken note of the band of heroes and wanted to ask them if they could do something for them. Apparently a shaman is in contact with Yelnan von Dunkelstein and he plans something, but the wolfs trail doesn’t know what exactly and the messages from their scout is already two weeks too late.

They are ready to give them a bit of Wirselkraut (a potent healing herb), a normal weapon (which Korenda takes but in the end they let the sword lay there, because nobody could use it effectively… It did found another owner and had some great adventures after the heroes abandoned it.) Good cold-weather gear and a pledge that identified them as soldiers who served under Yelnan from Dunkelstein. And if they were successful they would get the eternal thanks of the wolfs trail, and 50 Dukaten for everyone (that is a pretty good sum of money.) Surprisingly they all agree to take on the mission and next time you will read if everything goes according to plan.

They follow the map to the destination, are not hindered by anything on their first day of travel, and on the second day they wanted to stop under a very nice looking tree but Reo warns them and throws a stone and the tree begins to bash like crazy unto the stone, till it was pounded into the ground. He actually identified it as a corrupted tree. (Only clue was some vaguely visible red lines on the roots.) Reo explained that as a healer he know all about even the most unusual plants and how to use them in helpful potions, not that this particular tree is helpful in any way.

They rest in another spot (with some rocks that painfully sting on their backs, but at least they aren’t bashed by a tree.) But next day they came across a patrol led by a large muscular woman with wild brown hair, yellow eyes and demanded what they are doing on their lands! Tarunja didn’t like this at all, shot an arrow before the foot of the women and growled that they have every reason to be here. A bit shocked by that reaction from their normally quiet companion Wehrmyr unfolded the pledge and the woman advanced slowly keeping her eyes on Tarunja, who did the same and kept an arrow knocked on her bow. The woman growls a bit and let them pass, Korenda tells them that they did found a nice resting spot near a certain tree the other day and the other members of the patrol thank him for that information. (Surprisingly he rolled a pretty good bluff check and the soldiers did fail their sense motive…)
They evaded another fight with some animal wildlife and arrived at their destination. The village where the scout has sent his last message. The houses are empty, no smoke coming out of them, they are no trails and they start to search the houses. They do find some clothes, simple wooden cutlery, a bit of rotten food, some food that was still okay… And then snow began to fall. They searched around the village and they got a whiff of sulfur and blood. Outside the village they found a ritual place, magic symbols on snow, seemed like they were burned into the white snow by blood poured unto it and some fire pits where the smell of sulfur came from. Outside the ritualistic place they found a frozen body, mangled by bite wounds. They do found the trail of a wolf but they ended and were replaced by the trail of a carriage that cut deep into the earth.

They decide to rest for the night in the village, because the trail should be easy to follow. They do all dream a bit uneasy but no prophetic dreams for now. They do follow the trail and found it lead to the gates of Arkenstein. Part of one wall is crumbled away and most of the other stones are easy to break with bare hands, turning to nothing but fine sand. This is of course because of the demon attack they missed. The party of heroes decide to not check in the surrounding village and take a look into the courtyard. They see some 20 orcs sitting around a fire, grilling some newts over the fire. One very burly looking one with silvered fangs, telling the other a story of some kind. From the single window that goes inside the courtyard a voice yells something in orcish. The heroes couldn’t understand a word that was exchanged by the human yelling out at the window and the orc yelling back, but it was obvious that the orc was very definitely not happy. He backhanded another orc and was yelling something and stomped through the gap in the wall. From descriptions they got, the man in the window definitely was Yelnan von Dunkelstein. They figured that the orc was not happy with whatever arrangements he and Yelnan had and that they should get him on their side somehow.
They tried to sneak up on him, but Korenda was spotted. The orc yelled at him: “I crush skull, Human!” What prompted him to quickly threw his arms in the air and ran away. The orc snorted, kinda in a better mood that gave the other three charakters enough reason to quickly wrestle him down, without making too much noise. (He was outside of Arkenstein but they definitely didn’t want to fight against a horde of 20 orcs.)

After some strange demands from the orc: “If you let me go I won’t kill you, just enslave!” They found out that Yelnan had made a wolfbeast from black ice, by a blessing of the hunter of the frozen wastes and that he, as a believer in Gravesh (The god of smithing and fire for the orcs) really hated that Abomination but he hadn’t had a chance cause of the thing that was clammed on his throat.

He did wear a strange collar that could be opened with a key from Yelnan, but as long as he wears it, Yelnan can decide to let the collar explode in a fiery explosion. Luckily Korenda identified the metal as one he was searching for and with a particular spell of his he could make part of the collar melt and pull it apart, without setting off the fireball (even if the collar glow sometimes, seemingly not sure if it should explode or not.) The orc was exceedingly happy about this and decided that he and the strange humans should work together to make Yelnan and the wolfbeast fall. He stretched out his hands and said. “Gravesh, give me flame of promise, we make promise with your flame, make flame to kill black Ice and bring glory to Gravesh!” And a flame appeared in his hand what Wehrmyr actually could easily identify as a minor wonder that nearly every anointed of the twelve gods (the main human religion, I told you about some of them, the others should come to light as I tell more of the story.) could bring forth. He was a bit torn by the revelation that this unbeliever could perform such a miracle but he knew that it was now the time for action and not for doubt and he reached for the hand of the orc. The hairs on his hand and arm were burned away, but the flame did not harm him further. “We fight together, humans!”

They did need to make a plan now, and with some back and forth they decided that the orc should go back to the fort. Light fire on the staples (because Yelnan’s favorite horse Dragonfeather was stashed away in there.) And that they should use the confusion to attack the wayward baron and probably kill the wolf made from black ice after they mopped him up.
Will they’re plan be successful? Find out (probably) next week.

Sorry for taking so long, as often Real Life got in the way, I hope the conclusion to the story so far makes up for it.

The orc goes and does just about that, gleefully light fire on the stables (for the glory of Gravesh of course.) The horses were running away fast and Yelnan screamed at the orc and one of his bodyguards to fetch his horse (which she did try, while the other heroes were slinking into the shadows.) Yelnan screamed some more at this unbelievable act from the orc he thought he had under control, grabbed his key and spoke the command word… But nothing happened. While that was going on the other heroes got closer to the entrance of the Tower while Narunja stayed back, aiming carefully at Yelnan, breathing out and letting her arrow lose. Even without looking if her first arrow hit she drew a second and let that one loose shortly after the first (using fast shot, giving her a penalty for a quicker shot.) The first arrow nearly pinned Yelnan to the stone wall and the second still hit him square in the chest. He goes limp and nearly falls out of the window if another of his bodyguards hadn’t gripped him and took him in. (Tarunja rolled a critical hit on her first shot and a 2 for the modified shot… Yelnan didn’t stand a chance.)

Wehrmyr was at the door to the fort, shield and ravens beak in hand when the door was flying out of his hinges and a huge two-headed wolf buried him under the door. After the wolf a red haired, nearly naked man just adorned with a lot of bone talismans hanging from his hair and his flimsy cape, carrying a club made from white bone in his hand and with a look of fatherly pride resting on the wolf who just stomped one adversary. When the other orcs see the beast, they quickly scampered away, afraid of the wolf, only the priest of Gravesh stand strong and challenged the beast. Reo and Korendar tried to get in a better position and Wehrmyr stood up after the wolf charged the orc, his fangs only one finger away from his stomach, when one of the heads took a bite in his direction.

Wehrmyr and the orc do battle with the mighty beast, the holy weapon of Wehrmyr seem to do some real damage on the wolfs body, though the axe of the orc don’t seem to sink in that much, he still cut away at the beast at a steady rate. The unholy beast seem to heal a bit with every breath it took, but it only slowed the assault of the two warriors. Korenda
did try to cast a spell but the presence of the demon-wolf was crushing too heavy on his shoulders to complete his first spell and Reo… Didn’t really knew what to do at the moment.
The creator of the wolf wanted to step in the battle, but Tarunja screamed at him… In a language that none of the others even remotely understood. She let loose an arrow… But her bow broke in her hands, too much strain was put on the wood for such short time and the unnatural cold that had come with the two-headed wolf was just too much (she threw a botch AND on the resulting table her weapon broke… It was really bad luck.)

Undeterred she ran towards the shaman, who stand at the ready, the hand who wasn’t on his club glowing cold like shattered ice.
Wehrmyr and the orc were still battling with the unholy beast, Korenda catched his breath and gave another spell a try. This time it worked and a lance of pure elemental fire launched toward the shaman, but a wand of ice straight from the hellish depths erupted to shield him from the elemental fire. But his spell was so potent and so mighty that it burned away the ice and even singed him, distracting the shaman long enough for Tarunja to bite on his arm and not let go. He touched her with his glowing white hand on her chest and ice crystals formed where he had touched her. But she didn’t let go, it seems her teeth would grind even more into his flesh.

The beast, knowing that his creator was hurt jumped at the mage, evading the ensuing blows from Wehrmyr and his orc buddy and bit a huge chunk of flesh out of Korenda while bringing him down with his massive weight. Wehrmyr tackled the beast away from the mage and traded blows with the beast again and again, Reo used the moment and pulled Korenda a bit back to give him a quick pain-duller and checked if the wound was too severe.

Tarunja still hung on the arm of the shaman who let go of his club that crushed on Tarunja’s chest, her rips painfully creaking but her teeth wouldn’t stop grinding through his flesh and unto his bones. Her posture had changed, she was quite literally hanging on his arm, her feet had become smaller as had her arms and a bit of fur seemed to had creeped over her skin.
Korenda gritted his teeth, he had used a lot of his magic this fight and hadn’t much more left in him, but he knew he would still have a chance if he opened the forbidden gates. Using his own life force as a substitution for astral power. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and channeled his will into his body, opening the gates to let the flow of life be used as a component in a magic spell. He succeeded! He ripped his eyes open, stretched out his hand and another lance of flame zigzagged through the field, nearly hitting Wehrmyr, for a moment it seemed that the lance of flame wouldn’t hit the beast too.

But like it had a live of its own his spell darted to the beast, engulfing it in flames. Korenda didn’t see if his spell was successful, the blood that spurted from his eyes had taken away his vision, and the blood that was pouring out of his eyes, and mouth would have drowned him if Reo wasn’t there to bring him in a more advantageous position. (He opened the forbidden gates. It really does what I described, changing life points to astral points. This sometimes gives the spell a stranger appearance and if you use blood magic to call demons they get more furious and harder to control… You could also overshoot it and lose more Life than you wanted, because he was under half his hit points at the time he was pretty much out of the battle.)
When the fire stopped roaring all there was too see was a little pup of a wolf with two heads, lying dead on the ground, without a scratch or a burn mark. The subsequent hits and the fire lance were too much for the demon inside the little natural abomination and the demon was killed. The body it had inhabited died without the supporting power the demon had given him.
They look upon their comrade Tarunja, who battled against the shaman but instead of her they saw a wolf, biting through the hand of the shaman, wearing her shirt, her other clothes had fallen to the ground. The shaman clutched his severed arm, but the wolf was relentless, biting at him till he breathed his last, and severed his head with her sharp fangs just to make sure. The wolf freed himself from the shirt, take a look at the humans and the orc who looked astonished, and darted into the fort. The priest of Gravesh muttered to Wehrmyr, “you have wolf-wife?!”

They shook away their surprise and Wehrmyr followed her, letting Reo take care of the very tired Korenda.
In his chamber they found Yelnan half-sitting half lying before his bed, two bloody arrows beside him and one of his guard who treated his wound. Another guard stared at them with shock; he regained his composure but was quickly overwhelmed by the wolf and the anointed. The other guard stands before Yelnan who opened his eyes, quickly analyzing the situation and with a leap of faith he stretched out his hand to a statue that was lying on his nightstand. He miscalculated the pain from his wounds too much for him and he missed the statue. Wehrmyr killed him with a decisive blow to his head and the wolf tear at the other guards flesh till he stopped screaming.

Wehrmyr didn’t want to touch the statue Yelnan was aiming for and with a quick blow of his blessed weapon he shattered it into a hundred tiny pieces, leaving the statue of a six-hoofed demon unrecognizable. (That was Yelnan’s escape item. What should have happened is that after he knew the wolf was dead, he should have used this thing to call a horse-demon that would fly into his horse, mutate it so that he could fly away with it… But they killed him and I gave them a bunch of extra Adventure Points for that, the Experience Points in The Black-Eye.)

They didn’t want to take anything more than necessary from that place and wanted to get away as fast as possible. The orcs were raising the kitchen of alcohol and beverages and the orc-priest was so happy that he would let the insignificant humans with their wolf-wife go. He would bring every dead into Gravesh’s flames what seemed to please the wolf who transformed slowly back into Tarunja. (The more decent party members averted their eyes from the naked woman though she didn’t really seem to bother while she put on her clothes.) The ensuing questions were interrupted by a troop of people who the wolfs trail send to really take care of the problem, because the heroes were nothing more than a planned distraction.

Hi Guys, normally I wouldn’t bother you with too much out of character talk, but by retelling some stuff has resurfaced and I think it would be good if I could get this off my chest. The end stuff from that little campaign is in the next post so you can skip this if you want.

Before starting the campaign I asked my players if they would be okay if I would do stuff out of the rulebook, pretty much letting a bit creativity flow outside of the rules. They said they would be okay with it, if it would be consistent with the world. I actually was very worried about that, because my definition of consistent definitely varied from them (parallel to this campaign we played Orpheus, a white wolf game that I started as a very complex and difficult story with multiple angels and stuff that happened that the players couldn’t know and understand at the moment. I thought everything was fine and they… Not so much… To their credit I did jumble a lot of stuff around, that I didn’t thought were important for the plot, but they bit on and found stuff that didn’t made sense that should have make sense… And with their logic being useless it didn’t make a lot of sense for them to dig into mysteries because the inconsistent stuff could just been me messing up and not intentional (that was the plan for that campaign.) So we actually quit that campaign because I couldn’t retcon everything that didn’t made sense.
We talked about it for some time and I thought I could do some creative stuff (the rat exploding, being blinded by the weasel and the blood magic thing, Tarunja being able to fight and still transform, normally she would have been able to do anything but there is some material in some of the romance novels that make it pretty clear that they can move and dance while transforming… Pouncing someone seems pretty okay with that… Nothing like that was in the rulebook. But I liked it and it was cool and after I told them that this was not in the rulebook they were still okay with everything.)

At the end of that session Wehrmyr gained 5 additional Karmal Points, like astral points for anointed. He could use them if he wanted too and they would be gone, they existed outside of his pool and I thought it would be a very fitting reward because karmal points regenerate really sloooooooow. ( he wasn’t full from the blessing of Korstraad, anointed get 1 Point per day, some additional if they pray what they can do once per month or doing things that are strongly in favor of their gods, he hasn’t smashed any undead this far, so no favor points from Boron.) He… Well I can’t say it any differently he pretty much flipped out about that. That it isn’t in any of the rules that he studied, it isn’t consistent with anything that he ever read and that this is just really stupid. I needed to drive another player to his train and the two other players talked to him and when I was back the player settled down a bit. It get down to the argument that anointed who follow two gods (rare but can happen, they don’t get more karmal points but can use miracles that are normally reserved for one god) usually know from which god they get power and that it is possible too get karma points from both and my reasoning was that he did something major for one god, he didn’t know from whom, but I thought I made it really clear. He calmed down, accepted my explanation and never used the additional karmal points. I’m pretty sure he thought it came from a demon or something. It actually came from Firun the god of the hunt, because he helped kill an abomination AND a major follower of his demonic counterpart.

Just wanted to get this off my chest, thanks for reading.

They follow the guys from the wolfs trail (one of them takes Yelnan’s sword that the player’s didn’t pick up.)

They don’t have a problem getting back to Perainefurten and gave them a little raport of what happened. They are all very impressed and when they get back they do some stuff and GET some stuff.

Tarunja tells everyone that she was always able to transform into a wolf and that she actually lived a long time with some wolfes. (That actually explains why she talked the way she did. She wasn’t used to using her voice. Find the path is actually her wolf name, because she could open doors and get down fences and so could “find the way” too something to eat.)

The money is given to them all, through Wehrmyr gives his 50 D away because he has taken an oath of poverty (I think he takes 2 D with him. Just in case he needed it.)

Korenda gets a dagger that was crafted from the rat they slaughtered, it is a really poor dagger, has a high chance of breaking but it’s freaking magical and can hurt demons! He also gets a scroll with a new spell on it, though he never learns the spell that would let him summon a little bird that could carry messages.

Reo… Actually runs out of alcohol. He talks to Tarunja about it (he plays it down that he needs it for wounds and staff and not for drinking) and she flirts (very poorly) with the guard that stands before the storage. She loses her first kiss to the guard but gets Reo some high percentage spirit.

When they actually don’t know what to do they see a band of orcs outside the walls of Perainefurten who… Throw something and go away again. It turned out to be the bone club from the shaman they killed before. It had some burn marks but seemed to be undamaged. Korenda took the club and wanted to bash some heads in. They wrestled him down took the club away and he returned to normal.

Tarunja packed the club in with lots and lots of rags and into a backpack and is pretty sure that the only way to get that thing decursed is if they found a good shaman who could get Exorcise that. Wehrmyr wasn’t that sure but like Korenda he wanted to see what that shaman could do. Reo wanted to follow them because he really hadn’t a better idea what to do here and he was liked by the whole party because he could cook so very well.

That was the first part of that campaign and their adventures will continue.

They make their way up to the west. (A bear with some arrows in him was running past them. They stand still and the short-sighted enraged bear runs past them.) They found a little troupe made from some members of the patrol they engaged when they were on their way to Arkenstein. They attack them and win after a short and bloody fight. (They killed 3 out of 5 people and the survivors had a arm and a leg missing repeatedly.)

After they healed them (Simple triage, no magical healing.) Wehrmyr gave them a very stern talking and that they gave them a chance today and they should use that. They come up to a pass through some mountains and a very unpleasant smell attacked their nostrils. They see a large tethered lizard with six feet that stinks like hell and of course they don’t have anything better to do then run away. The Tatzelwurm (a very stupid dragon, no fire breath, no magic, just a very disgusting smell, so bad that you reek for weeks if you fight them and get like -4 to charisma for at least a week) runs a bit behind them, screams at them and goes back to his mountain, very pleased with himself that he defended his territory.

At the base of the mountain they see a man with a cart full of turnips and a very pissed of donkey. They calm down the animal and get a free ride on the cart. They get through some small and larger towns till they get to Trallop. (They did some stuff here and there. Wehrmyr wanted to get some money from a dwarven bank because he realized that he hadn’t any. He wanted to loan something but because he already had outstanding debts from his character story, because before he joined the Golgarit order he made a lot of gambling debts from different people. As a GM I wanted to lessen the impact on his vow of poverty because that isn’t really explained what exactly that means, rules wise it’s really vague and I wanted him to give between 20-50% of everything he ever owns to the church. He wanted to give nearly 100%, just keeping a little bit for food and stuff. I gave him his will, but that made paying back his dept 100% impossible. After the bank business, he got attacked by someone to get some money back, they dueled and Wehrmyr won by a sliver. The attacker promised to not get to him again but there will be others to collect his outstanding dept. Reo healed a woman who had a problem with a nasty parasite who curled inside the targets head.)

Arriving in Trallop they see a young man, in a carriage (a ferrara 4 horse carriage to be exact.) who got harassed by five thugs. They didn’t wanted to get involved but the carriage and the thugs are in their way. Tarunja just goes to them and states exactly that. With a succesfull intimidation check (seriously unintended but it worked nonetheless) they drove the thugs away. The young man, Ernbrecht Zweistätter, invited them to eat with him and his father, and of course gave them a ride with his new carriage that he got for his 18th Tsaday. (Practically his birthday.) The father of the boy introduced himself as Randolf Zweistätter a wealthy cattle baron in Weiden. All of them get a very tasty steak, Tarunja is the only one that takes seconds and Randolf is really impressed, stating that a woman who eats this well will be great wife, Ernbrecht doesn’t seem to be happy about that, but Randolf pretty much ignores his son and gets the group in his little smoking salon. Ernbrecht follows, he has a little corner there with some toy soldiers, a little painted carriage and some other toys. Wehrmyr and Reo get the boy actually in a little pretend battle, that thanks to Wehrmyr get tactically very sound.

Randolf smokes a little gets them some exquisite wine and spirits they talk a bit about Ernbrecht how he lost his mother that is a Nivese (They are a group of people that life mostly in the north, have a lot of red-haired people and are generally a more nature-oriented folk.) And that he does his best to raise his son away from these uncivilized people. Of course that let Ernbrecht spout: “I’m so happy that I’m not living with those wild Niveses.” Tarunja snorts about that and comments that he probably wouldn’t survive for 2 weeks in the wild.

They all get into nice beds and sleep very well. But they are rudely awakened by a girlish scream! That came of course from the young Ernbrecht. In the morning he realized a little fur on his feet. He cut that but it came back an hour later. He maddeningly tells that the heroes and his father. Randolf tells the heroes that the mother of Ernbrecht didn’t really die… He wanted to get his son away from the barbarians so he could inherit all his cattle. His mother wasn’t really happy about that and cursed him that something would happen on his 18th birthday. He also want them to get his son decursed. He knows a maga in Donnerbach that maybe could help and if the heroes decurse his son he would give everyone 50 Dukaten (again that number… That’s actually in a lot of adventures I just realized that.)

Donnerbach is actually on their way so they accept the quest. They also get some horses from Randolf so they get to be a bit faster (that actually screwed a bit with the adventure that had a hard-limit of 30 days that they circumvented with that.)

I’m sorry that the update took so long again. I had some phrophetic dreams for every character that I searched frantically, some of them were really good, but it seems I lost them. When they come up I try to recreate them as best as possible.

They make their way to Donnerbach, they come to the nearest village and Ernbrecht definitely wanted to stay in the Inn they’re because he had a little lovebird they’re. They go to the bathing section of the inn, through without Wehrmyr, he wanted to take a drink… Or several drinks. All to the cost of Randolf. Though the other characters don’t enjoy a normal bath, they are musicians there, some good looking guys and gals who serve wine in little glasses and some fruits, all very fancy. They are quite relaxed, Ernbrecht stretches his feet out of the water, that Tarunja sees are full of fur (he cut it before they got to the bathing room, because he thought it would take time to regrow.) Tarunja winks one of the personel to her and gives them some coins so that they all could enjoy some alone time.

Unmolested they spend the night at the inn. Over the night the fur on Ernbrecht’s feet regrow nearly instantly when cut. (Sadly they don’t make a lot of brushes.)
Ernbrecht says goodbye to his love and they make their way through some swamps that stand between the little village and Donnerbach. Wehrmyr spots a little movement before them and Reo recalls some tales of swamp lizards that really, really like to eat people. They not sure if it’s a good idea to walk around them, so Tarunja goes down from her horse walks near the lizard who blinks at her and she goes down on all fours, waddles with her rear end (to simulate a tail) and hisses and sputters at the swamp lizard (that’s actually a spell she is using to give an animal an order.) The lizard stands up, growls and hisses at Tarunja and slowly goes away.

Ernbrecht applauds her but she doesn’t even seem to notice and ride further. They make really good progress but they do have to rest at one point. They soon notice some orks who shout at them: “Let weapons fall, you live!” Though they don’t want to surrender and even Ernbrecht gets in some hits with his little dagger and parries way too much. (They don’t get abducted by the orcs, I probably should have used more than the party + 1. They also should get attacked by the former love of the rival of Randolf, but because of the horses they were too fast.)
The horses ran away in the battle but they do make their way into Donnerbach without any further incidence. They do find the maga who is ready to observe the boy if they leave him here for a night. They spend a night at the inn and join some of the locals on a little singing contest and win a giant piece of ham and some sausages.

The next day approaches and they found out that Ernbrecht is indeed cursed and that the magic workings on him will end on the next full moon (so they found out about the time limit.) And if that time approaches the magic will never be able to be revoked, sadly she is not able to lift the curse herself, but she knows about some witches in the next village over who could be able to lift it.

They do get to the next village, without any incidents on the way. The villagers say that they don’t know anything about any witches in their tiny little village. They get into one of their barns and hear that one of the villagers goes out in the night. They follow sneakily as there are and the villager meets a gorgeous red-haired woman in a green dress with stunning green eyes. The country bumpkin tells the obvious witch that they are people searching for them. They get out of their hiding at exact these moment, with Ernbrecht in tow. The witch is utterly unimpressed, the villager is in terror. They tell them about their plight and the witch has no problem with helping them if they give them Ernbrecht. Because they don’t really have any attachment to the guy they hand him over, while telling him that everything will be alright and that the nice lady will do him no harm. The witch flashes to boy a charming smile that totally convinces him.

Reo and the witch exchange a glance and the whole group goes back to their barn. Reo has a little nightmare about Ernbrecht, his face melts and there is a scream that lets his blood curl. He jumps up in the middle of the night. A little worried he sneaks out, without alerting the others and finds Ernbrecht, bound on a tree that grows on the side of a little lake, the water of the lake begins to stir and a wet claw goes up to the little beach. It drags a body, behind him that is a strange amalgamation of man, shark and demon with a nauseating smell around him. He snarls and looks around and at Ernbrecht who loses his mind and screams, wants to get away, but he is too tightly bound to the tree.

Reo is really torn, but he does decide to wait. The man-demon hesitates a moment but the helpless screaming human just is way too tasty he takes another step and there is a blinding flash, like an exploding sun that burns the demon, it staggers around , tries to get back to the water but from everywhere woman go out of hiding and point at the demon yelling Fulminictus (the most basic damage spell) and the shark-demon goes down.

(The plan is that the heroes try to rescue Ernbrecht if they give him away and foil the plans of the witches. They get blinded by the fireball and the shark demon should swim away. The heroes then get two witches with them and hunt the demon in a ruin that should end in a deadly cat and mouse game, akin to the ALIEN films, with the two witches getting killed, to further dramatic tension. Obviously nothing of that happens.)

The witches are very pleased that their plan works and on the next night they try to do a great spell of End Transmutation. With lots of naked dancing, throwing flower petals, blood for mother Sumu and some other stuff. Wehrmyr is really impressed and states that all of them would also make great followers of Rahja.

The spell doesn’t work and the only idea the lead witch has is that she knows someone in Gashok who had kinda the same experience.
But that’s too much hassle for Tarunja now and she decides that they all just go to the Village of the Nivesen so Ernbrecht’s mother can decurse the little boy.

P.S. Sorry AGAIN for taking so long but RL is really hard in these times.

Well, personal trouble have subsided (for now) and because I’m kinda itching to get to the more recent parts (with some questions to you attached) I decided to continue making these excerpts. If you have any questions (or opinions) don’t hesitate to ask them here or via PM.

The group goes past Gashok, and the only thing that hinders there path is a Forest that is occupied by elves. It was at this moment that Wehrmyr decided that he definitely doesn’t wanted to deal with these elves and instead of going through the forest he wanted to go around it, costing them a lot of time and willpower (they hadn’t met any elves yet mind you. I don’t know why he didn’t wanted to even met the elves, nothing in his background suggested that he wanted to do that and he couldn’t give an IC reason why he would stand against that.) The party split for a brief moment, he prayed for guidance and his irrational fear was prayed away (I didn’t knew what I should have done, we were at the beginning of the session and I didn’t want to run a solo-adventure for him, while handling the other charakters, his irrational fear against elves never did pop up again.)

He catches up to the other characters and he is silently accepted. They don’t see nor hear any elves on the edge of the forest, but when they wanted to go in, of course there is one that steps away from a tree and directly in their way. He doesn’t want any filthy humans in their forest, because they made his kin sick, some of the elves are on their verge of death and they can’t risk anymore infections by more humans polluting their forest.

Reo, as a healer, fells compelled to help them and wants more information about the disease. Together with the magic healing from Korenda they promise to help the elves that are on their death bed and tell them what they can do against this disease they never dealt with before (the elves are not stupid but there is no Cure Disease spell in The Dark Eye and they encounter a disease they never dealt with before, the only thing they can do is pump sick people full of magical healing so that they don’t die and that is stretching their resources really thin.) The elf reluctantly, lets the group in, they treat some elves and are thanked heartily for their help, Reo promises to look into things when they come back through here and they get an invitation to always come back when they want to.

After going through the forest, the boy, Ernbrecht has shrunk a little and the fur covers his legs, his entire upper body and he got a suspicios silver line at his back. That is the moment they realize that he won’t transform into a wolf but instead into a badger. The boy is of course freaked out by these changes and wants to meet the shaman even more urgently.
They do arrive at the village and are greeted by several simple clothed folks, get some food and drinks and Nivesen want to know what brings these guests to their humble homes. They get guided to the tent of the shaman, who is indeed Ernbrechts blind mother!

(Again with how the adventure should have progressed… They should have talked to her in a very polite manner “honored shaman it’s about your son.” That should gave her the reaction to sick her dog on them, she then would ran away, grab a knife and run into a boat, she would maneuver the boat perfectly while trying to kill herself, so that the curse should run its course, the heroes should have followed her by boat till they all fall down a waterfall and they could explain to her in full detail what happened)

Instead Tarunja goes, “your son transforms into a badger, something must have gone wrong, maybe you could change him back and help us with our other thing?” She does change her son back, but he must stay a year as a Nivese and then he can decide what live he would prefer. She also disenchants the bone club with one of the big godly wolfs showing up and ripping the soul of the polluted shaman out of it. What happens next (and a big mistake on my part), will be written down next week (hopefully).

Hi, I have to break the usual format up a bit, because in that session (I mostly write from session to session) I really screwed up as a DM. After that I still did a really good thing, I guess this is one of the sessions where you got chewed out on your players and immediately after that you got praised (both felt and still fell right.)
I got the idea for the session from a Video I put in spoilers, because if you see the video you know what will happen in written format.

Spoiler: undefined

Show

Spoilers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcMViXzSrPw Spoilers

The Party goes back to Trallop to claim their just rewards (with a letter from Ernbrecht in hand) and while they were retracing their steps through the swamp they have to rest a night, they have to make a fire and there is this old battered tree that just stands there, waiting to cut down. My players immediately nope out on that (they later explained to me that I descriped the tree as really spooky, so they just had to get away.) They got another mile or so farther and see the same tree. I really used GM fiat there, and I would have let them run into the tree till they interacted with it what I normally don’t do but I just wanted them to have that particular experience… I put them on rails pretty hard.

Korenda, viciously attacks the tree and a black oily substance oozes out of it. It attaches itself to Korenda and Reo, (I let them roll evasion checks that they both fail.) The black ooze didn’t like it that his slumber got disturbed and that he is going to curse the puny mortals that woke him up. He got the other members of the party (I didn’t let them have a evasion check this time.) And teleported them into a desert (not the pudding, the place with a lot of sand, I do make this mistake so often…) And curses them to count every grain of sand that is there, he tosses them a magic bowl that refills itself with a disgusting but ultimately very nourishing substance so that they can survive till they die. The players make all mathematic checks because the curse urges them to count. Tarunja fails pretty hard and recounts the same two (or different no one really knows) grains of sand. They should feel pretty helpless and confused by know but really they were all just annoyed that they couldn’t do anything.

A sand spirit appeared and let them know that the stench of a rival from him clings on them and that they are in his desert, ultimately making a bad situation even worse. He offers them a deal that he would take half of the life (basically cutting their natural lifing time in half) of one of the party and decurse every one of them. (The other party members could get a grip on themselves to talk with the spirit but Tarunja kept counting… All the time! Her player is very dedicated.) This is of course not acceptable to the party and they keep counting… OC my players are gone, think they are sure they can never get out of there and are all in all pretty hopeless. Better to die than go into a pact with a potentially demon, and the only character that in this situation would actually do something (Tarunja) is busy counting.

So I let the sand spirit get upset, lift the curse and throw them back were they came from.
Actually one of the heroes should have accepted the bargain (so that the others realize that one of them would risk half of his lifetime for them, building more group morale.) The spirit could not handle the curse and would be pretty fed up and outright scared that he could not fulfill his bargain. They then should come to the realization that he has to fulfill his bargain, haggle him down and try a different approach (giving them the power to say the number of grains of sand outright to fulfill the deal with the other spirit and guiding them out.) I realize that they had to jump through some logical loops to get to that and the whole situation was just a bit too railrody for them to enjoy.

They get out of the swamp and are perhaps half a day away from Trallop when they get jumped by a ragtag bunch of bandits, led by a large muscular woman with wild brown hair and yellow eyes that flare with rage! With this troupe there is also a onehanded guy and one with a crippled leg with a bow, that as soon as there are in rage turn on their comrades and they cut down the bandits surprisingly fast. (Old crippleleg even rolled a confirmed crit on one of their former companions. And yes the two crippled guys where the ones they spared from the troupe that attacked them before they could left Tobrien.)

The woman screams in rage as she got cut and crushed by their weapons in an act of rage she bit Wehrmyr in the cheek and run away but got beat down by an Attack of Opportunity. They check her belongings and found out that she has Yelnan von Dunkelsteins name tattoed on her shoulder, giving her a reason to hunt down the party. Wehrmyr praises the two guys that stood up to them and even writes them a letter of recommendation so that they could become temple guards or something like that. They rest in Trallop in an Inn on Tarunjas request and it turns out that Wehrmyr’s wound on his cheek got infected, swollen red with small puddles of pus on the edges of the bite wound, Tarunja tells the others that Wehrmyr may have gotten bitten by a wolfwoman and if they don’t tread the wound within 7 days, the wound will get worse and worse and after the 7th night the wound would vanish instantly but he would be a wolfman then. (For a Nivese this is extremely common knowledge, so I gave that to her, also the knowledge how the plant looked, but not where to find it normally.) They go to the local temple of Peraine and ask the priest there for help, he knows the plant (Red Dragons maw, because the flower looks exactly like that, it’s extremely easy to find if they are blooming but right know they don’t and know they are way harder to find. Something that Tarunja didn’t know.)

He takes care of Wehrmyr and sends some acolutes out with the party in search for the plant. All of the party searches frantically for the plant, and that ended as a way better group bonding experience than the thing with the desert.

Of course they find the plant, heal Wehrmyr, get their 50 Dukaten AND get to choose one of his cattle as a reward, they end up selling the choosen cattle to his rival what gives them some additional money.

After they rest for a bit Reo gets a message that he is supposed to be in Lowangen in a week or two. Very important stuff, but Wehrmyr doesn’t want to go there, instead he feels obligated to go back to Tobrien, because they don’t have enough warriors there. (OOC one of the players was very uncomfortable with having a character around who is lots of doom and gloom and death and stuff, so the player decided to change the character to:
Jago, character is updated.

On the way to Gashok nothing happens expect that all of them got more or less disturbing visions who they don’t share with anybody! But for completionist sake I’m going to describe them nevertheless, feel free to use them yourselves if you want.
Reo’s vision:

You try to get away, you are in that dark and cold forest, so cold, the cold creeps into your bones, the branches and roots seem to grab at your arms and ankles, every time they grace your skin there is a little cut on your skin that lets the cold get that much deeper into your body. You become stiff your movement becomes slower and less controlled, finally one of the roots gets you to fall. The branches and roots creep unto your body and try to make more wounds so the coldness can finally claim your soul.
You feel some of the branches get sweeped away from your body. Two strong hands pull you out from the grip of these unholy plants. You see an old woman that snaps some of the branches simply away and throw them into a small but still very warm fire, the little pieces of wood and leaves seem to try to flee from the consuming flames, but the old woman at the other side of the fire simply swipes them back with her bare hands.
“Warm up, young one. You gonna need all the warmth you can get, you gonna fight against SOMEONE who holds freeze in HIS hands and cold in HIS hearth, don’t become like HIM or the battle is already lost. Follow the blazing wolf and your path will be clear.”
Reo wakes up and realizes that he has wounds on his arms were the branches have cut him, but they heal before his very eyes.

Korenda’s vision:

You fall, you don’t remember how long you have fallen but it must have been a very long time. You remember that your crown is missing, the crown you always wore, in the name of the hunter. You miss your crown, you were important and you did the things you did, because you thought it was the best action you could undertake why punish you so severely for that? You just wanted to do the right thing and for that you had to fall. It was just not right! You hear the whisper again, the whisper of the OTHER HUNTER, the one who hunts without regard of fairness, he tells you that you would get your crown back. That you would be one of the high hunters again. You could still lead the hunt, but at HIS side, you remember that at first you were appalled by that thought, but it sounds so good and so right just about know. Your fall ends.
Korenda wakes and feels a heavy cold on his head, but it soon fades.

Tarunja’s vision:
You stand alone in a wide field, everwhere around you you can only see the white of snow, but you realize that something is not right with that. Every once again there seems to be a black speck around the white snow at first the black speck’s fly past you, not bothering you as you make your way further to your goal. The cold doesn’t bother you as you are accostumed to that and you wear your fur that protects you even from the fiercest winds. But then of the black speck’s fly’s up your nose and immediately your nose hurts like a sharp piece of ice was wedged in there. Your sneeze, but instead of the black speck there is blood coming out. For a moment you are shocked, enough time for more of the black snow to surround you. You curl up and try to protect your hurting nose, but the black ice finds a way. If there is missing hair in the wrong spot it comes and hurt you, you are bleeding you are hurt, you can’t reach your goal. You begin to grow weaker…

But the assault stops a big wolf has curled around you and licks your wounds, as soon as the saliva of the wolf touches your wounds they are closed the warm body around yours fills you with relief and you hear the words, not spoken but like thoughts that form inside your own head.
“You are a good child, keep your track, you are on the right way and you won’t fall if you hold your beliefs. Don’t let the cold creep into your heart.”
Tarunja awakens with a bit of blood coming out of her nose.

Jago’s vision:
They betrayed you, they kicked you out like a rabid dog, they don’t deserve that life that they ripped away from you. You gonna get them, you gonna hunt them down and rip them to shreds, that is what they deserve you just have too…

You are in that bedroom in his bedroom, you don’t remember how you got there, but hey you are here know you could… The sheets are moving and you see his face, there is this sleepy confusion that will quickly turn into recognition, they is no weapon only… You jump on him and use your bare teeth to rip his throat out, he can’t scream because your teeth are already on his throat and sweet sweet blood of revenge fills your mouth, you hit him with your hands and try to push yourself away to finally kill him and get this damn chewy life-important throat out of his neck. You manage to do that and shortly after you hear a scarred scream. You react like an animal, your head snaps around and you pounce at your next victim…

You are happy, you sit at the knees of THE MASTER, HE provides if you hungry and HE scolds you with inhumane cold if you even think of disobeying and you can hunt and taste blood when HE commands, your whole life is in HIS hands and you couldn’t be happier.
When Jago awakes there is a wolf curled around him, how it got there will be disclosed when I update next.

The party goes from Gashok to New-Lowangen (a settlement of strange people who have a different view of the gods than most people and therefore decided to settle 2 days travel away from Lowangen.) They don’t stay long there because the only character really interested in religion is away. It gets really really cold, snow begins to fall and shortly before they try to find a resting place they found a body lying in the snow with way too less clothing for the cold weather. They pitch their tent make a fire, all the usual stuff, that particular group is just good at (Tarunja always finds a good resting place. Reo can almost always prepare a feast for something to eat, etc…) and warm up the little boy who turns out to be Jago who totally underestimated the weather and first things that the wolf curled around him is like a special breed of dog. (Because a wolf would eat him… He is not the most adapt in wilderness life.) The little boy is very thankful and because the party doesn’t know Lowangen at all he happily decides to lead them around. They agree to have him and the next day he proves his worth alone for the reason that he shoes them that if they enter Lowangen not through the main gate they don’t have to pay a leg-tax (like 1 silver per leg, one of the reasons when the disadvantage one-legged becomes an advantage, and yes that information is in the manual regarding that town and because Jago is a local he knows all the little tricks and absurdity’s of the town.) They try to get an inn and Jago kinda shows them different ones till they are satisfied (the first is way to expensive, the second one is run-down, the third has a lot of evening entertainment AND is a bit too expensive for the party’s taste, till they settle down to one that is in a moderate price-range with an elder couple as the owner who are very talkative.)

They found an alchemist who invites them in and is Reo’s liaison in Lowangen and she tells them that she has a very important mission for Reo that involves him and his associates bringing some herbs and tonics to an orc. The party is very reluctant about that but Reo is telling them again and again that everything is alright and despite that this guy being an orc, no harm will be done. (To give a bit of context Tarunja really don’t like orcs, the only reason she helped with the other orcs was because they was a greater threat and they were too many orcs to harm them. She thinks that they are totally honorless and wolfkillers to boot, what especially hurts here and getting no real reason why they should help an orc bothers her to no end. Jago is very skeptical because Lowangen has a bad history with orcs, they were besieged time and time again by them and eventually settled to give them tributes once every two-years, that hurts the economy but not as much as the constant threats, despite being in relative peace with the orcs for some odd years, the general population still despises them and in irregular intervals goes out to kill orcs, what inadvertently raises the tributes they have to make what makes the population more angry… I hope you get the picture.) In the end everyone agrees to do that, despite Tarunja who has to think about that particular assignment, Reo in particular gets a stern warning again.

The party still has a bit of time and enjoys the sights of the town like a museum where new art pieces are shown as a tribute to the goddess Tsa (goddess of new life, rainbows and peace, her anointed are under a permanent not to kill order, making them an unpopular choice among most player charakters.) They also run across an auction that is held by a magic academy where Korenda decides to buy the hat of a former archmage. (The reason for him to do that was because they found out that 3 members of the other academy try to manipulate the auction by casting a spell that makes dismissive comments about the hat “It’s just an old rotten hat.” “How useless.” “Who is going to buy that?” And sneakingly casting a spell that makes the other interested individual decides he has to eat a snack NOW! The black Mages are not happy about that they were called out, and leave the auction, what let’s Korenda buy that hat for a very good price.)

They go to their Inn, where another magician has taken residence, he and Korenda talk a bit about magic, Hesinde and the world and go to sleep but during the night Tarunja decides that he can no longer help the party and as a final thank you gift decides to lift the party from some of their money, and spread it around Lowangen so that they may no longer be the greedy southerners that they are. (She is especially bitter towards Reo, because she really liked him but that he worked with orcs was just too much and the greed they showed during the auction was just too much.)

We talk that action over and because it makes sense IC, the other players agree that this really is the most in character response for Tarunja, maybe it also helped that she didn’t got all of their money and didn’t wanted it all for herself, but in the end it’s understood by everyone and out of character no one is bitter about that action. Next time two new characters are introduced, it’s also not the last thing we hear about Tarunja, because she still is in the general area of things that happen. The two new characters who also joined are updated on the character page.

I loved reading this.

I was an avid fan of the Realms of Arkania games when they came out (originals, not the "recent" remakes). I had always wanted to get "The Dark Eye" (which at the time was only available in their native German tongue, as "Das Ausage" ... I might be misspelling that without double checking)... but when they finally released The Dark Eye and the extra few modules (like 3 or 4 of them?) I devoured them all. The Realms of Arkania games had a very, very, very heavy hand in how I reshaped my homebrew world (and it continues to evolve, but still has traces of the RoA influence).

I've never gotten to play The Dark Eye with anyone, because no one else knew the system and figured we'd just play D&D since "it's the same pretty much" (in their eyes) and that everyone was familiar with it (which is a fair argument for the latter part).

Please continue to share how the game goes.

I'm happy that this does take your interest Tawmis. I'm still not very confident in my written (and spoken) englisch and the way I write with a more lenient approach and bits of GM enlightening seemed interesting for me, but I didn't know how much that would keep the interest of others. But the view count showed me that there definitely was an interest there, luckily.

The name of the game should have been "Das Schwarze Auge" literally the dark eye. There is some funny history about that, because the original creators wanted to call it Aventurien the name of the main continent but the publisher thought it didn't sound enough like fantasy and renamed it, letting the developers to quickly develop a fitting magic item.

I know the Realms of Arkania games! I think I never really beat any one of them because I was too unfocused at the time and didn't make my own party, but I did play the heck out of them but giving up frustrated in the end. I think I should give them another try sometimes they have to be on the internet somewhere. (I think I played the first with ZIP-disks...) They do give you a good idea how the game world works and giving you Basic knowledge (like the 12/13 gods and the different cultures.)

I kinda have to agree with your friends there, on a surface level it's very similiar to D&D, and the really strong part with the dark eye can also be their biggest weakness, because there is a lot of Detail in the game... Perhaps even too much.

Seriously if you look in the right place you can get an entire history lesson on each little village on a random part of the map and what important role they play in certain events when they were founded, etc... (I leave that stuff out because it would bog down the campaign notes.) Not to talk about different tidbits of culture, history, eticette... The former GM (who does not play in that campaign) loved giving us history lessons through his NPC's and then spring some kind of trap to us when we were drifting off... Still was fun when we could get to the action but it could get tedious at times.

I definitely try to write more on the campaign notes, it will still be irregular but I try to get a bit more out, because we still play regularly with these charakters (the complete overhaul is nearly complete after all.) And slowly get to a point where I would say that the campaign would end and that should be relatively fresh in my mind.

This night there are a lot of things happening. As already told, Tarunja goes out and spreads the money of the party in the streets, all in all some 100 Dukaten, the population and especially the craftspersons who get up really early are just soo damn happy about finding money on their streets and the rumour goes around that Phex himself strewn about 1000 Dukaten about the whole city to help the hard working populace (because of the saying “if you help yourself, Phex will help you.” The rumor kinda exploded like that and get blown a bit out of proportion but I thought it was really fitting, especially the way Tarunja spread the money around.)

Shortly after that Reo sneaks out of the Inn, because he wants to deliver the stuff from his liaison himself, because he is just so nice and doesn’t want to endanger the others. That is a mistake and they needed to rescue him. His player decided to play another character, because Reo was missing, it was more of a mercenary that got introduced with fernax, but he did play him just for only a single session and didn’t really contribute to anything, so don’t be surprised if you don’t read anything about him.

Miguel du Montazo also arrived in Lowangen (he drove some merchant-wife there, got a bit of money and payed for some luxuries, realizing he had only 2 Dukaten left, he was in desperate need for money. Luckily he found a very attractive woman with the name of Praiodane. Who offered him a job and some funny nighttime activities if he would bring some people from Lowangen to a different place. Because his carriage was able to interchange wheels and skids (yes it’s straight from a rulebook) he should have no problem doing that.
The 5 Dukaten she offered were desperately needed so Miguel agreed. Praiodane also hired Fernax and the mercenary who accompanied him, also for 5 Dukaten but no funny nighttime activities.

When the rest of the group wakes up they realize that half of the group were missing, they go to the alchemist lady, who has gotten a visit from Praiodane and the two helpers she decided to hire (just Fernax and the mercenary.) The two women are visibly shaking that the stupid boy did get out himself and thought that they warned him enough. They want the party to get out as fast from Lowangen as possible and hopefully they will find Reo and perhaps even the stuff he took with him for the orc.

The party goes to an open place where they should meet Miguel, there are some people around but no carriage, they begin to get uneasy but they hear some murmurs some screams, people who frantically jump out of the way, they hear the clump, clump, clump of hooves on stone and see a strangely formed carriage through the people who jump out of the way galopping directly to them! They are cramped together between to stands and behind them are more people so they can’t get away, the last people jump out of the way and the horses ram their feet into the ground there are sparks flying of the hooves and the horses come to a stand, directly before the group. (With Fernax player ruining the dramatic tension of the scene by saying “there, there whats up in front of here, I can’t see.) The lean sharply dressed guy tips his head and says: “Miguel du Montazo at your service, for today at least.” The party is relieved that they don’t get trampled to death and they can inspect the carriage a bit closer. There are three horses (all stallions) a dapple-grey one on the right side, one black in the middle and on the right side a white horse, on one side of the wagon there is a stylized wolf etched in.

Jago’s eyes seem to overflow with money and he quickly wanted to climb besides the very wealthy looking man who screams an almost girlish scream and wants to kick Jago of the carriage, but stopping himself before he hit. (Jago can see a blade sticking out of the shoe of Miguel.) Miguel doesn’t want a dirty little individual like him onto his carriage so he dumps him with flea powder and he gets him new clothes so he looks at least somewhat respectable (that doesn’t take longer than half an hour, Perainka is not happy about the delay but it’s a compromise and better that Jago should also take a bath.)

Jago shows again that he was worth taking along, because of him they can leave and come to the city without paying. When they leave the town Miguel and Jago change the wheels to skids, because Jago kinda remembered how to do that and Miguel can do that anyway.

They are very fast, in the afternoon they take a short rest and amongst the snow they see a group of orcs approaching them, they are not on their meeting point yet so they decide that they are probably up to no good and drive away from them, before the night can really set in they see a wolf, that curled up around something. Korenda and Jago can easily identify Tarunja that quickly stands up and runs away, leaving a slowly breathing Reo in her wake. He is cold, damn cold and he looks white as a sheet. His hands are clawed around his wandering staff and a backpack with some ingredients that they can’t really identify are at his side. They load him into the carriage and decide that they give the stuff to the orc and then ride through the night to reach an old Fort where they can probably make a fire and rest and perhaps get Reo to warm up.

They reach the orc who gave them a small vile smelling vial with the words “drink when the coldness in your soul grows.” They also get more information out of him that he fears that the hunter without remorse claims his people and that he will take away the fire of Gravesh and the joy of Rikai (pretty much an orcish peraine but they also brew beer and other fun stuff the other orcs consume.) To put his coldness in their souls. But with the stuff the party got him he can make more of the same he gave them to protect his people.
They part ways, kinda confused and make their way through the night, kinda slowly making short rests every hour to not overly stress the horses and their coachman. Way past midnight they arrive at the abandoned fort, bring the horses in, make a fire and get to sleep while Reo sleeps and dreams.

Reo’s second vision, because he nearly died:

You were out hunting, but again you had no luck, your people were starving some of the old and young already died you could do nothing for them, even as their best hunter. But at the time of your greatest despair there came someone. A person coated in arms of frost offered you seven arrows. Six would strike everything you wished for, but one of them would hit something that he would deem fit. You agreed, because you had no other chance.

You searched the whole night, not a single piece of game in your sight. Right when you wanted to turn around and admit defeat a large white deer came in sight. Your hands were trembling your mouth watered and you drew one of the arrows the mysterious person gave you. The deer stared directly at you and seemed to judge you. You let the arrow loose, but the deer jumps away. You wanted to let out a cry of frustration, but in the middle of it’s flight it turned to directly impale itself in the eye of the deer.

You brought home the meat and were cheered on as a hero.

The monster stalked the village, after the hunger, there came the big dangerous beast that would eat your animals and your people. You stalked the beast, like it stalked your cattle with the other hunters. You found it the exact same moment it found you, it pounced on one of the other hunters and ripped one leg right off. You let loose another one of the arrows. The beast stumbled back, it came down, but took another breath and screamed a defiant scream. But the next arrow brought the monster down.

Once again you are cheered on as a hero and wear the skin of the monster as a trophy.

Then there came the slavers. They came at night and cast you and your people in iron. They wanted to bring you to the south to sell you as exotic wares. You feel one of the arrows in your hands. With it you touch your manacles, they freeze over and fall down. With another arrow you jump at one of the slavers and kill him, driving the arrow on his throat. You catch a bow and another arrow jumps into your hands, killing the leader of the slavers.

Again you are cheered, you are the best hunter, the best warrior and the best of your people.

You are hunting again, but you have no luck, it seems every shot goes missing, every animal is spooked and runs away way too fast. Your people are not hungry, you don’t have to find game but you want to. You see another animal and drew another arrow. It seems to almost fly as its own toward the animal but in the middle of it, the arrow takes a turn and fly’s towards you! It cuts your ear as you blink and is gone you are confused and can’t do another thing then to go home.

The village is in shambles they are crying and fear and hopelessness fills the air. The book is destroyed, the book of your people that should hold their past and their future, but it was hit by an arrow and thrown in the fire. You just stand there, shocked by what you have done, you don’t know how long you stand there, but your people are away when you feel a bitter cold on your back that feels somehow different than the cold you are accostumed too. HE brings his huge ice covered claw down that could rip the flesh from you if HE want to, it lands on your shoulder gentle like a butterfly. “YoU ArE A gOOd HunTEr, HuNt foR Me aND yOU CaN hunt AlL yOu WanT.”

You smile.

Reo awakens feeling a stinging cold on his shoulder where HE touched him, the cold subsides but not all of it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

I'm happy that this does take your interest Tawmis. I'm still not very confident in my written (and spoken) englisch and the way I write with a more lenient approach and bits of GM enlightening seemed interesting for me, but I didn't know how much that would keep the interest of others. But the view count showed me that there definitely was an interest there, luckily.

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Your English is better than quite a few Americans I know! So don't worry about that!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

The name of the game should have been "Das Schwarze Auge" literally the dark eye.

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That's was it!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

I know the Realms of Arkania games! I think I never really beat any one of them because I was too unfocused at the time and didn't make my own party, but I did play the heck out of them but giving up frustrated in the end. I think I should give them another try sometimes they have to be on the internet somewhere. (I think I played the first with ZIP-disks...) They do give you a good idea how the game world works and giving you Basic knowledge (like the 12/13 gods and the different cultures.)

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Well if you have a Facebook, I run the Realms of Arkania page.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

I kinda have to agree with your friends there, on a surface level it's very similiar to D&D, and the really strong part with the dark eye can also be their biggest weakness, because there is a lot of Detail in the game... Perhaps even too much. Seriously if you look in the right place you can get an entire history lesson on each little village on a random part of the map and what important role they play in certain events when they were founded, etc... (I leave that stuff out because it would bog down the campaign notes.) Not to talk about different tidbits of culture, history, eticette... The former GM (who does not play in that campaign) loved giving us history lessons through his NPC's and then spring some kind of trap to us when we were drifting off... Still was fun when we could get to the action but it could get tedious at times.

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I agree. There's a lot of... unneeded... details in the character creation (both in the games, but more-so in the tabletop RPG).

And because there were not enough dreams/prophecies that nobody talked with the other players about here is the dream of Miguel.

You are in a dangerous snowstorm and the dragon is hot on your tail, you hear him inhale his breath, as soon as it will hit you, you will be another frozen statue in the cold wastes. But the sun wolf jumped over there to face the full brunt of the attack, she breaks in a thousand pieces, your other two wolfes jump at the side of the dragon and bring him down. You go over the pieces of the sun wolf and bring her back together so she blazes brighter than ever before. (To give more context to that particular vision, Miguel du Montazo has three ballestrina’s, basically very small crossbows that look KINDA like pistols and normally shoot small metal bullets, there are more experimental weapons that work in a purely mechanical way, with no black powder. The sun wolf is his most expensive ballestrina a nice gold-plated thing with a wolfs maw at the muzzle, no mechanical differences only that she is modified to shoot with bolts instead of bullets for an additional +2 damage. The other two are “the pack” and are standard weapons. For everyone questioning my sanity on the weapons they were all paid through Character generation.)

Sadly Fernax didn’t get any visions, I was out of creative juice on that one and wasn’t sure how long the player or character would stay.

When Reo awakens Miguel try’d to roast some of his horse food to get something in his stomach, Reo was fine enough to take that over and Miguel noticed the nice smell coming from the slightly roasted corn and was very pleased. The other party members fought a giant Ameba for breakfast that roamed the hall of the fortress that get in the fort for some nice and tasty dust, but would take some humans and a dwarf too. They quickly dispatch the ameba and get back to Lowangen, getting their sweet sweet reward money and Reo gets chewed out by the two women. They stay at their Inn again, Korenda talks with the other magician again and finds out that the hat that he won at the auction was enchanted to look especially ragged and unattractive (a strange variant of a spell you would normally put on yourself to look harmless.) The other mage found that just funny and would like to study the enchantment a bit more.
Some wealthy looking merchant goes over to the two magicians and want to buy the hat for double the price the party paid at the auction. Korenda and the other party members are put on edge because of that and decline, still politely, the merchant says that: “It’s sad that you don’t want to take this opportunity” and leaves.

The party is nervous about that and they decide to take watches for the night. They hear something and quickly rush into another room, with someone leaning over the body of the other magician that rests in the Inn with a knife in his hand. He get hit like once but manages to jump out of the 1st story window and quickly run away. Jago wanted to jump after him but strained his ancle on the landing and couldn’t run after him.

They talk to the other magician and are pretty sure that this stuff is about the hat. They search it over and find a small hidden sewn-in-pocket on the inside of the hat that they cut open and get a little map out that seem to point out a cave some three days-travel from Lowangen. Because they really have nothing better to do at the moment they decide to check this cave out.

They travel via carriage and some other people on horses are behind them and catching up, there are three minor nobles from the Horasreich with a mage in tow. (Someone in the group took a good look at him and realized that he was the same as the merchant who offered them money the other day.) They accuse the party to have stolen an important artifact, the group try to defuse that but one of the nobles insists that the issue can only be cleared by a duell. Miguel accepts for first blood and asks if the duell will be ala Chabab (I guess you all are accostumed to duels to the first blood. In the most glorious Horasreich the dueling culture is pretty big,

there is till the first blood: the first wound.

Till the second blood: enemy is unconscious or gives up.

And till the third blood: ends only when someone dies.

There are also different dueling styles that govern everything from what weapons can be choosed, on the time the duel starts, how many steps the fighters have to be away from each other, the shoe sizes of the participants, etc… There is also the thing that most duels are social encounters not only with the participants but also every onlooker. Basically you could win a duel but you get to be a social outcast because of the way HOW you dueled with your enemy, like when you are especially honorless or finish a newby with one strike instead of showing him what he could do better. Ala Chabab means that everything goes… Like everything, biting, scratching, hurling sand in the eyes of your enemy, magic, ranged weapons.) The noble dances around the issue but has no patience and just wants to throw down (common among some young ones that want to be accepted as worthy) and basically blurts out that yes, we duel ala Chabab and the duel starts now.

That was just what Miguel wanted to hear and he draws one of his Ballestrinas and shoots the guy in the foot, clearly winning. (And also teaching him a lesson in patience and dueling.)

They travel further and get stopped by a run-of- the-mill tree on the road bandit encounter… At least they would have if they hadn’t a very capable coach. He let his horses jump over the tree, the carriage makes it but when it comes down again Jago falls down. The bandits are totally confused and need a moment to understand what happened, enough time to circle around, let Fernax draw his Eisenwalder (a dwarven version of the ballestrina) to give Reo cover while he helped Jago up, so they could get away.

They rested in a little village not far away from the cave and what happens there will be covered next time.

Should I cut down on the exposition? I feel that some of that is quiet crucial but I’m not sure…

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tawmis

Well if you have a Facebook, I run the Realms of Arkania page.

That may become a reason to join Facebook...

I agree. There's a lot of... unneeded... details in the character creation (both in the games, but more-so in the tabletop RPG).

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The thing with the details is... Very complicated. There is some really cool stuff in there, like the Novadis spin on Gender (that actually will be covered in the future) the duelling rules from the Horasreich can also be very interesting as the information about the different mage academys. The big Problem I encounted with "Das Schwarze Auge" is that you don't know what your GM thinks as "that is enough reading" or "that is enough Information." Especially if you go into Intrigue (that I seriously can't play anymore because of a DSA-campaign that we played.) As soon as our Group came into the Horasreich we were bombarded with Information... I think I had 4 pages full of Charakter names (JUST names and a very short description) all in one way or another political players and I just noped out because it became all too much. (I would like to write that down too but because the campaign hadn't really an ending it seems futile.)

There is just a lot of Information everywhere and you could look into something and really find a lot. (I'm especially interested in Magic and demons, the player of Reo had printed out the Herbarium, etc...) The Problem is that a lot of stuff just doesn't interest me (like a lot of the political stuff) and you can run into people that like to run DSA because of the System and homebrew the world or People that say:

"Okay we Play in the year 1012 after Bosparans Fall, The "Mittelreich" has split from the "Horasreich" for some years know and there is tension all around." As a broad description or:

"Okay we Play in the year 1012 after bosparans fall in the "Horasreich" get ready to Play an Intrigue heavy game." And expect that you know that if you wear clothing, everyone can see your political standpoint by looking at the colors and if you don't wear a wig you are considered a traitor to the "Horasreich." (I don't know if this is the right year for the wig thing, but yes the wigs are a hook for a certain political adventure.)

There is just so much happening in the game world and regarding what GM you play with you can constantly feel like you are missing out on something or doesn't understand another thing... And then you are thrown in a high-Fantasy ghoul-apocalypse while you're searching for a political enemy of your state... I can only describe the situation as difficult.

Regarding character generation there is a really good Charakter Generator for 4rd. ed. https://www.helden-software.de/ That includes all the rules, but I fear it's not available in english.

For the newest Edition (5th) there is also one but it doesn't work on my Computer for some reason... Well I like 4rd Edition DSA more anyway.

They make their way to a little village between Lowangen and Tiefhusen (Tiefhusen is exceptionally important, because a little out of the town are the eternal Winevines of Rahja. They thrive in the depths of the north and there the nearly godly wine of Rahja is produced and sent to pretty much all temples of Rahja.) They talk to some villagers and find out that some old hunter knows something about one old cave in the depths of the forest. They pay him some good coin to descripe them the way (he is really superstitious hearing strange sounds from the cave, never finding game there…)

They leave the carriage in the village and go through the forest, with Reo’s help they do find a small mound (maybe 3 meters high)that is overgrown with moss and vines. While Reo, and Korenda look around the mouth to find an entrance or find out something more Fernax takes watch and Miguele stands around and takes in the sights (he was a bit afraid of the cave actually.) Fernax spots another hawk and Miguele’s is so fed up with this damn birds that he asks Fernax for his Eisenwalder (it has a bit better reach than his ballestrina’s) and try’s to take a shoot at the bird. (It’s really difficult, the target is really far away, small and moving. Even with his good abilities he needs to roll very low… And he rolls a 3. The bird is hit and circles down, away from the guys. Both guys want to find out where it lands, but instead of a downed hawk they find a very naked person… Who runs away from them, as soon as he becomes aware of both people. Miguele brings him down with a crit-shot and Fernax binds his wounds. (The mage became unconscious because he sustained too much damage.) The dwarf was carrying the mage back to the small hill and the other guys may have found an entrance in some vine-covered mouth. Korenda try’d to get some vines away with his staff but they rippled and stepped away from the hill.

Before them stands a vaguely humanoid figure made out of rich black earth, vines and moss that Korenda identifies as a Humus elemental. (There are seven Elements in The Black Eye, Fire, Water, Wind, Ore (stones, gems and mountains), Ice (absence of life), Humus (living earth) and Power.) Who says that they should not enter the cave of his master and that only one with the same blood as him should enter (the adventure did say that it would attack, but elementals are pretty intelligent and especially humus elementals don’t want to fight… So much that if you summon one and tell them to attack another living being you get a pretty high malus, that becomes a bonus if it’s against demons… Not a single elemental likes demons.)

After some debate Korenda gives himself a small cut to his arm so the elemental could check his blood. The face of the elemental is very strange (having shining bugs for eyes and a crawling mass of vines, soil and earthworms as a mouth.) But it seems really uncomfortable, it quickly rushes to Korenda (the other characters are twitching because they are not sure if this thing would attack) and slabs one of his arms at the wound, leaves it there (while Korenda get’s the feeling that a lot of stuff crawls and slithers on his arm and wound) and takes it back again, leaving only healed skin. The elemental seems to think for a moment and agrees to let them in (because his blood was also that of a mage so for the elemental that should count.) He thanks them that he can finally end his watch and the mass of stuff slowly sinks to the ground and seems to just… Disappear.

They search the little cave and after some time, they found a heavy book, protected with waxed leather from Satinavs teeth (the passage of time). They make their way back to the little village and spend the night there. Korenda could not stop talking about the book and was obviously very excited but that kinda makes both Miguel and Reo… Quite nervous. So they decide that Reo would acquire the book in the middle of the night with Miguel hiding the book in his carriage (Korenda did go quite over the top with that book and both of the guys just wanted to check if this book was not cursed or something and would give it back to him if they found out if it was not.)

In the next morning they explained the situation to him, he was quite upset but not seething with anger and because they had already had experience with a cursed item he did quite understood their reservations. They wanted to get back to Lowangen, but there was a rider in the village that extorted the villagers for their valuables and wanted to press something out of them too. They were not happy with that and intimidated him quite openly. He wanted to intimidate them right back because he worked for the bloody hand but… The only one who had heard of him was Jago and he was busy cutting the sack where the rider transported the stuff he got out of the villagers open. The rider rode away, and the villagers could retrieve at least some of their goods. While on the way back to Lowangen Jago tould them that the bloody hand was a group of bandits bounded together that were hunted kinda regularly but no one had found their hideout yet and they terrorized the region around Tiefhusen, but in very irregular intervals so it was very hard to get a really good grip on them.

They also interrogated the mage who folded like wet paper. He and two other mages from the black academy of Lowangen heard about the hat and wanted to unfold his secrets he was sent out to find out if the group found something because the other two couldn’t follow them (because the three mages could not ride and therefore were not able to follow the carriage, the mage who could transform into a hawk was able to do that.) He told them where his other colleagues were living and the plan of the group was to get to the mages so they could not disturb them further.

Makes me envious to read these. It's like reading a diary from a Realms of Arkania game...

Glad to give you another chapter then. :)

Because the group is a bit… Not nice, they use the house of the mage they captured as their base of operations. They bring the mage into one room and kinda tie him up and because they don’t know that much about mages they… Hang stuff made out of iron at him (a pot on his head that also blocked line of sight, that actually helped, some scrap metal that they strew around and a bit on him, some more iron stuff they found in the house that they bound at his body. (Iron interferes with magical energies. That means if you wear metal armor or have a lot of iron on your body, casting a spell gets harder and costs more astral energy, it’s not impossible but pretty unpractical all in all. The biggest problem is that if you wear metal armor for too long you lose the ability to regenerate astral points for a certain amount of time.))

They go to sleep, Jago had the gorgeous idea of making breakfast and nearly sets the house on fire (he has no points in cooking…) Gladly Fernax is fast enough to stop the fire and Reo even if he is a very good cook can’t save the burnt remains of what Jago had done “How can you burn water?” He makes breakfast and while they eat they decide to go for the maga first. She has a nice little house in the better part of Lowangen with a neat little garden and they found out that he will do a little illusion show in one of the better hotels in Lowangen so they use that to break into her house (Jago making short work of the locked door) and looked around a bit. They found some perfume and Miguele took some (as compensation) he also smelled on some other stuff and was kinda enarmored of the idea of the maga, but the feeling quickly dissipated (he smelled on a love potion, but because you have to drink that it didn’t stick.)
They found the basement who had a strange floor with different symbols and a reading on a wall who said something like “the way to healing.” They had to basically recreate a healing potion with the symbols on the ground or it would trigger something. They decided to not look at this further (because Korenda couldn’t remember the exact recipe for a healing potion. It would contain another book the 14 discoveries of Nandus, that was just a funny quip on another book the 13 doxologys of the nameless that will give you pretty nice boosts, but if you read all of it you become a NPC fanatic of the Nameless god.)

The maga came home and the player characters quickly jumped on her and knocked her out. They dumped some wine on her and got through the streets pretending to bring the poor drunk girl back home, with her smelling like wine, that worked pretty well.

They took her in too and secured her like the other mage. They proceded to get to their next target who was in a more bad part of Lowangen (just because he liked that, not because he needed to live in a run-down house.) Jago tried to open the door again, but as soon as he opened it, it snaped back again (the mage enchanted the door to do that, but only once.) Jago was a bit scarred of that, but the others managed to calm him down and Korenda checked the door to found out that it was enchanted before, so Jago could pick the door open again. Fernax stood watch outside and the other guys were going in. They found the mage in his bedroom on the first floor who awakened when they were going in. He threw a quick spell on Jago who stumbled back into the others and the mage jumped out of the window right into Fernax arms, Miguele shoved Jago away and ran to the window, leaning out with one hand on the frame and with the other he wanted to draw one of his ballestrinas… But he ran away screaming and being totally afraid of the window. (The cunning mage had enchanted the window frame to release a fear spell on anyone that was not him to release a fear spell for anyone who touched the frame, he was the most paranoid of the trio, and was in a bad part of town, therefore all the security measures.)

Because the mage hasn’t exactly expected a heavily armored dwarf, grabbing his feet while jumping out of his window he landed pretty badly. Korenda wasn’t affected by anything so he and Fernax could knock the other mage out… And because there were on a bad part of town they weren’t really bothered by the town watch.

They gathered all three mages on the room and didn’t really know what to do with them… They couldn’t just kill them but they would definitely not just free them and because they were mages every charge they could bring against them would first go through the mage guild. So they decided to keep them here and Fernax would feed and clean them… And make them drunk. It almost felt like torture seriously.

Jago talked to Reo for a bit and they both made a little night walk… Where Jago told Reo about his abusive uncle who… Did stuff and practically hold Jago on a short leash, meaning he expected Jago to regularly pay him money or he would strip him off his status as a citizen of Lowangen and would rewoke his protection (whatever that meant.) So Jago decided to teach him a lesson with Reo who wanted to talk him out of that idea and maybe talk that over with the other guys but Jago was very determined. They got to the house of his uncle (that was nearly a mansion) so Jago and Reo got in there through a window and Jago was sneaking into the living room where his uncle and two of his henchmen were lounging around… So Jago charged in to the bigger guy and swinged his knuckle-duster… And missed horribly. The bigger of the two henchman stood up and rammed his knee in a… Very unpleasant place and Jago was down. Reo stepped out of cover and the shorter henchman wanted to deck in his face but he parried his attacks with his staff and told Jago’s uncle that this is all a big misunderstanding and with his outstanding people skills he actually convinces him. He would of course gracefully forget what happened here if he would be able to pay him godpleasing 12 Dukaten (because there are 12 gods.) And would even forget Jago’s outstanding payment. Reo really had to scratch all his remaining wealth together but in the end could pay him off.

He brings the limping Jago back to the group and convinces him to tell the others exactly what happened to him. What they think of that will be disclosed on another day.

Jago then talks to the group… And tells them why he doesn’t like his uncle, they have to bring Fernax down so he doesn’t storm off to chop some legs off. Miguel is shaken, he thought that Jago was more of a dirty street boy but he was more than a slave (what is not allowed in the Horasreich, the Horasier all hate slavery and Miguele even feels a tang of guilt because he was so cold to the little boy all the time.) They also found out that Jago was originally one of the Norbarden a wandering batch of people who are pretty antiindividualistic, who got separated from his people (their swarm was reduced pretty heavily and Jago’s mother had kin in Lowangen so she wanted her son and herself there in safety.) They had a good life for a time, till Jago’s mother disappeared on one of her incursions (she was kind of an adventurous lad for a Norbarde) till he was adopted by his uncle.

They decide to not act on Jago’s uncle at the moment because they got contacted by Reo’s two female buddy’s. They want the group to drive to Tiefhusen and go up the mountain there to pick a very important person up that could help them with… Anything. So they decide to help them first and engage in revenge seconds. Reo and Fernax decide to buy provisions and cold-weather gear (well… More like Fernax decided what they need and Miguel haggle the people down.) Reo stacks up on healing ingredients and Jago tries to find something who could take care of their prisoners.

While Jago does that he goes into a temple of Boron to… Basically talk to a priest to ask if it’s okay to kill someone, as a punishment to their deeds. (Priests of Boron mostly don’t talk that much and a vow of silence is really common among them, but there are still some who do talk, though if they do, they try to use as few words as possible.) I had to think for a moment and the priest answered with: “Death is never a punishment delivered by mortals, is it the end of the long road that is life.” (I had to include that because all the players were like: “of course he would say something like that.”)

Jago actually finds someone that… Takes care of people for a price, called the Golgarit (it’s not Wehrmyr, but someone who doesn’t talk much.) But when he wanted to go back to the group he is stopped in an alley by two big and burly woman. “Hi Jago isn’t that you? I heard you make it free these days?” Jago turns around but there are two big and burly guys who block his way out. “What Jago does it for free? Hey than I want to try him out too.” The two groups come nearer and Jago tries to climb out of the alley… Which he fails. The big woman tries to grope Jago but there is a bullet that buries itself in the place before her feet. Without saying anything Miguel uses the confusion to go in the alley and kick one of the guys in his knee… Leaving a bloody wound on his leg. The other characters are backing him up and the four bullies run away. (I rolled if the group after doing their stuff would stumble over Jago and they do. I also wanted to point out that the bullies weren’t going to actually do anything… Yes they would bully Jago a bit and have some fun by pushing him around a bit, but not doing anything more than that… And because I had to include a female bully. (The dark eye prides itself in total equality in most places, there are still places where this is not true, but in the middle realm and the Horasreich it is perfectly normal to find a female knight who courts a squire. Or have female adventures or have male who wear cosmetics. Miguel is mostly wearing big amounts of perfume.)

After the mages are taken care of, they find out that Korenda is missing… He died while he try’d to rediscover the book in the basement of the maga. His updated character is in the first post again. The group is not really fazed about that and before they be ready to depart to Tiefhusen they found a wandering priest of Rahja, accompanied by an cavalier of Rahja (the riding type not the gentleman type.) That wanted to wander to Tiefhusen for a pilgrimage to the eternal wine vines of Rahja.

The group of course takes them along and has some role-playing encounters, mostly the group talking with everyone in the group and talks about the gods in the world (in a very laid back way, he is not here to convert anyone.) Where the group finds out that he is a part of a very militant order of the church of Rahja that act against individuals or groups that try to act against Rahja in big scale (mostly followers of Rahja’s demonic counterpart Belkelel who is the patron of selfish fornication.) He is also in possession of a very important artifact the shackle of Levthan (Levthan being a halfgod of Rahja and another god, he was considered fallen for Rahja’s demonic counterpart but apparently she got down to the 7th sphere where the demons dwell and rescued him from her clutches.)
They arrive at Tiefhusen without any further incident.

The Mod Life Crisis: Please don't spam threads by constantly bumping them.

I'm sorry about the inconvenience I'm going to edit when possible from now on.

They actually don’t arrive without further incident I forgot something. In the middle of the way to Tiefhusen they see a white wall fast approaching them. They react fast and get away from the road to two big foundlings that would block the harshest winds, they have enough time to arrange the carriage in a good way (more like Miguel makes a great carriage riding roll to let it slide in the perfect position while letting the horses between the carriage and the foundlings.

The horrifingly fast blizzards hits them and they’re world is suddenly just raging whiteness and biting cold. The anointed of Rahja produces a small divine flame that warms them a small amount, but really gives them more hope than anything else. Then Fernax thinks that he sees something in the white storm and a six-legged beast jumps at one of the foundlings, keeps hanging there for a moment and falls down and maims Zerpratus legs. They hack unto the strange demon, Miguel’s more aggressive horse kicks the thing around into the stone (I did throw courage for the horses, normally animals flip out when demons are near but they couldn’t flee right know and fighting seems fitting.) When the other characters fight against the demon Miguel needs to calm down his horses so that they won’t trample everyone down. The demon-wolf try’s to get away but thanks to attack of Opportunities they manage to kill it. Literally when they kill the demon the storm stops. They collect they’re bearings Zerpratus got healed and they drive further too Tiefhusen, the four other wolfs who the demon wolf wanted to bring into the battle, are know without a leader till another wolf arrives. The other group rides further to Tiefhusen

The group gets stopped by a group of orcs who seem to be protecting the walls of Tiefhusen. (2m high stone walls, on them are wooden panels with arrow slits in it.) The orc who tells them that his name is goldfang wants a very hefty price for them setting foot in Tiefhusen, they argue a bit but a messenger from the castle arrives and persuades goldfang to let the people through and after they get through the gate tells the group that the king of Tiefhusen is very happy to see another noble coming through here and that he would be overtly honored if the noble would come into his castle. (To clarify a little bit, to own a carriage you have to be a noble in the most places and because Miguele’s carriage looks pretty nice with especially fine horses, let the king just assume that the owner of the carriage has to be a noble.) They let the servant go further to the king, because Miguel had to take care of his own horses, because at least one of them is very bitey. While he does this he tells the others how to keep up the charade. Fernax is obviously his bodyguard, Reo his personal doctor, and Jago is his manservant. The anointed of Rahja even ads that he would be the leader of Miguele’s spiritual journey of course with his own bodyguard (he enjoy’s the situation waaaay too much.) Which Miguel accepts.

The group then gets dinner with King Arion the IIIrd. It’s a lot of niceties and the group quickly realizes that he read a lot about etiquette material that is like 100 years old (that are all little things, like using the wrong cutlery for certain dishes and greeting in a very dated way, nothing serious but they got the picture that he is basically an entitled bushwacker.) They found out that he wants to get into trade with some blessed wine of Rahja that he got (little trade, because he got like 1 bottle per year, but his forebearers kept that stuff and it literally never goes bad, because it’s blessed wine. One bottle is worth around 100 Dukaten and is considered a very strong Rahjaika, basically a strong aphrodisiac and it tastes really nice.)

And have some surprisingly pleasant discussion with him how he is able to manage the orcs which he has great pleasure in detailing how he did that. (Goldfang is a pretty strange orc because he likes gold way more than bronze, bronze is considered a holy material for orcs but goldfang likes the shimmer of gold much more. For an orc he is also a pretty strong diplomat who is able to bleed King Arion of his resources but also keeps the other orcs out of Tiefhusen.) Miguel actually humours him and tells him that he is way more able to control the orcs than Lowangen, probably because he is a king instead of a random bunch of commoners. Totally accidentally Jago spills a drink in Miguele’s lab, King Arion offers in a very friendly tone that he could ask goldfang to flog the clumsy servant, but in a even friendlier tone Miguele says that he will take care of it himself and Fernax has the keen intellect to shudder and the anointed of Rahja lets out a heavy sigh so Jago’s fauxpas goes by unpunished. They get a bloodpudding as a dessert and go to sleep, with Miguel kinda wanting to go to the mountain to ride out a bit (of course to really get to their contact.) And then go to sleep.

Then everything kinda goes to the 7th sphere… I was taking a five minute break to collect myself a bit, normally I don’t do this because it breaks the flow but it seemed like a good cutting point. I told them that they would be sent to their bedrooms and can do whatever.

Jago strewn some of his cut off pubic hair unto Fernax face because he was a bit pissed. For breakfast Miguele ordered some pastries and apparently they rolled out if they were all good… Well two out of the 12 were so bad that Miguele had to spend the next 7 hours on the toilet. So basically the journey was delayed a day and the whole group (with the exception of Jago) was really nice to Miguel and even if he was feeling better he let himself get taken care of, cause he liked the feeling of security he got about the people.

They were finally going up the mountain with two horses, found the nearly hidden path, discovered the structure of a burned out hut and got to a big stone at the end of a mountain path but they found out that they could got into the rock and find… An old grey-haired woman who made quite a comfey home there, she even cooked some soup for them and got some goat-milk for them. Then they got a huge plot-dump that on the peak of the mountain there was this guy who was deep in a pact with the cold-hunter, the hunter who’s arrows hit every time (she didn’t wanted to say his name with at least one of his high servants in close range.) Who was shooting witches on their flying equipment out of the sky. (They don’t have to be brooms, they could also be quarterstaffs, like Reo’s one, planks of wood, barrels for more comfort, or even the broad side of a barn.) The group finally found out that Reo is a witch too. (Yes, there are male witches but they have a bad stand in witch society and have to really fight to get recognized.) And that she has not been going out, because the servants of the one who hunts two-legged prey would catch and kill her. But the group has a plan. Miguel would ride down with his horse, with Fernax at his back, giving them cover with his Eisenwalder, Reo would fly down with Jago, but he would fly very deep, so the hunter would not be able to get him. And finally Zerpratus would have the witch on the back off his horse and maybe they could be able to get to the temple of Rahja and be safe there. (The anointed got there in the morning and the group decides to take Zerpratus with them, because despite him being annoying he could at least be another meatshield in case of something going wrong… Well they were right.)

The old witch gets a scythe from a hidden compartment that was made by the old order of witches (the circle of the black toad, actually a pretty dangerous demon, that weakens nature where he walks and actually makes everything a bit more demonic and makes demon summoning in places where he walked way easier. It was killed and the new order of the witches of Rohrwed were established. Rohrwed is the name of the mountain-range there are on.)

The old witch also uses magic oil on the metal balls that are used on the Eisenwalder because that works way better against demons (the players inserted obvious jokes about balls getting oil on them, tension was pretty high and they needed some jokes to relieve themselves.)

They got to the burnt out hut and hide there for a bit because the old witch claimed that they were safe there. They see some little gargoyle’s made out of ice fly by, searching for something (these little guys were self-made, but seemed fitting as little demons who would search in flocks for people to cut them a bit to bring blood to the hunters.)

After the first flock got away they were riding/flying done the mountain, the little flying ice-demons hot on their tails… And I was really bad at running that chase-scene, because Fernax shoot every demon out of the sky that came near and the two that may had a chance were shoot down by the witch and by Miguel respectively (I let you guess who used a spell and who used a Ballestrina.)

They got down the mountain, and rode toward the temple, one ice-demon came from the side and Reo saw more movement in his peripheral vision. He evaded the demon and it was snatched out of the air by a wolf, chewed on and spit out. Reo sees Tarunja who follows the procession with 4 other wolfs following her. They warn the temple and the acoluthes and priests take on farming and digging equipment all blessed by Rahja in case something is coming. One boy climbs on the roof with a sling and a bunch of grapes. And something does come down…

BIG EPIC BATTLE

At the head of a small demonic army is a human with small blood soaked antlers growing out of his head, a bow made out of ice aching like it will break any moment. At his left side is a big four-armed monkey with a three-pronged crown on his head. At his right side is something that resembles a human on all fours his body is broken in several places but it’s still able to move swiftly and deadly, his mouth is coated in blood and there are small bits of blood and gore in his unkempt hair.

The three head-figures are accompanied by a big flock of the flying ice-demons, a handful of shadowy figures who wear horrifyingly twisted hunting implements, a bunch of mangled and mutated hunting wolves and a small herd of Thalon weasel-demons. Running this kind of battle was definitely hard, I let the players do their thing most of the time and then descriped how the battle went overall and then got back to the players.

The battle began when the pact-maker with the bow shoot an arrow at the temple that took the form of an opened dragon maw made out of ice that broke at the wall of the temple, but some ice spilled over and one of the vines began to wither… The battle began, there weren’t really two forces who clashed at one another and more individual battles that took place. The anointed of Rahja faced the four-armed ape, with nothing more than a rainbow-colored long piece of cloth (Of course it’s actually the shackle of Satinav). Fernax joined the acolutes and other anointed to try to catch the biggest force of the enemies. Zerpratus strided from one fight to the next so the wolfes and the disfigured human couldn’t outflank the “main force”. Reo catched several wine casks and let them fall at the enemies, so the demons got splashed by blessed wine. Miguel jumped on his horse circled around the demons to try to get to the cursed archer. Arunja stood at the side of the anointed her wolfs ready to pounce on anything if she would give the first call. And Jago… Was afraid and hides.
The ape let his fist fly to the anointed but he parried with his cloth. And quickly moved around to bind the arm of the demon with the shackle of Satinav. Every ounce of strength seem to leave the demon and he falls down while the anointed keeps the pressure on. Of course a wine casket crashes him from above and his icy fur got burned. Tarunja jumped on his back and bites him over and over again, her sharp teeth piercing the thick skin, her wolves circling around to protect her and the anointed.
Fernax try’s to hack and slash his way through the mass of demons to get to the archer, protecting the acolutes as best as possible, using the cursed scythe who seems to cut through the demons like a hot knife through butter.
Miguel get’s hit by an icy arrow who nearly shooks him out of his saddle, but he keeps spurring on his horse shoots with the sun wolf in the same moment the archer lets loose another arrow, the bullet hitting the archer square in the shoulder and the arrow totally obliterating Miguele’s most treasured weapon. Miguel let himself fall at the archer and drew a weapon he got from the pile of stuff that was given out. And we decided as a group decision that it was probably a bar spade, the player then begins to curse and sputter that he could not use that stuff and then going silent… Suddenly realizing that he has a special ability that let him use small weapons with his brawling skill he is very good with.

The ape-demon moves and gets up, throwing Tarunja from his back and just opening his maw and fall to the anointed of Rahja. He wants to get the shackle of Satinav away from him, that lets Jago take on all his courage run there, screaming wildly, grap the flowing cloth, right when it would fall out from the hands of the demon-ape and holding tight, giving Tarunja another chance to sink her teeth into the abomination.
Zerpratus faces the mangled human and is able to get him into a frantic duell, with his mutated hands clashing against his sword and his sword sinking into cursed flesh.
Reo lets the last flask fly, landing behind the group of demons Fernax fights and throws his staff at them and his staff gets to throw itself at the demons and like it’s used from an unseen hand goes to town on the demons.
Miguel hugs the archer and stabs him with his improvised weapon repeatedly, he gets another shot but Miguel is so determined he stays by him and stabs him some more till he melts in a bloody puddle, leaving the bow behind.

Then a bunch of orcs show up screaming “for Rikai!” And begin to kill the last demons that were still there, though Tarunja gets the killing bite for the ape.

Miguel is frantically searching for the broken pieces of his ballestrina and screams at the acolutes who want to take care of his wounds to help him search what they do. The anointed of Rahja is not seen anymore, but there is a small wine vine that Jago plants in the wine garden when nobody is looking. Fernax, Reo, Zerpratus and Tarunja get to talk for a moment and she tells them they should bring the bow and the scythe to the shaman, she has still some work to do here.

And that is where we end for today.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

The group then gets dinner with King Arion the IIIrd. It’s a lot of niceties and the group quickly realizes that he read a lot about etiquette material that is like 100 years old (that are all little things, like using the wrong cutlery for certain dishes and greeting in a very dated way, nothing serious but they got the picture that he is basically an entitled bushwacker.) They found out that he wants to get into trade with some blessed wine of Rahja that he got (little trade, because he got like 1 bottle per year, but his forebearers kept that stuff and it literally never goes bad, because it’s blessed wine. One bottle is worth around 100 Dukaten and is considered a very strong Rahjaika, basically a strong aphrodisiac and it tastes really nice.)

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I'd love to be in this game... and also learn how the King built such a strong relationship with Orcs.
Also, I don't know if there's any online resources for The Dark Eye... but maybe linking pictures to some of the monsters when possible would be cool for the visual.

The pictures are a good idea, I wanted to upload some pictures but apparently the image-hosting sites don’t like me. Regardless if you want to search some pictures yourself they are easy enough too find.

The 4 armed ape is called Umdoreel.

The wolfs are Karmanth.

The flying ice-demons are basically small Gargoyle’s made out of ice.

The human with the bloody anklers is a pactmaker, I couln’t found pictures of.

The shadowy figures are Usuzoreel, I couldn’t found pictures of, but they are like see-through ghosts that can’t hurt you, they can just use innate Fear-abilities to bring you where the other hunters want you. That’s why there are the herders of Nagrach.

HISTORY STUFF (For the Fantasy history buffs, regular update is further down.)
I deviated from the original The Dark Eye lore regarding King Arion III because I though it made a bit more sense and made him a bit of a more capable person. To elaborate Tiefhusen (under the reign of King Arion the I st), Lowangen, Gashok and some other towns and villages had forged a pact to trade and protect themselves from foreign threats and made them a sizeable and important factor in the north of the world.

That worked for some years but then came the first orcen storm (about the beginning of the reign of King Arion the III th) it’s pretty much what it sounds a massive group of orcs who want to plunder, kill and maim.

The orcs were driven off, but then came the second orcen storm that ended in the total obliteration of the pact of the villages and led too Lowangen to pay the orcs every two years. King Arion the III rd (in the official story) was imprisoned in his own castle (what I thought was strange…) in the first and second orcen storm. Instead I made him into a cunning collaborateur who was able to send a messenger when the orcs first came and was able to constantly make new pacts with the new orc captain that wants another piece of Tiefhusen. That made him still a bushwacker but definitely a cunning and intelligent individual who knows how orcs work.


ADVENTURE


After the acolutes found the missing pieces of Miguele’s sun wolf, the group gets healed up and with a lot of caution Fernax wraps the bow in a lot of layer’s of clothing and they decide to wander too the shaman, resting in a inn to the way too Lowangen with Miguele being totally nonchalant telling the owner that they rescued the holy wine-vines from a demonic invasion. The owner is totally convinced (because the claim was so out there and Miguele being so cool about it) that he gives them the genuine hero treatment. (free food, baths, the best rooms…)
When they arrive in Lowangen, they bring the old witch to the other two witches (because of course they are also witches) and Reo actually gets the opportunity to join the pretty decreased witches coven humbly accepting his new position (yes it’s time for another character change, but still not the last.)

The party rests some days in Lowangen and promise Jago that they will help him with his uncle, as soon as they found out a bit more about the strange bone-bow from a demonic pact-maker. They travel to the place they meet the nivesen shaman before. But on their way there, they had to rest in a little cottage (not really an inn, more like a little house on the way that sometimes took travelers in) where they meet:

Amene melior (character description in the first post) it turns out that Miguele kinda knew her (they met in Kuslik some years ago when he needed some new clothes) they get into talking and found out that she is at her wits end. She had a prophetic dream about her betrothed dying a horribly and painful death if she would stay near him. Every anointed and every person who could look into the future could not help her and her last hope is that perhaps one of the shamans of the nivesen could maybe help her.
The party of course are totally nice and promised her that she could travel with them, because they are on the way to a shaman anyway. The next morning Fernax doesn’t feel very well but fights the feeling down.

On the carriage right when it’s moving Fernax had to ****, immediately. He screams to stop runs behind a convenient stone and the party hears (and smells later, except Miguel because his nose is really not working well) that he produced something. He gets in sight of the party again, a bit week on his knees and askes someone to please check his, um, product. Miguel and Amene are appalled by that, but Jago doesn’t have that much problems with looking at that. And can confirm that Fernax has a ungodly amount of worms in his product.

They’re trying to get to the shaman now as fast as possible, with the whole group pretty suddenly getting bad symptoms like sudden drowsiness, short-term loss of limb control, bad eyesight and the feeling that there is something inside them. Miguel in particular has the feeling that sometimes there is a worm that blocks his field of vision (if they did not had a carriage the illnesses would have become even more serious.)

Gladly they arrive at the shaman and she quickly discovers that the source of the illnesses are the demonic scythe that fernax had with him (that item was a serious topic of discussion with the witches, that felt a certain responsibility to secure that this weapon doesn’t get in the wrong hands, but the group decided that they are definitely experts regarding cursed items and made it their responsibility, they didn’t really had a chance to protest much because they really solved the big problem the witches had, that they were shot out of the air by the pact-maker.)

The shaman simply removes the iron part from the wood part of the scythe and banishes the members of the group to a special tent, that Ernbrecht pitched up. The shaman burned rare and strange herbs and wood and made all of them drink a strange concoction. They all strip down in the tent and… Lose their ****. It was a surprisingly good group bonding experience for everyone involved (if disgusting as hell.)

After nearly a day of ****ting and a day of resting they ask the shaman about the bow and Amene. But they have to do a little something for the shaman, before she will give them more information.


OOC talk (Adventure is over, this is for people who like the Out of character portions and group dynamic talk.)


You may noticed that Zerpratus have been missing from the adventure. That’s because we kicked his player. For a little more context the group is pretty role-play heavy (I omit a lot of that, because I wanted to tell more of the story and don’t want to bog down the Journal. And I forgot some of that, so I just include the most interesting tidbits) and we played with the player in some other unrelated adventure and he is more of a bash the door in and kill and loot stuff player. What is not a problem but we didn’t wanted that in our group, he said that he would try to be more of a roleplayer because he wanted too and we gave him time… I think nearly one year. The strange thing is that we thought he improved greatly in his first month but then he came back to his murderhoboism. Mainly when he played a mage, because his mages were all the same, if they came from a complete different cultural background or from a different academy, it was all the same.

He wanted to make another character, that was Zerpratus, which I basically handwaved in without looking at it in great detail because he brought the character sheet in like two days before the big epic battle and I had other stuff on my mind. I then had to lay out his character to the other players (which I would normally never do and never done that before and if something similar will not occur I will never do that again.)

He also wrote a backstory that introduced him as a pretty serious (if a little horny) individual. The disadvantages on his character sheet made him into someone who would force himself unto others. I talked that over the group and with him and the way the disadvantages would affect his character (in his view) would make him a bit horny. That pretty much was it, I layed out how it would affect him if he would be following the rules (I’m mostly not that adamant about the rules but for something that gives a bunch of character generation points to have so little impact on someone was a bit too much) was not acceptable. After some back and forth that included a rewriting of his character by him that made him a little bit worse and a suggestion how the disadvantages would affect him if he would want to really do that stuff (which he didn’t accept) we kicked him out of the group.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

The orcs were driven off, but then came the second orcen storm that ended in the total obliteration of the pact of the villages and led too Lowangen to pay the orcs every two years. King Arion the III rd (in the official story) was imprisoned in his own castle (what I thought was strange…) in the first and second orcen storm. Instead I made him into a cunning collaborateur who was able to send a messenger when the orcs first came and was able to constantly make new pacts with the new orc captain that wants another piece of Tiefhusen. That made him still a bushwacker but definitely a cunning and intelligent individual who knows how orcs work.

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This is one of the reasons that working in a pre-defined world (whether Arkania or Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance), sometimes the setting's history can interfere with your own game; and changes like this need to be made to make it fit your campaign. I think that's why for 5th Edition D&D, they firmly emphasize "the multiverse" - so everyone's game may be taking place on Forgotten Realms, but there's potentially millions of versions of the world that exist in alternate reality type settings.

But you can still run into that "History Buff" who is like, "But that's now how it happened..."

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

You may noticed that Zerpratus have been missing from the adventure. That’s because we kicked his player.

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Curious; when you punt a character (sounds like the only one so far), so you add it into the game or does the character simply disappear?

OOC Talk

Well, by thinking about it, that was the first character that was ever kicked out… There were some that decided that the group is not to their taste and left, but I never kicked someone before. I worked it into the story but in a very lazy way. He got suddenly very ill and the characters left him in the care of a temple of Peraine. I thought about bringing him back as a pact-maker for Rahja’s demonic counterpart but ultimately decided not to do that, it seemed a bit too much.

The following is a pretty cliché dungeon crawl, something I do avoid most of the time because my players don’t really enjoy that but I do, so I gave that to me as threat, not that the players would like to solve that in the manner I thought they would but that is because they are the players and use their creative freedom most of the time.

ADVENTURE

The shaman tells them that they recently lost someone on an expedition they even knew where the individual hunter was going but the tribe doesn’t want to venture to that mysterious ruin because whatever happened the individual didn’t come back and before they risk their behinds they are more comfortable to risk the behinds of the party. They are pretty sure that the hunter is dead, because he is missing for so long and it is kinda crucial that the party rescues him as soon as possible, because if not he will almost certainly come back as a vengeful ghost. The only way to prevent that is bringing back his corpse and have a nice feast to send the person off. (But not too nice because that could give the wrong message to the ghost, how the Nivesen are handling their dead is kinda complicated.) They all get an Anaurak a special clothes item off the Nivesen that helps immensely against the cold. Of course Amene uses her tailoring to make them look more fashionable and adjusts a child Anaurak so that it could feasibly fit Fernax.

They get to the ruin, that is basically just some stairs that go into the ground, with some pillars flanking it. The pillars have writing on it that just gave sense to Miguele and Amene (basically written in Latin). With the charakters knowledge of scripture they found out that this is a vault from a mage academy and with Jago’s knowledge they found out that the academy was located in Lowangen… Some 400 years ago, the academy went bankrupt. (He overheard some mage academy scholars in a pub who talked about their ongoing history tests.)
They went down the stairs and after some strides they realize that the steps become less worn down and the temperature rises to a degree that they don’t have to wear their anauraks anymore. At the end of the steps there was a small room that looked like it was cut off.

The characters investigate the cut off section and it seems like it was a cliff that looked down a mountain range with some clouds above. Before the characters were a row of pillars, with a very broad top the characters could step on. (No check to go from pillar to pillar, even from Fernax.) When they looked at the row of pillars they caught a whiff of cold mountain air. The cliff was flanked by two statues that depicted two stone warriors, but kinda corroded, one was missing a shield (I wanted to write one was missing a child…) the weapon off the other one was cut in half. Above them was the message: “Walk like a soldier.”

Fernax walked before the statues and the other characters had no idea what to do. I gave Fernax a check to know that there is an age-old warrior thing that goes like this: “left, left, left, right, left…” and repeat. (OOC I was a bit confuddled that nobody on my group has ever heard of that before, that’s the reason I always include the possibility of the players just rolling a check when confronted with a puzzle if they don’t know what to do.)

They just walk off the pillars indicated by Fernax, follow a corridor, round a corner and see themselves face to face with a humanoid figure that seems to be totally covered in a viscious slime. It scream-gurgles and charges them. Miguel calls for a retreat and they jump to a safe pillar, the very stupid but dedicated demon wanted to follow them but falls through an illusionary pillar, like 20 feet down and scream-gurgles at them some more. (The floor and ceiling were painted pretty realistically, the fresh mountain breeze was a saved spell that activated when the characters looked at the pillars. The fake pillars were permanent illusions.)

The guys pass the room of the slime-demon, and came to a T-section. They go right first and they find a little laboratory with a smithy that has a still working fire… The charakters investigate the fire and find a literally flaming eye (think the eye of Sauron but just as big as a cat.) The eye seems to talk to them (despite not having a mouth) and is totally surprised that someone is here and ask if it could possibly be sent home, the easiest way to do that would be to kill it. The characters are a bit squeasy about that, talk to the flaming eye some more and find out that it has no problem to tell them that it is a demon. (The demon is freaking bored, imagine sitting there for like 400 years and nothing happening. It can’t leave the forge because of his pact and he can’t go back to the 7th sphere because it’s too weak.) It would even tell them how to avoid some traps deeper into the ruin totally free of charge, but they don’t want the help.

They go left of the T-section and find a GIANT THREE-HEADED CHIMERA corpse. It was the only “living” thing in the ruins and it died years ago, because nobody was there to feed it. They go into the next room where they found a big stone golem, that begins to speak. “Answer my riddle or you will surely die. There was once a thief that wanted to get into the ruins of a mighty spellcaster, who had a guardian just like the one you see before you. He waited to see what the apprentices of the mage would do. The first apprentice came and the guardian said twelve and the apprentice said six. Another apprentice came and the guardian said six and the apprentice said three. The thief was full of himself and thought it knew who to get around the guardian. The thief faced the guardian who said ten. The thief said five and the guardian smashed him. If you can’t say what he should have said you will share his fate.” The player of Fernax knew the answer and said three. It’s about the number of letters the word is made out of.

The golem opened a hidden door and they came to a room where a vaguely humanoid thing with one crab claw, one disfigured human arm and a disfigured face was taking watch. It stormed at them and I moan-gurgled in my best unholy monster impression “WhAt ShOuLD I dOOoooOO?” They rollen initiative, the demonspawn was first and hit Fernax for very much damage. One of the characters screamed “clean!” And the hands of the demonspawn changed and it did exactly that. (The idea was that this thing was mentally very weak so that the creator would have to do not a lot of work to take it under control because he had enough to do with the two other demons and the chimera.)

They found the corpse of a Nivese, probably cut down by the crab arm of the demonspawn. They’re was also a door engraved with some gold and strange runes (not something anyone could read.) Jago asked the demonspawn where the key is and it ran to the demonic eye and began to punch it a lot with his crab arm, that made the eye laugh manically till it was killed and sent back to the 7th sphere. The demonspawn gave the key to the group that was in the forge.

They open the cool mysterious door and found a little artifact vault with some gems, a Journal that descriped how you could activate every artifact and that the owner of the Journal was something like the assistant treasurer that made some artifacts and keep them safe with demons and the strange thing before the door that was a very unholy abomination of a human and a demon (yes these were very dark times.)

The artifacts included a sword “Defender” that was a magic sword that could once a year give you a magic protection field for 5 minutes and a lot of one-shot magic items. (If that sounds very unimpressive it’s actually not, magic items are rare in The Dark Eye and permanent magic weapons are really, really rare.) Miguele doesn’t want to take any item that was created from an individual that summoned demons without remorse and leaves the vault. No one else took anything (well Amene sneaked a gem inside one of her pockets.)

I was a bit… Well kinda angry and a bit sad that they did not took any of the cool stuff I created but in the end it was a very in character decision.

They bring the corpse to the shaman and when they got into the tribe Jago sees… His mother! She had lost her memory of him and didn’t knew who that little kid was that was sobbing in her Anaurak. (She was part of a hunting party that was not there when Jago was visiting the tribe.)

After the goodbye party for the deceased the shaman tells Amene that she needs an egg that is constructed with spears made out of Mindorium, teeth that were made out of dwarven steel and the shell should be made out of Gwen Petryl. She is obviously frustrated because she doesn’t know what kind of egg that is supposed to be. She then should give the egg too her husband. (Mindorium is a magic metal, dwarven steel is a special kind of steel that is made by dwarves but even they don’t necessarily know how it’s done. Fernax heard about it but doesn’t know how it was made. And Gwen Petryl is a special stone that is also called fire of Efferd the god of the see and sailors. It glows in the dark.) All very strange and unusual materials.

Regarding the bow she could only say that there is a mighty spirit inside it that should be freed, but if the bow is destroyed it would come back to it’s master and the spirit would still stay trapped. She thinks that the spirit could free itself if it would believe it could really do so. Fernax then try’s to talk to the bow whenever possible.

The group then goes back to Lowangen with Jago’s mother who decided to follow that strange young man who is so adamant in that he is her son.

What happens in Lowangen will be told another day.

MORE ADVENTURE

They get to Lowangen without any further incident and bring Jago’s mother to the witches who take the women in in a kinda motherly way and perhaps found a possibility to give her back her memory.
The group sits together to make a battle plan, the idea is to lure out Jago’s uncle with a nice offer of something very good, made them met out of town in the abandoned fort they have already rested once in.
Miguel sets up an elaborate letter with some golden applications (also provided by Miguel due to his fine mechanic skill which he uses to repair his Ballestrina’s but definitely works with stuff like that too) with Amene helping with throwing one or another noble-sounding word in. They send the letter and wait (setting up quite the complicated way the back-letter would reach them, all for the cost of 1 Dukaten. It was something like “display the letter on this public place, then A will get them hand it over to B he holds it a bit and gets it snagged away from C… Till I think J would give them the letter.)

He agrees to meet at the fort in two days to talk about specifics. They excitedly go there and set up an ambush and out there strides a slightly overweight individual in screaming yellow colors that can Jago identify as not his uncle. But he knows the two other guys, especially the one guy who rammed his knee in a bad place. So Jago need to make a hard Intuition check to bring down the iron gate to the yellow guy and his small entourage.

I was a bit shocked by the idea, but yeah that’s not hard to do (you just had to pull a metal thing out of the mechanism holding the gate up) and the gate rattled down smashing the two guys into a pulp. Jago wanted to do this out of pure revenge and because he was sure that one of the guys did more unspeakable stuff to him, together with his uncle.

The garishly dressed yellow person got into a mental breakdown and asked if there shouldn’t help the two bloody pulps of flesh in the ground (I normally won’t do that much blood and gore but the situation seemed to warrant it.) They very slowly get out of him that he is a business partner of Jago’s uncle who does all sorts of unsavory and illegal stuff. (Stealing from a crypt of freshly deceased individuals and selling the things within, handling with drugs and poison, going around tolls… Really all kinds of small and big stuff.)

With him in tow they go to a temple of Praios (who is the god of the law, judges and has a strong stand against magic used for evil purposes and sometimes against magic in general, you have to ask the clergy to nail that down. Horas is actually, kinda, somewhat a grandson of Praios and got down on a griffin to the Horasreich to tell the humans in words they can understand, how the godly order shall work down in Aventurien, he got evicted king and while he lived it was pretty nice… The moment he died he got displaced by a demon-worshipper who the church of Praios backed because he was the king but for a time live was really good.) And with skillful wordplay they avoid telling them about the guardians of the yellowy dressed man without really lying.

Jago’s uncle got arrested, and Jago gets his house for safekeeping till they got all his charges and find out how much Jago should get from the unsavory money his uncle made, to at least repay him a bit for all the ordeals he had to endure. (The party never found out, but his uncle is proven guilty and spent the rest in his life working in the salt mines, He doesn’t get the house, it’s sold off to feed the greed of the higher-ups and Jago lives together with Reo.)

The party says goodbye too the friends they made in Lowangen and Miguel, Fernax and Amene go back to the Horasreich, not without making a stop in Gareth (pretty much the maintown in Aventurien) to look at the famous zoo there, go shopping and in the theatre and then after these necessities they go to an academy with the hopes that someone can tell them more about the strange demon-bow.
OOC talk

The player of Jago was ill for some time and we made some adventures without him, he joined later with another character who will got introduced when he joins the party.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

Well, by thinking about it, that was the first character that was ever kicked out… There were some that decided that the group is not to their taste and left, but I never kicked someone before. I worked it into the story but in a very lazy way. He got suddenly very ill and the characters left him in the care of a temple of Peraine. I thought about bringing him back as a pact-maker for Rahja’s demonic counterpart but ultimately decided not to do that, it seemed a bit too much.

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I've not yet had to punt someone; but I have had people leave the game (in a recent game; one of the players left because his wife had a baby and being a father was a full time task; and later his friend, who was in my "work game" ended up leaving; because he found a new job elsewhere). For both instances, I simply wrote them out as a part of the story. Because I've not had to punt a character, I always leave their characters alive (in the event said players ever want to come back to their same characters). But punting someone; they're probably not going to be welcome back; but yeah, just writing them out is the best. Doing anything else (especially making the rest of the party have to attack them) will put the party in a dilemma about attacking an old friend (in character), and may make you look very bitter if they're suddenly having to kill the character of someone they know was punted from the game.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

The following is a pretty cliché dungeon crawl, something I do avoid most of the time because my players don’t really enjoy that but I do, so I gave that to me as threat, not that the players would like to solve that in the manner I thought they would but that is because they are the players and use their creative freedom most of the time.

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Straight up dungeon crawls, as a "D&D" type mechanic has always been difficult for me. Because it's simply a lot of "The cave extends 60 feet. There appears to be a split up ahead."
"We move up 60 feet."
"OK. It splits left or right."
"We go left."
"OK. That goes for about 30 feet, before it dips down."
"We go down."

I just ... feel like it.... it's too constrained. Not a lot of choices for the players, other than going left/right, up/down, forward/backward, with walls on every side.

It works in video games (Legend of Grimrock, Wizardry, Realms of Arkania, etc.), but for an RPG, I struggle to make it interesting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

They get to the ruin, that is basically just some stairs that go into the ground, with some pillars flanking it. The pillars have writing on it that just gave sense to Miguele and Amene (basically written in Latin). With the charakters knowledge of scripture they found out that this is a vault from a mage academy and with Jago’s knowledge they found out that the academy was located in Lowangen… Some 400 years ago, the academy went bankrupt. (He overheard some mage academy scholars in a pub who talked about their ongoing history tests.)

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I love these kinds of details.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

Fernax walked before the statues and the other characters had no idea what to do. I gave Fernax a check to know that there is an age-old warrior thing that goes like this: “left, left, left, right, left…” and repeat. (OOC I was a bit confuddled that nobody on my group has ever heard of that before, that’s the reason I always include the possibility of the players just rolling a check when confronted with a puzzle if they don’t know what to do.)

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How have they never heard that march song before? Are they young?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

They open the cool mysterious door and found a little artifact vault with some gems, a Journal that descriped how you could activate every artifact and that the owner of the Journal was something like the assistant treasurer that made some artifacts and keep them safe with demons and the strange thing before the door that was a very unholy abomination of a human and a demon (yes these were very dark times.)

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Do you ever do print hand outs? Like for the journal?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

The artifacts included a sword “Defender” that was a magic sword that could once a year give you a magic protection field for 5 minutes and a lot of one-shot magic items. (If that sounds very unimpressive it’s actually not, magic items are rare in The Dark Eye and permanent magic weapons are really, really rare.) Miguele doesn’t want to take any item that was created from an individual that summoned demons without remorse and leaves the vault. No one else took anything (well Amene sneaked a gem inside one of her pockets.)
I was a bit… Well kinda angry and a bit sad that they did not took any of the cool stuff I created but in the end it was a very in character decision.

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Welcome to the world of DMing ... where your party does the unexpected.

The post is longer than I have thought… Still not at the part where I wanted to be but just post now and edit later. The adventure becomes very detailed because it’s a published adventure and there were a lot of moments that I felt where necessary.

ANSWERING

Dungeon crawl:
Yeah that does sound kinda boring, I see it more as a sequence of battles and riddles, not that much of going someway there and then more way in this direction or that direction. I also avoid traps most of the time or telegraph it in some way to avoid the (I search the entire room for traps) thing. (Like a disarmed trap or a very easy to see trap to get it in the players mind that this place may be trapped.) I also descripe it this way and try to take possibilities to not follow the way to a minimum but also try to give them the possibility too solve every puzzle or battle in a way they want. I also was weirdly proud about the chimera corpse, for some reasons it was the funniest thing too me.

Details:
Jago made it very easy to me to sprinkle in little details and stuff, but only in Lowangen and proximity, in that way it was kinda fitting that he left when the group got to other places.

March song:
I know right? They are not young, late 20s most of em but still didn’t knew it. They called me out that I knew it only because I was in the military for some months but was still sure that it was kinda just known if you see any military film (I saw a military film after that, but they only sang some self-made stuff about some panties.) Not one of them is a military buff so I really don’t know who is to blame here. (Well it was a good incense for me to allow them checks if they couldn’t solve riddles.)

Hand-outs and artifacts:
I like hand-outs, I would have give them some artifact cards (little cards with a probably bad scribble how the artifact looks and what it would do and how it is activated.) I would give that for every artifact they acquired… But they did not take any artifact. Seriously nothing (Still haven’t) It’s not that bad in The dark-eye because you don’t necesarily NEED artifacts but they help.

Other hand-outs I had given them were letters they found or a flag that hanged from the ceiling or something. (I took white printer-paper and aged it with teabags, ripped it too pieces, sometimes burn the sides if it fits and write on them with ink and pen. Very stylish.)
It shouldn’t had been unexpected but it’s really hard to give them artifacts or other cool stuff that I just want to give them if it doesn’t fit their idea. They will throw away some other very cool artifact later because of style reasons.

ADVENTURE

After some culture-time in Gareth they go to Kuslik, the main town in the Horasreich because they still want to get this bow analyzed and taken care of. Miguel got a list of some mage-academys there, because in his character background it was stated that his father very much dislikes mages and doesn’t miss an opportunity to drag them through the mud. (The list was full of misconceptions but it showed at least that the Institute of Arcane Analysis would probably be the best way to go. Though the director of the academy appaerently never sleeps and if you want to understand what they say you have to pay. Because not even other mages don’t understand what these guys are talking about, because they always use very advanced words to describe any magical or nonmagical effect.)

On their way to Kuslik, they have to make a bit slower on the carriage and Amene sees a little carnivorous bird and a mangled ripped up rat fight one another of the corpse of a blindworm. The battle is rudely interrupted by a giant foot that squashed the animals. In shock Amene looks up and sees a charcoal burner, haven’t seen the struggle under him and continue on his way. He looks at Amene and he has burning coals instead of eyes. She blinks and the vision fades. (She does tell the rest of the party. Finally!) Though they can’t make any sense of that right now.

They arrive at the academy without any incident and get to a nice maga who states that they can either let the bow checked up for one Dukate or pay 5 Dukaten to let it analyze even further in case it really is magical. They pay 5, Fernax is allowed to watch the bow the whole time, while Amene and Miguel go to the magic theatre to have some fun there. The next day they found out that the bow is infact magical (wohoo) and asked if they want to know more, with they answer yes, they’re patience already wearing thin. The next day they talk with Rhayodan de Porcupino, one of the leaders of the guild, he has deep black rings under his eyes and speaks in a slow pattern, intercepted with short-bursts of manic speech, he is suffering from a strange sleeping-sickness that doesn’t allow him to sleep. The only way he can sleep is with a special alchemic drug (basically a sleeping poison or a sleeping elixir.)

He tells them a lot in quite complicated terms. (Yes, yes the bow is made out of Os draconis, but that isn’t responsible for the astral effects that it can occur with the help of a willing participant, the astral construct seems to be heptaspherical but curiously it’s very ordered, the effect seem to come from the magister ventus inside of it, I guess you want to sell it?) They can slowly find out that the bow is made from frozen dragon bones, but the magic effect comes from an elemental master of wind that is trapped inside the bow. Surprisingly they don’t want to sell it, instead want to free the trapped being themselves. That would be pretty hard to do, but the leader is willing to analyze the bow with the two other leaders of the academy so they can find everything out that this bow is magically capable off if they would be willing to do something for the guild. (to explain the analysis further there are basically two spells where you can analyze magic items. One, the Oculus, tells you if the item is magical and if you’re good ad it gives you some more information, like if a spell is centered on a persons head, or if the spell is of demonic origin. The other one the Analys Arcane structure spell will definitely tell you what origin a spell or artifact has, like if it’s created from witches, or an old saurian spell or from a guild mage. It can also tell you how to activate an artifact if your good enough “the magic ring of charisma only activates if worn a whole day beforehand and if you say Shangrila while turning it on your finger.” That already is dubious for a player character to get if you’re not an analyzing specialist but you can get even more information if you can cast the spell even better, like who exactly made the artifact or cast a spell because they leave a kind of arcane signature. The best way to destroy an artifact or you could potentially learn something that even the creator of the artifact didn’t know “It was created when boron’s scales where in the hand of the giants” (It’s a stellar constellation.) So an in depth analysis would be very beneficial. They agree but only on the terms that they will be compensated for their spendings. Of course then they followed with meticulous bookkepping with everything they ever spend down to the last Kreuzer (the smallest possible coins, 10 Kreuzer is one Heller, 10 Heller is 1 Silver, 10 Silver is one Dukate and one Horasdor is 2 Dukaten, Horasdor are mostly used in trades with large amounts of wares. I didn’t try to discourage that, because they had fun, it just had no effect whatsoever because they did get compensated by the good old standard reward of 50 Dukaten and not a Kreuzer more.

They found out that their mission is to find out what happened to a researcher in Kuslik (Ludovigo is his name), the guild expected some findings from him that should have been delivered yesterday. And of course it’s not as simple as that he just oversleeped.

They find a nice little house in a good part of Kuslik and knock on the door, which just swings open. They go into the house into a nice atelier that was obviously rummaged through. They search through the room (I dislike searching with this group. if I describe a room, a simple “I search the room” is in my opinion just enough. Not for them, they want to say “I search the chimney” and don’t want to accept that they found something on the way to the chimney because it has grasped their attention. If there would be something under the bed and someone would have found it but nobody said “I search under the bed” they wouldn’t like it. I think this is teasing “No you don’t saw it, you didn’t say that you look up” but they actually want that and I’m not mean enough to use it against them) thankfully they split up without incidence and search through stuff. They found a portrait of someone that vaguely looked familiar, but they could not pinpoint exactly from where. They also found little pieces of paper with writing on them (aged like I descriped above) some of them ripped, in the tiles between two wooden planks, behind a portrait and under painting material.

Part of the treasure, giant ruby with the name Cyclops fire

Follow trail, some colubrid worshipping individuals want to get away from the noble Horas, need more details.

In the year bosparans fall somebode stole a treasure from the temple of Hesinde. (Hesinde, as mentioned before is the goddess of intelligence and magic. Her holy animal is the snake.)

They also found, behind the chimney, a little book with a lot of information in it. (I didn’t make a whole book, but I wrote down some pages and the information that the adventure gave me and added some more, I donated every unimportant page with: the weather today is… Thankfully the group catched that.)

The information within is that Ludovigo has met a strange person who gave him some documents that should led him to a great treasure of wisdom. The person also gave him a strange amulet, that the group does not found anywhere in the house. He found a trail that the Hesinde-temple were robbed before it was burnt down in the annuals of history and that “we should met where Hela lay down.” Some old pages mentioned “the black town and the hidden temple.” They were also mentions of places where he met the stranger, that he didn’t came to their last meeting and that he had a strange accent.

The group want to gather their thoughts for a moment, leave the house and are stopped by a woman that is the nosy and suspicious neighbor of Ludovigo. Miguele, though is a smooth talker and can actually get some information out of the woman, namely that Ludovigo met a nice looking man some days prior, that had nice sun-kissed skin a scar that looked like a circle and wore interesting strung sandals. “If I would habe been 20 years younger…” (common footwear in the cyclops isles, a fact that Amene knows.)

They decide to investigate further, first at the statue of the chicken thief. (An amusing story that is a common children story in the Horasreich. A thief was stealing some chickens, but the rooster was too loud and the thief gout caught) the statue depicts someone who has a sack over his shoulder and out of it is the head of a rooster who is crowing. They search the beak of the rooster but have no luck.

Without much hope they go to the nearby tavern and ask around and actually found out that Ludovigo was here and that he met a sailor with whom he got thrown out. They also conclude that it must be a different person than his strange benefactor because the sailor didn’t look nice. (Some conclusions… I mean… There are correct, but still…)

They go to the ship the sailor is affiliated with (after giving the harbor mistress some money) but the sailors there seem to don’t know anything about Ludovigo (the hunt is on now…)

They try their luck in the great library of Kuslik and try to found something out about past Hesinde temples. (it’s a very great library with literal thousands of books.) They met a young acolute of Hesinde there with the name of Xerane Zeel who can help them find some materials, but gets called out by a small and fat anointed that she should not just serve some people and only serve Hesinde she mumbles “He has the blood of Grolms in his veins.” (Grolms are small, fat, hairy creatures that like to strew around misery.) She tells them that they should wait why she searches around but when she comes back she could not find anything. She is deeply sorry and tells them that if she finds anything they would be contacted. “I’m sure there were some books…” The group then makes their way to a nice inn, but they hear dangerous rumbling behind them…

It’s a carriage that runs toward them. Thankfully they could all avoid getting overrun and Fernax even manages to jump at the carriage and get the coachman to stop. (When you’re at the dragon slayer academy you learn to be especially mobile.) The coachman is totally nervous and after some pressure he tells them that someone hired him to scare the party by running towards them with a carriage. He was given 5 Dukaten to do that, the heroes relieved him of the money and deliver him to his actual breadgiver (the major of Kuslik, Sir Pechstein!) and get told that he will have a lot of latrine duty to do. (I was a bit surprised that this was enough for the group but it will not be the last time they have something to do with Sir Pechstein.)

Sir Pechstein also gives the party an invitation to a costume party he does not want to go too. The party is relatively pleased with themselves and uses their own carriage too go around. They sleep for a day and try to get more research done in the library. They get to some different places that all honor Hesinde in a different way.

The serpentarium where there is a 45 feet long snake that some think it may be the animal prince of all snakes (animal kings are prominent in The Dark Eye lore. They are especially grant and wonderful animals and should even be able to speak. This snake is just big.)

The hall of the flaming word, where you can give speeches that others may find heretic. (fire)

The hall of harmonie, where they are concerts and a little burbling fountain. (water)

They found the hall of writing, that is full of drawn icicles. (ice)

The hall of portraits, that has a lot of exotic plants. (living earth)

The hall of singing that is just a big room with a great acustic. (wind)

And the hall of statues that is stock full of statues and has a nice mosaic that you can’t see because the hall is full of stuff. (stone and gems)

(Yes this is a hint, each of the six elements presented here correspond with a hesindian virtue.)

They go to eat in a nice restaurant and a bard decides to humour them, sing them a song or two and after they ate, he gives them one of his “own special brew.” Some minutes after they all drank the bard says something like “well I have to take care of my little bard” and goes out. Then they all get wobbly vision. (I was so surprised that they all drank…) They quickly call for help and luckily there was a priest of Peraine outside the restaurant who can quickly help them to not get severely poison damage or even die. (Yes that was actually in the adventure, not me being merciful, the scenes should make them know that they are hunted.)

They are totally pissed and Miguele needs to vent and drives his carriage fast through the town… And of course in a bad moment there steps a woman and the bodyguard out into the street. Miguele stops his horses, the carriage nearly topples over, but neither the woman nor they guardians are hit. But his horse that tends to bite in stressful situations bites in her hand.

They see the woman better know, noble dress with wonderful lace, noble paleness, blood running over her white glove… her guardians have on their shields a green fist on silver (the bearing of a noble house…)
And surprising for everyone Miguel jumps from his carriage (after getting sure that his horses are standing still) and throws himself on the ground apologizing profously and promising that he will do everything he can to make amends.

Well first she wants to get to the temple of Peraine so that her hand will not bear a scar as long as she lives. Amene wants to make another glove for her, without her demanding it. After she gets patched up the group finds out who she is.

Delhena Visterdi from Ankram (who also is the curator of castle Ankram) is a high-ranking noble (definitely higher then Miguele) who is not pleased and that makes Miguele very scared (as already mentioned social standing in the Horasreich is very important.) She wants the mask of a dragon before going to a costume party (yes the same they got an invitation from Sir Pechstein from.)

They are all totally into making her a mask and instead of making further investigations they all use all their time and ressources into making her the best mask possible. With Fernax help they make it very real-looking and he also makes little scales they can adorn the mask with. Amene makes the general mask and Miguel installs some hinges so that everyone the person with the mask talks, the masks moves with the movement of the jaw. (It’s very cool.)

They get themselves very simple masks and Delhena is actually so pleased with her mask that all her animosity is gone and even invites them to her castle should they be in the vicinity. She shamelessly uses Miguele’s carriage and after giving her a ride, the group let the carriage go around the block and get in the party themselves (just to party.)

They are a lot of strange costumes there, a bigfoot, a scaled human, two times the same mighty sorcerer (who look daggers at one another), a big lady with cheap giant butterfly wings, etc… They go around the party and hear some stuff.

“When you eat with demons you need a long spoon.”

“Did you hear that Magus Alkusta did make his basilisk task? And at such a young age!”

“I tried to get rid of them but failed.” “’The master will not be pleased.”

“They are still not afraid.” “We should ask the master for advice.”

The last two of course make them curios. They follow the people who said these things and after some time they go out. The group follows pretty silently and find out that they go to the local borons meadow (it’s a graveyard) where the masked people go down a crypt. They decide to go into the crypt but then want to wait… And hear that there are more people going down, they don’t really have a way to hide themselves, so they press on the wall and hope for the be… A wall appears in front of them. That was Amene who made the illusion of a wall appear before them (she is a very capable illusionist appaerently, called a charlatan. Basically an entertainment mage who is very good at illusions. Her being a tailor is just what she does as a serious job.)

They hear more people going down, Miguele can’t help himself and he puts his face through the illusionary wall and sees some rough looking thug’s going deeper into the crypt following the masked fellows. The group is not sure what to do now but Miguele decides that the thugs shouldn’t get those people.

They go down too and hear screaming “For the promised one!” (I don’t know how to translate this… In original it’s “Der Verheißene” I didn’t came up with anything better) and see the thugs attack 6 masked persons with sword and crossbow. (They managed to ambush the people that should have ambushed them.) They get them down fast thanks to an effective surprise round and after that they found out that these 6 people are known as the illuminated of Kuslik a group that has a strong connection to Hesinde and are in contact with another person who shares their wisdom with them. This person asked the illuminated too attack our heroes. (The anointed in the temple who talked smack about them was part of that. He hired the bard who poisoned them.) The thugs have purple armbands and one of them has a little piece of paper on them:

“Glory to the promised one! The illuminated will gather at the known place. Go with all haste! Commando Ivash will go to the beak and hack the head of the snake! Glory to the promised one! Burn this message immediately after reading!”

Amene knows that the beak is a tavern in Kuslik. They immediately rush there (no time to get the carriage) burst the door open ask the surprised tavern keeper where the rooms are and he surprisingly points there. Fernax knocks the door out of his hinges and see a 30 year-old man that looks really surprised to see them. One wall of the room gets knocked down and two other thugs get there and shoot at the man who goes down, the party gets the thugs (the tavern keeper actually helps) but the man is down. The party searches through the room (the tavern keeper is not happy that someone died on his ground but after the party promises to take care of everything and bribe him he is pacified.) They found a riddle, an amulet that shows two snakes who seem to eat one another around a big obsidian AND a piece of literature that has the name Teremon on it, that points to the isle Teremon who is not that hard to reach via ship. They also found a little booklet where they found out that the person who got killed is named Midur, that he is a member of a mystic organization who is known as the conservators and that supposedly he killed Ludovigo because… They don’t found out why exactly but it could be because he was founding clues about the mystic group Midur was a member of.

They kinda have found out what happened to Ludovigo and go back to the mage academy where they are tell about their findings. Mister sleepy implores them too please try to find out what exactly this conservators are about which they agree on if they get some more help. Because I found this was a reasonable request he gave them a ring, they can use to summon a wind elemental.
They then make their way to Teremon. (I will try to explain the riddle in the next post but it’s not easy…)

The piece of literature reads:

In the light of the sinking sun the shadows of the dead town seem to be filled with unholy live. The massive lids of the sarcophagi seem to move, dark creatures get out of them and rush to the casual observer. Then, when praios eye disappears completely, all the shadows vanish too. Where are they? Do they dance around the mortal visitor of this abandoned place? Silence lies about the ruins, the stumps of pillars, the broken walls, the statues of nameless dead and the memorial tablet that are all that remain of past glory days. No one remembers the people of Palakar, it’s been to long that they’re voices have giving live to the destroyed ruins, no trader uses the road to Teremon anymore, to find glistening gold, sparkling jewels and exotic spices for the glorious, rich and devastated temple. Death strides also in the theatre, it lies in the arms of two magma currents, embraced by them like a lover. The only jewelry the town has left is the black poppy that only grows here, a dark plant for a sad place.

Written by Rahjamanda, highest anointed of Rahja to the temple of Teremon. (A very solemn piece of literature for an anointed of the goddess of love.)

The riddle is a six sided circle, on every part of the circle there is a sentence.

Over the picture, on the lonely tree.

The wrong way, straight to the fire.

Look through the ravens eyes, in the house of writing.

Towards the sky, the right path.

Along the cliff, where Hela lies.

Go behind the water, where the left path leads.

They get to Teremon via ship (the academy pays for the ride) Miguele is at the tip of the ship when they can see Teremon and looks at the isle and says. “Ah, the Isle of Cyclops. Home of exotic spices, great fisherman and land of free chests. You know, we should do it like the locals.” He rips his shirt away from his body and looks at Amene expecting her to do the same. (Yes common clothing in the Cyclops isles involve bare chests, for men and women alike. Most cyclopians take on the common clothing of the land they go into.) Amene laughs a bit about that quip and does it too, making the sailor’s nearly crash the ship. Fernax was not interested in that, because he had to give up his armor for that. (I gave both players who freed their chests a slight modifier for their social interactions with the cyclopians.)

They’re first modus operandi is eating some of the local cuisine and hearing and old scary story about a temple of the nameless god, where bad children got abducted too if there were out in the night. But some adventurers raided that and threw out the cultists. They were weary about that because they had some run-ins with cultists in Kuslik and ask some locals where this temple might be. They get directions but before they go there, they first wanted to make their way to the Hesindian temple in Teremon. They get greeted by an old anointed and see a hesindian statue that depicts the goddess giving the humans the gift of reading and writing having a closed of scroll on the left and a writing feather on her right hand. They find a slight indeption at the bottom of the statue and after giving a short prayer and then feigning being in deep meditation till the old anointed got away, they put the amulet they found in the indeption and give it a whirl.

There is a slight *click* from the scroll and they can open it and read:

The way to wisdom is not circle nor polygon.
Search in the town where fire and stone, beat water and living earth.
First Ice, then air, then fire.
But no element speaks without his counter.

They now have all the necessary elements to find their quarry.

But first they want to see if there is still something to that temple of the nameless god. They travel on foot for half a day and reach Palakar but go beyond that and when Praios eye meets the sea they arrive at some destroyed ruins. They found a lot of rubble and one wall that stands a lonely watch. The grass that grows here is clinging to the ground and looks sickly, different then the other flora at the cyclops isle.

They don’t really find anything till Fernax takes a short rest on a stone befitting for him and sees some footprints that go away from the ruins… He follows them and they seem to end at some bushes that Fernax parts and he sees an old hatch that is suspiciously free of rust. Fernax calls the others over and Fernax is able to open the hatch (Miguel could break a nail and Amene’s strong suit is not her strength.)
Before going down in total darkness they bind a robe on a burning bulls-eye lantern to let that go into the darkness first. (There is a ladder but they don’t want to fall down several feet if the ladder is damaged too heavily.) From above they see a small enclosed room so they all go down that ladder, Fernax first.

Down there they find a complex with some sleeping rooms, a torture chamber (that has been recently used…) And two people who are totally afraid that they will now finally be killed. They decide to leave them here for the moment, because the prisoners think they are cultists too. The group then finds a big chamber with around 4 cultist who pray at a gruesome altar. The twelve gods are present, but they are all bound by thick strands to an amalgamation of a creature who seems to be part giant, part humanoid and part demon with lots of arms, eyes and other more difficult to identify body parts worked in (some of that stuff seems to have come from living things instead of worked out of stone.) In the midst of the altar is a dead person that has an arm inside his womb, at the end of the arm is a mouth sewed on and in the mouth is a pretty big eye (definitely too big to be a human eye.)
The valiant heroes scuttle away to live and fight another day… No they just backed down a notch to maybe attack the cult-room from two angels. They do find a secret door but are pretty sure it can only be opened from the inside. But with Miguele’s knowledge in mechanics he can actually open the door from the outside. They find a nice bedroom with a constructed wooden bed (unlike the sleeping quarters they found before, who just had some organized straw) and satin for the other bed stuff. In the room is also a wooden desk with some half-written letters with just strange writing on them. (The moon bleeds green when the children cry for copper) (Find the teeth that are not hidden from your sight) and some more stuff. (They can’t decode any of the messages, it would be possible but only if there were deep in the cult of the nameless… And then it may be even too late for them.) Miguel searches the desk a bit more thoroughly and he disarms the trap that protects one compartment. And because he is an intelligent individual he attaches the trap to the secret door. (It’s a needle with some kind of poison on it. They can’t discern what kind of poison.) Amene can’t help herself and strokes the satin… That actually feels not like satin but has a spell put on it, so that it feels like skin.

They make themselves ready and let Fernax storm from the first entrance they found and Miguel and Amene attacked from the room of the Cult-leader. They quickly dispatch the four cultists, Fernax hacks the bed and bed-stuff apart and they free the two prisoners that actually calmed down after hearing the dying screams of the cultists.
They bring the two prisoners outside and rest and then the next day bring them to Teremon and finally decide to do stuff with the riddle they found.
They cut the six sided circle so they can rearrange the writing with the writing on the parts and arrange it in a fitting fashion so the total riddle reads.

Look through the ravens eye in the house of writing (because writing is associated with the element of ice) Over the picture on the lonely tree (element of living earth, that is the counterpart of ice.)

Towards the sky (element of air) the right path where Hela (there is an old statue of Hela-horas that represents earth, the counterpart of air) lies.

The wrong way straight to the fire, Go behind the water where the left path leads. (should be obvious.)

They find the house of writing in Palakar soon enough. Most buildings are destroyed and buried by cold magma but the house of writing and a look-though on the highest floor in form of a raven still exists. They found the mentioned tree fast enough and go there.

Instead of going right (that would just lead them nowhere.) They go left found a way behind a waterfall and the hammering of water is interrupted by the hammering of… Someone. They found a big cyclops who hammers at a Pailos (a spear-like traditional cyclop weapon, they are also used by other individuals but of course cut down so the size still fits. Fernax spear-like weapon is also a Pailos) with his bare fists! The glowing metal doesn’t seem to hurt him, but the thing that is missing from him is his eye, there is just a big crusted over hole there. He also wears an amulet that looks like he just took some cooled of lava and hanged it around his neck. They talk to him a bit, he doesn’t slow down his work and he is not that much surprised to hear them.

They basically found out that he doesn’t feel comfortable with the other Cyclopses (Cyclopy?) not because they threw him out for being blind, just because he doesn’t felt that well. He describes the way to the other Cyclopy but it would involve going through lava, if they go further they should find a way to the other Cyclopy and some strange humans where they should not get burned. Miguele kinda wants to know why he lost his eye but is not brave enough to ask straight out.

The typical cyclops is at least double the height of a normal human, has a lot of muscles on his body and one eye above their noise.
They found a closed up door and a large stone ring that inside himself has smaller and smaller stone rings that you can move individually. (Kinda like this one Indiana Jones puzzle.) On the individual stone rings there are different stones. They can identify the holy stones to Hesinde, Firun and Kor. The riddle was: look up and Hesinde will show you the way. (Remember that they are in a cave.) They look up and don’t have the slightest idea how to solve this. So Miguel try’d to get his ear on the mechanism and move the individual places of the stone rings to hear if some mechanism clicked in (I allowed that because they had no other ideas. The answer was that they should, with the holy stones of Hesinde lay out the star sign of Hesinde, a snake. The players generally know enough about the world that they know that every god has certain stones, animals, concepts and star signs associated to them, but because it was inside a cave the riddle really stumped them.)

They open the door and follow the way of the cave, they arrive at a bridge and at the other side of the bridge there seems to be a strange kind of golem. It’s an metallic oven above two strong metallic legs and one sword and one hammer arm. Fernax goes over the bridge and the golem holds up his sword arm aggressively towards him. He holds up the amulet they found and the golem lets his arm sink. He goes over the bridge and throws the amulet to the next person (not without binding a rope to the amulet so it doesn’t get lost.) And they all got past the golem. (And because Amene is so curious she opens the little hatch on the oven and sees a little flaming man inside the oven that powers the golem. He closes the lid and calls Amene names like “coldfeet” and “annoying little spark”)

They found a small tunnel that ends in a room with a closed door and four levers. WITHOUT GOING INTO THE ROOM they got to move the levers with their ranged weapons or just stones that lie around. (The door behind them would have closed and the bad bad mechanism would have activated to set the room on fire if they had used the wrong lever that could be identified because it’s the most used one. But they didn’t go into the room, so it didn’t catch on fire when moving the wrong lever but the door still got up when they activated the right lever.)

They got into a huge living cave with around 5 Cyclopy, and a big fire in the middle, one of them is a very old one and two are women. That is the moment that Miguel can, with his own eyes, tell that the saying about Cyclopy about (they don’t only have one eye if you know what I mean.) is false. (I gave them a small sheet with information about the Cyclops isle and Cyclopy that they could have heard, that information was one of that.)
The Cyclopy are welcoming them and tell them that the other humans have their own cave complex that begins right here. (pointing to a tunnel.) They finally find the conservators and… They are not impressed. They are a group of old farts (Miguele’s words not mine) no one younger than 60 godcycles (years) that hoard wisdom, books and other stuff that may one day be important enough to get finally revealed. They had an argument that the times may be now (they’re information about the outside world is very limited but they find out some things) and to find out if that is true they leaved some breadcrumbs of information BUT also included some danger because whoever Hesinde had chosen would survive that. They get into an internal debate if maybe our “heroes” are these chosen ones while the group looks over some stuff the conservators have hoarded. That include an alchemical recipe, a strange scaly axe, a crystal skull, an erotic book (with full illustrations), a lot of non-erotic books, stone-plates with undiscernible writing on it, a statue of Hesinde, etc. etc.

Our heroes wander a bit around the cave system to decide what to do with the situation as they find themselves on a ledge where they can see the cyclopy from before. The very old cyclops goes to the flame in the middle of the cave and shoves one hand into it. The old cyclops begins to fade, first the arm in the fire seems to disappear and thenhis shoulder gets more translucent till the whole cyclops is gone. From deeper inside the caves they’re come two other cyclopy one man and one women with a little cyclops child (as big as Amene) that goes toward the flame who has gone trough a slight but still noticeable color change. Then they hear screaming “for the promised one!” some bolts came flying, one cyclops get severely hit and they see a lot of people storming the cave and one eyeless cyclops with a still redhot pailos in his hands guarding the rear (yes it’s the one they talked with before.)
The battle is on. Miguele stands on the ledge and fires with one of the crossbows they get from the cultists before (way better range than his short-range ballestrina’s) Fernax get’s down with a robe and Amene… Goes to the vault of the conservators and wants to loot.

Miguele get’s an anointed of the nameless god in the middle of bringing down a wonder of his god interrupting him. When Fernax got down he goes to one of the cyclops and says “throw me at him!” and points to the eyeless cyclops. The one he asked looks at him with this “are you totally crazy should I really do this?” look and Fernax shoots him a “yeah” look back.

He gets thrown, hits the blind Cyclops brutally in the shoulder and severs the binding that hold the amulet on him (without really aiming for it, I rolled a chance roll.) It goes away and he flails around wildly, crushing the anointed by stomping on him (the amulet was a gift of the nameless god that gave him limited “sight” now that this was away he wracked havoc on his buddies.) The rest is basic cleanup… Till the earth starts rumbling… Seems that on of the conservators activated a self-destruction mechanism that dumped massive amounts of something into the still active Vulcan so it erupts that the intelligence gathered will not fall into the wrong hands. Miguele helps Amene with the looting while Fernax falls to the ground to safety! (He reduced the damage a bit by getting a good acrobatics check but he suffered a lot of damage, some broken bones and a lot of grinding against ground. I know rule of cool and all but you really should let yourself throw around.)

Amene and Miguele jump over some appearing rifts, (with a book getting lost) get to the cyclops cave and get carried out by them. (They run out too, because they can survive the fire but not tons and tons of rocks on them.)
They can see the erupting Vulcan from the outside the cyclopy carried them too. They get back to Teremon with the help of the gentle giants and one promises Fernax to give him a real Pailos sometimes.
After tending their wounds (mostly Fernax’s) Amene and Miguel seduce a captain to get a free ride back to Kuslik.

And that’s where we have to end because I really didn’t remember this adventure being so long… We managed to do that in two sessions what I thought was really strange but being one less player really cut down the time.

Phew. Long read. Longer than I originally saw - assuming you did an edit to prevent Moderator wrath around here!
(Sometimes I wish there was more clarity in the rules - for example why some threads can be self bumped but others can't? I think it'd be a cool idea if folks used the "Journal" pre-cursor icon thing - that it could be self bumped, because it's literally a journal). But I digress, that's not what we're here to talk about...

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

ADVENTURE
After some culture-time in Gareth they go to Kuslik, the main town in the Horasreich because they still want to get this bow analyzed and taken care of. Miguel got a list of some mage-academys there, because in his character background it was stated that his father very much dislikes mages and doesn’t miss an opportunity to drag them through the mud. (The list was full of misconceptions but it showed at least that the Institute of Arcane Analysis would probably be the best way to go. Though the director of the academy appaerently never sleeps and if you want to understand what they say you have to pay. Because not even other mages don’t understand what these guys are talking about, because they always use very advanced words to describe any magical or nonmagical effect.)

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Is this all canon stuff from the books? I have the English version ("The Dark Eye") which has some differences from the German version... I've admittedly not ever finished reading the Dark RPG books.

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

On their way to Kuslik, they have to make a bit slower on the carriage and Amene sees a little carnivorous bird and a mangled ripped up rat fight one another of the corpse of a blindworm. The battle is rudely interrupted by a giant foot that squashed the animals. In shock Amene looks up and sees a charcoal burner, haven’t seen the struggle under him and continue on his way. He looks at Amene and he has burning coals instead of eyes. She blinks and the vision fades. (She does tell the rest of the party. Finally!) Though they can’t make any sense of that right now.

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So was even the carnivorous bird bit real - or all part of the vision?

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

They arrive at the academy without any incident and get to a nice maga who states that they can either let the bow checked up for one Dukate or pay 5 Dukaten to let it analyze even further in case it really is magical. They pay 5, Fernax is allowed to watch the bow the whole time, while Amene and Miguel go to the magic theatre to have some fun there.

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I can't remember if you mentioned this in a previous post - but if anyone else who isn't familiar with The Dark Eye - could probably use a translation of the coin (towards D&D equivalents)

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

They are a lot of strange costumes there, a bigfoot, a scaled human, two times the same mighty sorcerer (who look daggers at one another), a big lady with cheap giant butterfly wings, etc… They go around the party and hear some stuff.
“When you eat with demons you need a long spoon.”
“Did you hear that Magus Alkusta did make his basilisk task? And at such a young age!”
“I tried to get rid of them but failed.” “’The master will not be pleased.”
“They are still not afraid.” “We should ask the master for advice.”

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The mysterious "The Master" that creeps into every campaign! :D

[QUOTE=Alhallor;24204038]

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

The riddle is a six sided circle, on every part of the circle there is a sentence.
Over the picture, on the lonely tree.
The wrong way, straight to the fire.
Look through the ravens eyes, in the house of writing.
Towards the sky, the right path.
Along the cliff, where Hela lies.
Go behind the water, where the left path leads.

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I do love a good riddle... When I am familiar with the world and can make sense of it. :D

(SNIP)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alhallor

And that’s where we have to end because I really didn’t remember this adventure being so long… We managed to do that in two sessions what I thought was really strange but being one less player really cut down the time.

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Good, if long, read.

OOC talk

Yes I did an edit mostly because I wanted to get to a satisfying end.

ANSWERS

CANON

What exactly do you mean? The zoo in Gareth is definitely canon, the different mage academy’s in the Horasreich also definitely exist, there are also some more than in most lands because the Horasreich is technologically and magically very much the biggest player in Aventurien. The Institute of Arcance Analysis is also definitely canon and every mage who wants to train in Metamagic goes there. That necesarrily comes with a lot of technobabble if you want to explain ANYTHING because all the other people who you interact with on a daily basis also use the advanced technobabble.

Miguele’s father just heard some stuff and blow it out of proportion because he doesn’t like mages. The academy also doesn’t have one leader but instead three, one of every “color” of mages, to understand magic better and in effect alter it for more beneficial magics. The sleep-depriven one is also the most well known because he is from the grey philosophy and most of them are more people-oriented than white and black. And yes sadly he has that affliction where he cannot sleep without the help of drugs… More fodder for miguele’s father too badmouth him. Sadly I can’t say much about the translation… But a lot of detailed information is hidden in even more books like the ones that are specifically tailored to a special region or the magic book or the fighting book or…

VISION

Nothing about the vision was real and because we passed the point I can actually tell you what the vision meant (yeah!) The carrion bird represented the party (I don’t know anymore why I choose the bird but I had a reason at the time.) The rat were the nameless cultists (Because his “holy” animal is the rat) that fought them along the way but especially in the vulcan. The blindworm was supposed to be the books and stuff that the extreme hesindian followers (the conservators) horded (because Hesinde’s holy animal is a snake but it’s never really mentioned what kind of snake) and the charcoal burner was supposed the be a representation on Ingerimm the god of fire, smithing and vulcans… Also lava and magma and main deity of the dwarves who believe he forged them. The whole vision was a casual reminder that if they took to long in running away they could get killed… Of course I don’t know if this really came across as that I think I will ask the players.

COINAGE

This… Is actually very hard… They’re is of course an economy in the Dark Eye but translating that is kinda hard because you can’t buy most magic items… What D&D has an abundance of and is therefore a nice indicator what the spent money actually means. Well I try to give some examples what some stuff costs and hope that this helps.

Water in a tavern = 2 Kreuzer

An ordinary meal = 3 Heller / with watered down wine = 5 Heller

Normal sword = 150 silver

Cost of living for a month in luxury (servants, going to the theater, exquisite meals) = 50 Dukaten+

Room in a inn: Commoner room with other guests = 3 Heller, Room with four beds = 8 Heller, Single room = 1 Silver 5 Heller

Suite (with room service) = 5 silver+

Healing potion (that was checked before and you know it heals at least 10 HP) = 20 Dukaten

MAGIC ITEM

A hat that three times increases your magic resistance = 3000 Dukaten (After three times it needs to be recharged that includes MORE ADDITIONAL COSTS!)
Did I mention permanent magical items are expensive? Oh and a fun one.

MAGIC TELEPORTATION STAFF

A failed magical teleportation staff that can teleport you 10 times. (After that it doesn’t work anymore.) It transforms yourself in a magical electrical bolt, you fly at the destination that you pointed at, transform back and all your equipment and clothing is missing: Did go away for 300 Dukaten at an auction.
Both the hat and the staff are examples of artifacts that exists in canon. 5th edition made magic items more common and watered down the costs immensely but we are still playing 4th.

THE MASTER

The master was very important. I was also very anxious about this part because in the campaign beforehand where I was a player there was also a social gathering of sorts and the only reason we had to apply there was that the plot demanded it. I cut the time there relatively short, they had some personal encounters (the lady with the butterfly wings wanted to flirt with Fernax and he had some problems getting her of him because she found his grumbling avoidance just too cute. Someone spoke to Miguele that he wanted to get with him in the bushes but he rebuffed him pretty easily.) But ultimately it was rather short because I didn’t wanted to linger there too long.

RIDDLE

The one with the six-sided circle was basically a paper chase with the environment with a hesindian twist, that was okay. The one with the rings and the stones totally stumped them but they passed all the others with flying colors. I really have some problems with them measuring how they will solve riddles and what is an appropriate brain twister.

ENDING

And there is also the aftermath of that adventure! All in all there were 3 relatively high-action sessions for this adventure. Including the aftermath and the hints of more adventures to come, what I’ll going to present now.

ADVENTURE

Fernax was down for the count because he was on a ship (And he was afraid of water so they used the tactic of making him drunk and carted him to the ship and let him sleep of his drunkenness.) But suddenly the ship stops. People are screaming and there is a lot going on. Miguele and Amene go out of their cabins to see what the trouble is all about and they see that the ship is frozen in place and they see a huge man, made totally out of ice, with black snow resting on his shoulders go from an isle directly to their ship on a bridge of frozen ice. Amene even spots behind the corrupted ice elemental a man in ragged clothing that seems to direct the monstrosity. Miguele shots the thing but the bullet just burrows itself into the giant block of ice and the elemental doesn’t even seems to notice. He uses the ring from the mage and a small windy looking man appeared who said. “Hey boss, what do you… Oh…” And looks at the ice elemental.

Miguele screams at him to do something and the small wind elemental is clever enough to break the ice and winding the ship forward. While he breaks the ice the crew throws every lamp and oil they have at the ice the elemental is standing on and setting that on fire. He breaks in, tries to emerge but gets rammed by a big whale, cracks forming on his body and he gets tackled by the whale and some dolphins who drive the thing down. The summoner is nowhere to be seen.

The captain is grief-stricken and explains to the group that this really never happened before and he has to repair his ship and he says that he is sorry… And the group feels really bad, because that was probably about the bow they are still carrying around that was most likely be craft by the arch-demon of ice and cruel-hunting.

First things first, they go to the mage-academy and all three guild-leaders analyze the damn thing, coming to the conclusion that it was likely crafted by a guild mage who had years and years of experience with deamonology and entrapped a mighty spirit there. Communing with the spirit would most likely be possible via an augmented communication spell (OOC: I pulled the spell out of my fingers, there are spells where you can “talk” with persons who are sleeping and appearing in their dreams. But that was basically a modified summoning spell that doesn’t pull the creature out of the bow, what would have likely not have worked, but instead pulled the characters in the bow, put not trapping them there. Hopefully.)

They talk with that for a bit but decide to talk with the mighty wind spirit, despite the possible risks involved in doing that. They appear on a flat snowy plane, don’t feeling any cold at all (at the moment.) And in irregular intervals there are appearing some spears of light that seemed to block a path. A voice appears that seems to come everytime from another row of light spears. The voice is very… Well fatalistic. “Hello master, are you here to give me more false hope today?” “We are not your master we have actually come to free you.” “Of course you have, master, of course, like the time you posed as my sister, yes? Very entertaining, master, yes. I know it’s the first time that you appear as a group of people, you really surpassed yourself there master, yes.” The voice is without any sympathy and really without any emotion.

They all ponder a bit but for some reason Fernax asks. “How can I shoot arrows from you?” And the voice says “like you always do, you take your fingers there where the bowstring would be, make a mockery of my name as always, like Zru or Urzl or Schrems or all the other very funny names you give me master, it’s always very entertaining.” “What happens when I say your full name.” The voice doesn’t say anything and even erupts from the same place as before with the faintest shimmer of… Hope… In his voice. “If you say my full name, Urzschrammada you release me. You know that, master, right?” Of course the players agree that they totally now about that and wants to get taken back, suddenly beginning to feel the cold creeping into their bones.

They rebuff all questions about how much the bow will cost and go out of town. Fernax licks his lips while laying his hands there were the bowstring would be and pulls back and it seems like he would pull a very thin silvery line back. They all look at one another and nod. Fernax says “Urzschrammada” and let and arrow loose.

There is a sudden blast of wind, the trees creak, a rushing gale topples potted plants over, let’s windows clatter and hats fly and over all the chaos our heroes hear a single word, freedom. Fernax has on his fingers a mark of cold. It looks like he had frostburn on his fingers that pulled the string, but with the help of some anointed of peraine, this is healed very fast, but his fingers seem to became a little stiff (I decreased his nimbleness by one point. That was a small price to pay if you consider that they ripped a weapon away from a very high positioned servant of an arch-demon and gained a great new alley.) When they sleep they all dream that a disembodied voice talks to them and promises that should they ever need him they only have to say his name. If they whisper his name the other winds wouldn’t bother them. If they say his name he himself will come and try to help them. If they scream his name he will gather all the winds that he knows and help them in every capacitiy they can. They wake up with a great feeling of accomplishment but now it comes to the loot.

One is a pretty erotic book with lots of interesting positions (pictured!) with a lot of text on them that they can’t read. There are two magic books that nobody of them could read, one book bound in red leather they could not read. and a loose collection of papers that (you guessed it) nobody of them could read. But there also took a skull with them, that seems to be carved out of a single big quartz and that miguele try’s to look into. As soon as he holds the skull for a moment he hears a voice in his head that he talks with (the others think he is crazy because he talks with a skull…) They find out that inside this skull is the soul of an old historian that would have no problem deciphering the books, if they may free him from that prison he finds himself in. They promise to bring him to a temple of Boron if he would be fine with translating the books, they make also clear that he doesn’t have too, but would like it anyway. He considers and after some back and forth he takes over Miguele’s body and translates the books nearly inhumanly fast. (He didn’t possess him and ran away with his body.) He then get’s back in his skull, gets… Well… exorcised and as a parting gift, everyone can now speak and understand an old language… All besides Fernax who can now understand the language of the scaled folk.

They check their translated books. One is a book with charlatan spells (for Amene.) The erotic book has a lot of… Interesting techniques that people could try. Another rare spellbook (for nobody right know), the book bound in red leather has some techniques to give stones special powers. (Lay a ruby inside a carved out stone bowl. Fill it with fresh spring water and lay cut off raven feathers inside out. Let it only out when the moon can shine on it, at day hide it away and put black cloth over it. If all water is gone use the ruby for a gold ring and you can find hidden rooms just like the dwarves do. And stuff like that.)

And the loose papers actually have the recipe for a magical perfume. (Annes number four) They give that to the guild they worked with before, for a copy of the recipe and one portion of the perfume what they gladly do. (The perfume of course goes to Miguele.)

They enjoy a nice little breakfast when someone talks to Miguele…

And what happens will be revealed next time, I hope the conclusion to this all was rewarding enough.