The SilverClawShift Campaign Archives

[Anxe]

Wouldn't it be:
invokes "The Thread Walk?"

[Fayd]

(Eldritch) Blast it, you're right. It is an invocation, not a spell. Correcting now.

[Mitth'raw'nuruo]

13_CBS: I just wanted to say thank you for all the work you did to get this is a nice, easy to read format. The difference between reading SCS's posts and this - It is feels very much like reading the letters by W. S. Churchill when he was a war corespondent during the Boer War; and then reading what he published in his books about the events which he had witnessed; with the benefit of time and reflection. Both are excellent, both provided the information, but at a different tempo and in a different light.

SCS. Thank you.

[Ripped Shirt Kirk]

Fayd invokes "The Thread Walk!" In other words, bump!

Seriously, as a friend of mine put it, SCS, her DM, and her group are forged of the elemental plane of win.

With the creature type "Awesome"

[13_CBS]

Latest SCS update posted.

[Roc Ness]

Another new post by SCS requires updating

EDIT: Also, I found another "vignette". This one relates to that bard that hoards everything which was mentioned somewhere near the end of the first campaign. I don't know how to link single posts so just scroll down till you reach Silverclawshift's post http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...hlight=holding

[13_CBS]

Archive updated.

Updates:

1) Last of the Second Story has been edited and posted.

2) All of the vignette stories have been edited and posted.

3) Links to the original threads provided.

[Fayd]

This group is epic incarnate. Truly awe-inspiring work...SCS, you should be proud of the quality that you consistently have access to, and of the massive following you have gathered on these forums. You (and your DM) are an inspiration to many.

[13_CBS]

A Journey of a Thousand Miles...

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So I'm starting a new thread for my groups new campaign, as per popular request. I don't yet have our first session written up, but I do have this.

The DM has given us a fairly large amount of the worlds history. Basically a "What You Would Know if you Lived Here" cheat sheet for us, and I'm going to preface the thread with that information, and info about our characters, so the rest will make more sense.

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PLACES

The only rule the DM gave us was that we're all starting at level 1, as citizens of the same relatively metropolitan city. We have to be reasonably respectable, which means we can't make characters that will frighten children just by knocking on the door, and who won't be questioned by the local law enforcement as to "Why we're still breathing" and stuff like that.

Outside that, the place being relatively metropolitan means we do have some leeway in who we are. Oh, and as an aside, the names given to the cities are actually what the DM called them . He usually figures that we're likely to mix up the names ANYWAY, so he might as well be blunt and descriptive about them. Our characters would know, that doesn't mean we need to stay up all night studying.

So, on to the four main city-state-kingdoms in this world:

Home City

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Our Home City, where we're starting off in, is actually noteworthy in the world for being the absolute most defensively impregnable kingdom in the world. Centuries upon centuries of barriers, reinforcements, defensive military training, and even magical aid have contributed to making our home city the one city you absolutely do not want to go to war with, for the simple fact that we've basically already placed ourselves under seige and are prepared to stay within the walls indefinitely if we have to.

Home City is such a difficult military target that people used to joke that the only way to launch an assault would be to have been born inside the walls. A few decades ago, a small elite team of treasonous guards took several of the royal family hostage within the central castle itself, in an attempt by a rival kingdom to distract the city long enough to open a gap in our defenses.
Within three hours, the attack was repelled, and the entire team of traitors had been captured, sentenced, tortured, and cast into the acid pits of the sewers. People used to joke that the only way to launch a successful assault would be to have been born inside the walls. People don't make that joke any more.

Home City is also a relatively open-minded place, featuring multiple races in various districts, and a fairly good-natured policy towards the rest of the world. "The best offense is a good defense".

Undead City

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One of Home Cities allies, undead city is ruled by a vampire king who's well over two millenia old. Undead city is, contrary to the name, NOT actually filled with living corpses. It is however the most metropolitan place in the world. ALL are welcome citizens of Undead City, should they abide by the laws.

Undead city does in fact have a significant undead populace. Zombies and Skeletons serve as the 'grunts' of their military force. Several of the cities elite are actually vampires, who are sustained via a 'blood tax' on living residents. Others are liches and necropolitans, or 'other'.

However, most living humans who live in Undead City are actually more than happy to pay their blood to the king and his vampiric upper crust, as life in Undead City is actually fairly pleasant. Menial labor is taken care of by mindless undead (who are masked to prevent uncomfortable recognition by still living relatives). The city is known for being high minded regarding arts and entertainment and science, and frankly, in a world where your average commoner is wrestling pigs out of a cesspit and performing back-breaking labor, the citizens of Undead City are happy to give their blood and have their corpses used after death when it means they don't have to do a lot of actual WORK.

Directly from the DM: "Picture New Orleans mixed with Vegas mixed with Manhattan mixed with a haunted house, but clean and friendly."

Undead City does have a darker side though. The city extends just as far underground as it does above ground, a pit mirroring every tower, and a cellar mirroring every attic. The further underground you go, the worse it gets, and the less the laws tend to be enforced. Stay topside if you can.
The problem is, the city is built in 'levels' which can be very disorienting for a newcomer. Since much of the city is actually roofed in some fashion, and most lighting is artificial (a natural side effect of having a vampiric upper class), it can be hard to tell when day or night is, or just how far underground you've actually gone. When in doubt, take the stairs up.

An even darker side is the Crimson Maw. The Crimson Maw is a team of five incredibly elite vampire warriors, the kings own personal military force. And the Crimson Maw is pure 'effing' evil. They've been around long enough that they've become incredibly bored with life in general, only really looking forward to their next chance to kill something in a ridiculously painful way. Hedonism taken to the next level. In fact, they're so bored with normal life and normal fighting, that all five of them tend to prefer strange exotic weapons, and fight in bizarre ways, just to entertain themselves. Even with the tactical abnormalities, the five of them combined are worth an entire army. Maybe even two armies.

The Crimson Maw would freaking KILL you and freaking EAT you if only they thought for a second that they could get away with it. Fortunately for the rest of the world, the king keeps the five on a very, very short leash, only letting them 'out' at specific targets as necessary, or in response to being attacked.

They're evil on a leash, and they know it. They know the only reason the world tolerates them existing is because they do whatever their (good, benevolent) undead king tells them to. If he weren't in the picture, they'd be hunted down and dragged kicking and screaming into the daylight, so they make darn sure their lord, his kingdom, and anyone the vampire king cares about is perfectly safe and happy.

Outside that, they don't see 'you' so much as they see a series of arteries that could potentially be spurting blood.

Dragon City

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Dragon City is, predictably, ruled by dragons. Four of them, specifically. An Ancient Red Great Wyrm of unimaginable power, and three younger (Mature Adult and higher) golden dragons.

Life in Dragon City is good, but very lawful and bureaucratic. The laws change frequently in very minor ways, and while the city wouldn't be called totalitarian (it is a comfortable place to live), the laws are still enforced and those who would disobey would answer to a higher authority than a man in a black robe and silly hat. They answer to a dragon who views them the same way we view chipmunks.

In a grand scale, the city is generally neutral, and the dragons themselves all seem to be more interested in law and order than in good or evil. No one is exactly sure how, when, or why these four dragons became interested in the meddling of lesser races like humans and dwarves, but there they are, keeping things running safely and efficiently.

Some speculate that the Dragons are actually engaged in a game of Xorvintaal, a game only played by dragons (lesser beings would not even be able to comprehend many of the rules, let alone be taught to play the game, let alone find a willing opponent among the mighty dragons). Whether the kingdom is the game board, a mere piece of a larger game, or simply a 'practice match' is not known, if the Xorvintaal rumor is even true (the dragons have never confirmed or denied, and find it offensive to be asked).

Dragon City is, predictably, the worlds 'banking' city. It has the most widely recognized currency, and all wise investors store their funds within the mountainous reaches of the city.

That WOULD make it a great target for enemy armies... if the leaders were not four incredibly powerful dragons, each one stronger than the last, each capable of laying waste to an entire army of mortal men.

Going to war with an army containing dragons is suicide. Going to war with an army LED BY dragons is not something a sane man even considers.

Empire

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The least metropolitan and least open minded kingdom in the world, the Empire is ridiculously xenophobic. The population of their various smaller cities are almost entirely human, with a few elves, halflings and the like.

The Empire has a particularly frothing hatred towards the Undead city, as it's a metropolis full of everything they find wrong with the world, LED by a vampire and just getting worse from there.

They would even consider attacking them outright, difficult though that would be, if they weren't allied with us in Home City. The Vampire King has long been allied with Home Cities royal family down the entire lineage, and the current royal family of Home City is no different, trusting the Vampire King as a friend.

Any attacker on Undead City would find themselves also engaged in a war with Home City, and between an undead army, an impregnable fortress, and a team of five elite assassins (and lord knows what else they could scrape out of their gutters), the Empire isn't foolish enough to begin a true assault.

They would love to wipe all three cities off the map and pillage our resources, and despite having a larger force to bear than all three cities combined, the knowledge that engaging any of us would probably result in a full on war between all four parties is something that has kept the Empire in check.

For now.

The DM also pointed out that the cities are really the 'heart' of small kingdoms, with outlying lands and smaller towns that are owned and controlled by the larger cities.

The Empire itself is more of a world spanning kingdom. It has less of a 'center' so much as an overarching goal that multiple cities and towns allign themselves with, and pay fealty to. So while the three cities have more of a "Castle, surrounding fortress, surrounding city, vast tracts of land" feel to them, the empire has more of a "We're everywhere, but have multiple official 'centers'" kindof feel.

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PLAYERS

Me

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I'm actually going to be the base class made by Rich Burlew, The Champion. Something about it stuck in my head a while back, and I've been really interested in trying the class out.

My character's going to be the daughter of a halfling farmer. In normal form, I'm going to be the party face and take some cross-class skill-monkey type skills to try to make myself useful (UMD, Open Lock and such). In avatar form though, I'm going to be the screeching, reaping figure of the harvest, hooded death with a scythe herself, Autumn, the embodiment of the "Final Word" we all experience some day.

I'll have the Death and Plant domains, and in normal form I'll have high mental stats, so I should get some bonus spell slots and be able to make myself relatively useful to the party in general, and I'll be your usually energetic happy-go-lucky jolly little halfling girl (neutral good).

In avatar form, I'll suddenly grow to be human sized, with a black hood, green veins, and dead leaves for hair, and I'll basically be lopping off heads left and right with a huge scythe for 5+ minutes each day, while being your quintessential babbling crazy-lady.

I just love this character so much.

Previously the Kobold

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Also previously the archivist in the halloween campaign, also previously any number of ridiculously well executed character concepts.

For the first time (that I recall), this player is going to try out the Binder base class, which should be incredibly interesting when he fails a binding check and has to deal with the influence of an otherworldly being inside his head.

His character is going to be a member of our Home Cities unified church, which is a generic temple that is a coalition of multiple good faiths. As long as your deity is holy and pure, you're pretty much A-Okay by this churches standings.

Now, our DM wanted us all to be respectable citizens, but the DM really likes this character idea. He's basically a part of the church that deals with 'oddities' in the world, basically the Fox Mulder of this church. Him and a few other acolytes regularly catalog and assess the weirder goings on in the religious world and determine whether they're threats or not.

He doesn't even conceal the fact that he's a Binder, but it's okay because everyone in the church knows he's 100% not evil and on their side, he's just "that weird guy who works in the basement".

He's also human this time.

Previously the Dragon Shaman

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Going to be a Warmage, an amateur arcanist with a goal of joining up with the Home City militia some day and generally wrecking the faces of anyone who would oppose us. Or wrecking the faces of people who give him trouble. Or just generally wrecking faces.

You know. Lawfully. Human too.

Previously the Swashbuckler

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Sorcerer...Archivist... guy.

He's actually going to start the game as an Aristocrat, one of the lesser members of one of the lesser families who'll not be ascending to the throne anytime soon... but an aristocrat nonetheless. Focus on being agile and charismatic, with a rapier and a longbow ("classically trained". Say that while turning your nose up a little).

He's also taking the Wild Cohort feat to snag himself a loyal Hawk, which is pretty cool.

Since Aristocrat is an interesting class, but not THAT interesting, he'll probably wind up peppering the rest of his levels with whatever classes catch his eye (he's been doing that a lot lately). He already mentioned Marshal and Rogue. So we'll see how that all plays out.

28 point buy.

And that's that!

I'll post more when it's written up

[13_CBS]

Session 1(a)


Introductions

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So we sat down for our first session, and the first thing we did (as per the norm) was introduce our characters (the basics only really) and then start coming up with how we know each other.

Sometimes that part is really tricky, but having certain common backgrounds (like all being citizens of the same city from birth, for starters) makes it a little easier. We still kind of drew a blank at first, but anytime we start to stall on the introduction phase, our DM picks two of us and asks how we know each other specifically.

We decided for simplicities sake to establish that we all already knew each other and are already relatively good friends (as we frequently do). We couldn't come up with WHY though.

So the DM picked me and the aristocrat, and asked how we know each other. I came up with the fact that the aristocrats family owns the land that my family farm is on, but that they're not really snobby about that fact and we just give them a cut of the profit we make (beyond what we grow for the kingdoms needs).

Since I was on a roll, I threw out that the Binder and my father have been friends for a long time, and that the Binder occasionally uses our fields when he needs to do some pseudo-religious stuff away from the prying eyes of the easily spooked masses.

The Binder liked that enough that it stuck, and said that the Aristocrats family regularly makes large donations to his church, without which they probably wouldn't be paying acolytes to sit in the basement archiving spooky rituals concerning vestiges and other abnormalities.

And it went on like that until we had a generally good feel of who each others characters were, and why in the world we'd be spending time together in the first place. Once we had that settled, the adventure proper began.

A Phantom Menace?

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Life for us all in Home City, up until this point, has been normal. The Aristocrat hangs around having money and prestige, the Binder works in his churches basement, the Warmage spends his time helping the local mages guild in the hopes that they'll continue helping HIM grow in strength to the point that the city militia won't laugh at the idea of having a spellcaster on their front line of defense, and I'm helping my family on our farm and generally vaguely concealing that I can spontaneously grow human sized and triple in physical strength (though I did throw out that my family and close friends know about it, and are respectful about not turning me into a freakshow).

The first plot hook comes in the form of a rumor spreading around the binders church, that our cities royal family has been receiving strange, and very detailed threats concerning our kingdom. Supposedly, these threats are coming in the form of stamped and sealed letters being found in odd locations.
The Binders church has elected to fill him on the details, because of his oddball position. The letters have been asking for members of the royal family to go to various secluded locations for a 'meeting' with whoever is sending the threats, warning that if they don't agree to a get together, that an outright attack will be launched. Naturally, our king did NOT stumble alone into the wilderness into what looked like an obvious trap.

Normally something like that wouldn't be told to anyone aside from the royal family's personal guards. In this case though, the strange symbol that the letter was signed is unidentifiable.

None of the kings arcanists, diviners, or advisers have ever seen the symbols used in the letters before, and they didn't have any answers (even with magical aid). So it falls, with a hush, to the local church, which in turn has given their 'guy in charge of weird stuff' the letter to see if he knows anything about it.

He did a few Knowledge checks, and came up with no direct matches. But he did come up with a match in STYLE for the symbol... one of the markings on Dragon Cities custom currency.

It wasn't an incredibly uncanny similarity... just something kind of close. But it was enough for the church officials to send him off to Dragon City to see if he could drum up any more information. The threats on the kings family were being taken a little more seriously than they might otherwise, since at least one letter was actually found sitting on the kings throne in the morning .

So with a plot hook firmly in hand (a copy of the symbol), the Binder went to meet up with his friendly Warmage and Aristocrat buddies, to let them know he was going to be traveling to Dragon City for a while.

Better Than a Tavern, At Least

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Now, brace yourself for a contrivance. It just so happens that the Aristocrat was actually planning a trek to Dragon City some time soon, to make a withdrawal from the 'bank' (read: Massive Pile of Dragon Gold that isn't all technically owned by the dragon, but is way safer with him sleeping on it. Lot easier to say bank).

And, as luck would have it, the Warmage was going to accompany him as a bodyguard.

And wouldn't you know it? My father was just about to send me with a sack full of money to go make a DEPOSIT in the bank at dragon city.

If you have a hard time swallowing that, you'd better have a better opening to your adventure than "And you're all drunk in a bar!" . We gotta get traveling together somehow.

Reaping the Whirlwind

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So the aristocrat bumps up his trip to 'now', and we get a carriage loaded with some basic supplies, and set off for the few weeks of travel to Dragon City. With the four of us traveling, the Aristocrat doesn't really need to bring guards, so once we were ready to get traveling, we simply set out.
As an aside, our carriage is being puled by two mules, instead of horses. When we asked, the aristocrats exact words were "I'm not THAT rich". Apparently horses are fairly pricey compared to donkeys .

A few hours out, we saw an indistinct shape on the side of the road, laying off a few dozen feet. As we got closer, we realized it was a small boy covered in blood. Naturally we stopped our carriage and ran over to see if we could help.

Naturally, it was an ambush. As soon as we got to the boy, two burly men with weapons leaned out from behind some nearby trees, and the boy got up and sprinted deeper into the woods. Two more men with bows were in the trees above where he ran, and when we looked back at the carriage, a roguish looking guy with a crossbow was sitting in the drivers harness, and he winked at us.

One of the men spoke to us. "Here's how this is going to happen. You're only a few hours out. So you're just going to give us everything you have, turn around, and walk home, and be thankful that we didn't gut you and leave you rotting in the woods."

The Binder character (bound to Naberius, some diplomacy boosts and stuff), tried to work his magic. Said that we didn't have much, but that we were on official business. That we could give him some gold and supplies and wouldn't cause any trouble, but that we really needed to be on our way.
The man got very angry, very quickly, approaching us while the three archers trained on our location, and the other melee fighter moved behind his boss. He barked that we apparently didn't understand the situation, and that there we weren't negotiating.

I had a really high diplomacy check myself, so I gave it a try, telling the man that we didn't want any trouble, and that things didn't have to get violent.
The man said "See munchkin, I think things ARE going to have to get violent, because I think I'm going to have to kill one of you to show you how serious we are".

The table got quiet for a second, and I said, "Then let the REAPing begin". *cough* Reap being the word that transforms me into my human sized avatar form .

I grew to human sized with my scythe at the ready, which the DM decided startled the five attackers enough that I got a surprise round before the initiative rolls, and I used it to hit the non-leader melee fighter. He looked like a big tough guy, but my scythe roll was high, and with "Autumns" incredible strength, I tore right through him and sent him into negatives with the first hit.

We rolled initiative, and the two archers won. I'd just made myself a target, so both shot at me. One missed, the other hit. Luckily, Autumn also has a lot of hitpoints .

The Aristocrat and warmage went next. The Aristocrat drew his bow and fired, hitting one of the archers in the trees. The Warmage threw a lesser Orb of Cold at the same one, which was enough to knock him into negatives.
The leader went next, and he crossed our group to the Warmage and hit him hard, leaving him with only one hitpoint. Then our Binder went. He had the ability to issue a "Command" as the spell once every five rounds, and elected to use it to take out the guy with the crossbow, pointing at him and growling "DON'T MOVE". The crossbow guys turn was next, and he failed his will save, standing there helplessly and unable to do a single thing.

Then I went, crossing to the leader of the bandits and slashing at him with my scythe for a heap of damage. The surviving archer fired, this time at the Aristocrat. It took off all of his hitpoints, but didn't push him into negatives, disabling him. The Warmage threw an Orb of Electricity at him, and it was enough to disable him as well.

The leader turned his attention to me but missed his swing. The Binder took the chance to throw some of his darts (he opted for darts as his main weapon) at the crossbow guy, and hit. The crossbow guy fired at him, and also hit, but they both remained standing. I took another swing at the leader, and managed a critical, which turned out to send him so far into negatives that it was an instant kill (quote our DM: Sure enough, you lopped his head clean off).

The crossbow guy tried to run, but with the warmage throwing orbs and the dart throwing binder, he didn't get far. While they were taking care of him, I drifted over to the disabled archer and promptly killed him (it was only wise, and autumn would certainly want a waning life to be cut short, like a harvest).

We gave the Aristocrat one of our (precious few) healing potions, and the warmage another. The rest of us opted to conserve the remaining potions for now, and press on.

The others stayed inside the carriage while I drove, because my halfling form hadn't actually taken any damage. We made the rest of the trip a little more cautious while we rested our hitpoints back up to full, but we made it to Dragon City without further incident.

Okay, that's about halfway through our first gaming session in this new campaign. I wanted to have the entire first session written up, but I also didn't want to go too long between posts about it.

I'll have the second half of this session written up whenever I can, and we have another session tonight, so, yeah. Hopefully I won't fall too far behind . Thanks for taking the time to read it.

[DragoonWraith]

I thought I'd mention that I've added a "Crystal Cantrips" class feature to my homebrew overhaul of the Cerebremancer, in tribute to SCS and her incredible DM.

[GreatWyrmGold]

There's a THIRD story?!?
YES!

[13_CBS]

Session 1(b)


Someone Call for an Exterminator?

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So we made it safely to Dragon City. One thing that was immediately apparent to anyone traveling the Dragon City for the first time is how strong a draconic bloodline actually runs through the people there. It's not incredibly common, but you will occasionally see full on half-dragons walking along the streets, and a significantly higher number of dragon-blooded people. Even a lot of people who seem fully human also seem very flushed or unnaturally tan (read: golden).

First we had to find some kind of healing house to see if we could snag a few healing potions to replace what we'd used on the travel. That didn't prove too difficult, as the church (dedicated to Bahamut, naturally) was fairly... blatant. A gleaming mirrored building covered in reflective materials and decorations, surrounded by well tended and protected flames that made the building literally glow with a holy light. So, we made our way into the consecrated building that gleamed with the blessed light of a rising sun... in order to purchase a measly three Cure Light Wounds potions .
After we'd resupplied, we also managed to find an armory that would take the bandits weapons off our hands. They didn't give us MUCH for the used weapons with questionable origins, but hey, every little bit counts.

We weren't entirely sure what to do at that point, but the Binder had the idea of heading to one of the bank buildings to see if we couldn't get into contact with whoever had designed the currency. But when we arrived at the first bank building we could find, we were a little shocked to have stumbled right into one of the leaders of the town, a 30 foot tall golden dragon, sitting motionless in the middle of the street and staring unflinchingly at a very nervous looking man.

The people on the streets were trying very hard to act casually, pretending they weren't shirking off to the sides of the roads and ducking between buildings in fear, leaving this lone individual looking up at a clearly ticked off dragon prince. We sidled up to listen to the conversation.

The man stammered uncomfortably, saying "It's too dangerous, there's nothing we can do here". The dragon just glared without moving a muscle. The man went on babbling uncomfortably for a solid two minutes, before the dragon finally (mercifully) interrupted him by calling him a coward. The man just stared down at his feet awkwardly, while the dragon went on, "Are you telling me that I am going to have to tear the very roof off of this building to deal with this problem myself? And then return to the caves to tell 'Big Red' that one of the banks has been shut down for construction because his workers couldn't handle an infestation of RATS?"

The man objected with "These aren't normal rats, we've already lost two men trying to ge-" which was as far as he got before the dragon slammed its forepaw down next to the man, making him shiver in his spot and continue staring down at his shoes.

I decided to jump in here, a little nervous squeek as I said "Excuse me?" at which the dragon immediately barked that he didn't have the time without actually looking back at me.

I chirped that "Actually, maybe we could help out with whatever the trouble is?"

The dragon craned his neck to look back at me, and scoffed slightly. But despite that his face betrayed that he thought it was a good idea. The Binder backed me up, saying we were in town from Home City on business, and maybe if we could take care of the problem, the dragon could help us.
The Dragon Seemed mildly taken aback, and I actually (at the table) elbowed the binder in the ribs and hissed "That's not how you talk to a dragon, especially not if you're first level!" The Binder just gave held out his hands and said "We need a lead!"

The dragon grumbled at us, asking what could be so important that we think it warranted his attention.

The Binder held up the sketch of the symbol, saying that we actually just wanted to get into touch with whoever designed the symbols for their currency, as our king had been receiving threatening letters with a similar symbol on them.

The Dragon lowered his head to our level, eyeballing the paper intently, before squinting and plucking it out of the binders hands with his claw tips, holding it up to the sky and staring at it a moment longer.

"There IS a resemblance...isn't there? Tell me human, does your king believe these letters are our doing?"

The Binder promised that, no, we didn't think Dragon City was responsible, we just were following up on one of the few similarities we'd noticed. The Dragon seemed to accept his answer, nodding and gripping the paper tightly in his fist, gesturing with his nose towards us and the building, telling us that if we take care of the rat problem, he'll bring the symbol up to 'Big Red' and see if there's anything relevant for us to bring home.

With that, he told the worker he'd been berating to thank us for saving his hide, and to go get four rings from the flame-tenders at the nearest church. He said if we succeeded, we could keep the rings. And with that, he flew off, with the worker running frantically in the direction of the nearest church of Bahamut. Not too much later, he came running back with four identical copper bands. They didn't look like much, but they felt warm with magical energy.

The worker explained that the rings granted 3 resistance to fire damage, which mostly covered minor burns and kept the flame-tenders at the church from scarring themselves on a daily basis. We asked why we would need these rings to take on some rats, and he just looked at us and shook his head, and wished us luck.

Large Rats, Large Rats

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Before we went inside, the Aristocrat pointed out that if Dragon City was planning an attack, we'd just revealed way too much information to them. The Binder countered with the fact that if they WERE planning to strike us, letting them know we were kicking up our defenses and preparing for a fight with dragons was probably the smartest thing we could do.

We slipped on the rings, and then slipped in through the front door, closing it securely behind us. We crept up through the lobby, and then we spotted one of the little vermin sitting on the counter at one of the bank tellers stands. And we realized why these weren't normally rats.

It was red and scaly, with a strong looking jaw, horns, and two tiny little wings folded against its back. It wasn't just a rat... it was some kind of draconic rat. Either a unique TYPE of rat, or... well, a half dragon rat, which is probably something best not thought about.

The Binder crept up until he was about 20 feet from it, reared back, and pelted it as hard as he could with a dart. It nailed it dead center, and tumbled off the counter with a little "WARK" death scream. The Binder chuckled, and said the bank worker really had been a coward, as the rats weren't all that tough.

Of course, any time you say something like that is the trigger for all hell to break loose.

From behind the counter where the rat fell, a swarm of about a dozen of the little suckers came flying out in an angry arc, circling us and hitting us with tiny tiny little jets of flaming breath weapon. The ring caught most of the damage, but every jet was a chance at a bit of fire damage getting through the resistance.

The Aristocrat drew his rapier and took a stab. Fortunately the little monsters were just big enough that they weren't exceptionally difficult targets, and he managed to skewer one straight through. The Warmage threw off a Ray of Frost that froze one solid thanks to it being vulnerable to cold. I debated switching to Avatar form, but decided that under the circumstances, I could do just as much good by hitting the rats with crossbow bolts, so that's what I elected to do (for the official record, I have a ridiculously high dexterity in halfling form, and switch that to a ridiculously high strength when I turned into Lady Autumn. So I'm good at ranged combat in normal mode, and good at beating things senseless as a divine vessel).

The rats were one-hit mooks, but the fight was still a little tense with us being slowly roasted alive with every pass they made. They weren't smart enough to use any kind of REAL tactics (they were still rats) but their draconic instinct made them a little more predatory. They would fly away together, wait for their breath weapons to recharge, and then make fly-by attacks at us while hitting us with their flames all at once.

And once we were done with the rats in the lobby, we still had to stalk through the bank killing rats from room to room (and another swarm of them in the basement). And we had to talk the Warmage out of taking some of the loose coins that were laying around, figuring that ticking off a bunch of dragons was not how we wanted to START this story.

None of us had very good spot checks, but after enough poking around and overturning a few suspicious places, we were convinced that we'd killed the last of the hideous scaled flying fire breathing rats.

And I honestly kind of hope that's the last time I ever have to say that exact series of words.

The Summons

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We left the building, and the DM informed us that on exiting the building, the scared worker getting chewed out by the gold dragon was waiting to tell us that the dragon came back and let him know to tell us that Big Red did in fact want to talk to us. Directly. And NOW.

We had to end the session due to time constraints. We didn't level up yet (no telling if the story is just long, or if we're just supposed to stay low level for longer).

That means that our next session is going to start with our four 1st level characters sitting face to face with a CR "Some Epic Number" creature for a little pow-wow about why our king is getting threatening letters .

Well, since I finished writing this after our second campaign, that's already happened. But, you know. Storywise, you'll get to hear about it next time. Thanks everyone

[Tyrmatt]

This thread just cost me nearly 6 hours of revision a week before the most important exam in my life so far. And I don't care. It was worth it

This thread is going into my morning website rotation. It demands to be read every time.

[13_CBS]

Session 3(a)


Peace, Bread, and...No More Zombies

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So our third session started with us sitting in a hotel room talking about where we could find more information concerning the symbol (and by proxy, the letters they were attached to). We wanted an audience with the king or some other higher up, but that seemed like the type of thing that would be very difficult to make happen (we're under the impression that the dragon thing was a stroke of luck due to them wanting to shunt off any suspicions towards them).

So all in all, we didn't really have a great plan. We figured the only thing we could really do was just to stumble around town like idiots and ask anyone who seems like they might be knowledgeable on the subject. See if we can find an arcanist or something.

So we double checked our gear and health status, and left our room for the shadowy streets (more like interconnected alleys with ceilings about two and a half stories up...) of undead city.

***************************************

We did manage to snag a rough map of the area, and noted there was a church only a few blocks from the Inn we stayed at. The map didn't say who the church was TO (which raised all kinds of uncomfortable possibilities), but we figured that was as good of a place as any to start our search.

When we got to the church however, we found some kind of public rally in front of it, with about 35 people gathered and listening to an angry looking man standing on the steps to the church (bear in mind, this is ALL roofed in and light by tiny magical lights, so it's pretty hard to make out a lot of details for us).

But hard to make out the details or not, the tone and expressions tell a lot. The man is getting the crowd very riled up, shouting about how "They think of us as cattle! Well treated cattle, but still cattle!" and so on. Also says "We give them our labour and our BLOOD and they would abandon us like this?"

The crowd shouts agreements, muttering angrily to themselves. We slide around to the back of the group and ask one of the onlookers what's going on.

Onlooker: "We're talking about the contingency failure in old quarter."

Binder: "The what now?"

The onlooker turns to face us with a confused expression before a look of realization crosses his face and he says, "Ah, you're not from around here."

Warmage: "It's really that obvious?"

Onlooker: "Yes actually, it's written all over your face. A few days ago, one of the necromancers controlling a big group of shufflers bit the dust. They're suppose to be set up to control them in pairs, but somehow his backup died at the same time, no one's sure how. Problem is, the corpses went out of control, and before they could get it cleaned up, they killed managed to kill some more necromancers. Things spiraled pretty bad, and the authorities locked off old quarter before the zombies could spread."

Binder: "I don't mean any offense, but isn't that a danger that comes with the territory of living with skeletons and zombies in the first place?"

Onlooker: "Aye. And we accepted it as an honest accident in the first place. but it's been THREE DAYS, and there's still living people in old quarter. Well, there WERE, god knows by now."

Binder: "Is there a reason they haven't done anything about it yet?"

Onlooker: "The crimson maw. The king sent them away right before the accident, and we don't know why or where. They could have wrapped this up in no time. But no one else is willing to go in and save anyone."

Binder: "So are you guys thinking of swarming the place?"

Onlooker: "Me? Hell no, I'm not a guard. I have a family to think about."

Binder: "Wel-"

But before the conversation could continue, the whole crowd went dead silent when the church doors slammed open, and a very angry looking priest (who even in the dim light was obviously a vampire) with several tough looking guards came out, ordering the crowd to disperse.

The man preaching to the crowd tried to argue, but the priest shut him down pretty hard, telling him that as soon as the Maw returned, they would take care of Old Quarter, and until then, anyone attempting to get in without authorization would be fined. Heavily. In blood.

The crowd mumbled uncomfortably and began to disperse slowly. A few stuck around longer than others, but when they started thinning out, even the braver of the many began to think better of sticking their necks out in a town full of bloodsuckers.

The leader didn't budge though, staring the vampire priest dead in the eyes and telling him that it wasn't right, or just. It wasn't until our Binder went over and led him away for his own good that the priest and the guards finally went back inside.

We started talking to the leader of the angry mob. We got the gist of what was going on already, but the leader had details. And by details, I mean a battle plan. He had a map of the district, including various ways in and out of it, where the chokepoints that had been sealed off were, and where survivors would likely congregate.

The only problem? In his own words "I'm not a warrior. I've tripped and needed a healer while putting on my boots before, I'll get eaten alive in there." He wanted to be a revolutionary, a hero, but it just wasn't in the cards for him. The best he could hope for would be for gathering info. He told us if we'd go in and see how bad it was, try to get any survivors out, or even just tell him more details from the inside so he might be able to get a group together that could make it in and out in one piece, he'd be very grateful. As in "pouches of gold coins" grateful.

We agreed. We had a job to do, but no true adventuring party can turn down a side quest involving zombies, right?

We followed the man back to his home, and after he searched around like he was having a paranoia attack and drawing all the shades, he pulled out a small backpack out of a secret compartment in a dresser. He opened it up, and started passing us some supplies, looking intensely worried, telling us to "not let anyone catch us with this stuff" and to pretend we'd never met him if we were busted.

The stuff he was giving us? Several vials of holy water, 2 wands of cure light wounds, and a scroll of Cure Moderate wounds. The Binder asked "Wait a minute, you have a living populace, but you're not allowed to have access to Cure spells?". The Amateur Revolutionary laughed, and said "You can have as many cure POTIONS as you can afford... but trying to get a wand or scroll? That's like going up to a guard and saying 'I'm looking for a weapon that can only be used against the upper class...' Won't find one laying around, will have some serious questions to answer if you get caught with one."

We thanked him for the gear, and set out to break into old quarter, promising to report back whenever we got out safely.

Where the Dead Walk

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The best way into Old Quarter, in our opinion, was to find a way to the next level up in the city (not too hard to do). It was a little disorienting, basically being in a giant house the size of a city, walking on city streets made of wood and knowing that the stone streets were just below. Eventually, we made our way over Old Quarter. The area above it was pretty sparsely populated (maybe they'd evacuated out of fear, as if you stopped to listen, you could hear scraping and moaning of the zombies on the street level below).

We followed the map given to us, and found that it was pretty accurate. It led to a small nook where the streets and 'buildings' of this level didn't match up perfectly with the ones below, letting us slide into the wall that had just enough room for us to squeeze into. It was dusty as heck, and obviously didn't get a lot of attention (why squeeze through a construction error when you could take the carpeted stairs up to the next level?).

About thirty feet into the wall though, we found what we were looking for. A gap that dropped straight into the middle of the street inside the barricaded old quarter area. We peered down, but we could only make out the street to about ten feet in any given direction.

So we braced ourselves, and dropped through one at a time, tumbling out of the way so the next person in line had a clear landing spot. Warmage, Me, Aristocrat, then Binder. The streets were quiet where we hit, but it was darker here than it was in the rest of the city. Whoever made and tended to the magical street lights obviously wasn't patrolling the streets here, and most of them had been destroyed (or simply winked out due to the time span passing).

So we were in a crowded alley with no easy way out, full of uncontrolled skeletons and zombies (and hopefully nothing else), mostly pitch black with areas of shadowy illumination.

Luckily, as far as vision goes, the Binder had the foresight to bind a vestige that granted him Darkvision out to 60 feet, and my Avatar form also had darkvision, so whenever I switched forms I would be able to see too. So we gave the two goggles to the warmage and aristocrat... they still couldn't see in pitch black, but they could see fine in the shadowy illumination, limiting them to dashing between light sources to avoid being blinded.

So off we went down the street, trying to move as stealthily as possible. We saw a lot of signs of struggle, but no signs of life. Finally, dashing down the alley/streets in a senseless pattern just looking for any signs of people still active, we came across the first of the walking dead. Er, not counting the vampires. Anyway.

The Binder was the only one who saw them, hunched and swaying quietly in the darkness between pools of dim light. The Warmage cast Light on a gold peice and flipped it out into the area of darkness, lighting it up like the day and giving us all a clear image of what we were up against. A dozen zombies, give or take, who started shuffling towards us now that they realized we were there, moaning blankly. I opted to stay in halfling form, and we started plunking them with ranged weapons. Darts, crossbow bolts, arrows, and the Warmage threw off some "Disrupt Undead" spells, saving one cantrip in case he needed to cast Light again.

We cleaned them out before they could get to us, but the noise attracted the attention of more of them. They weren't as grouped together, but they were drawn to the light and noise, and then to US when we were spotted.
Rather than staying and fighting a never ending stream of walking corpses, we opted to run between them, the Warmage holding up his gold coin as a makeshift torch and letting us move between their ranks and further into Old Quarter.

Eventually, in between outrunning the slow moving undead chasing the pretty light and tasty smelling people, we started seeing signs of intelligent activity. Recently moved objects and boarded up windows gave us the lead we needed to find a few scared survivors barricaded in their homes.
The Aristocrat consulted the map to find the nearest way back out of old quarter while the rest of us fought the zombies back (and I hissed out the word "REAP" to turn into autumn, and starting lopping zombie heads off left and right), and he found a passage back up to the second level just a block down the street. We promised the survivors they could trust us, and got them out of their barricaded building and in between the four of us. We moved as quick as we could, taking out any zombies that got too close, before we found the passage back up (this was a locked cellar of a three story home that had been barricaded when old quarter was sealed).

We found a way into the building and got the survivors up, telling them to stay hush-hush about how they got out (we wanted to talk with the local nobility as travelers, not as willful criminals). They thanked us profusely on their way into the building, and we re-barricaded it to keep the undead from following.

Unfortunately in the process, we'd been too busy to notice just how many zombies (and a few skeletons) were surrounding the group of light-bearing tasty-looking living people. We were severely outnumbered. We managed to fight our way back out to a crossroads, but there were just too many of them. We started taking hits, and it was looking like we might have walked into a true dead end. I even ran into my time limit on being Autumn and was forced to turn back into a halfling, fatigued (and encumbered) on top of that.
The Binder player even said "Well guys, 95% of all TPKs happen at third level or lower..."

Which is when we heard a sharp whistle over the noise of the zombies, from down one of the streets. We looked down and saw a a lithe redhead, crouching in a pool of light. There were long thin reflective lines coming away from her shoulder blades, touching the ground on either side of her.
When she had our attention, she said, "Heads down gentlemen" and came sprinting at our group so fast she became a blur. The three taller members of the group (everyone who's not me) fell prone, and the woman dashed through the crowd of zombies, slicing the heads off of a good twenty or thirty of them and sliding to a stop about 50 feet past us.

Before we could establish anything else, four more figures came out of the shadows from various direction (including a vampiric halfling with clawed-gloves leaping from the ceiling above us). Yup. We were getting saved by the Crimson Maw.

The Crimson Maw

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The five vampires made ridiculously short work out of a swarm of zombies and skeletons that we had no hope of fighting through, so not only were we outnumbered, we were outnumbered by a group that could have killed us by accident and kept on walking.

And now they were circling us like the hungry predators we knew them to be.

A woman with what looked like wings made out of razors, a halfling with claws, a human man with a whole mess of weapons strapped to him in various locations, an elf vampire who had literally just been throwing arrows, and a man who was so big there was no way he could have been human before being a vampire (meta-gaming here, probably a half giant).

The halfling spoke up first, saying, in a very British accent, "You ain't from town is ya? Waltzed in and somehow stumbled into Old Quarter?" he pointed out that anyone even coming close to Old Quarter would have heard they were to stay away until the Maw came back.

Warmage: "No one told us."

The woman leaned up to him and sniffed his face, telling him point blank he was lying.

We stared as they continued pacing around us, staring us down, while the halfling told us that the punishment for obeying a direct edict from the king, especially by a 'tourist' could carry a damn hefty fine. Then he added "I'd kill ya where ya stand just for the hell of it, but Kingy don't like it when we dust people without his permission. So I guess we gots to bring you in. Of course, we could pretend we never saw ya right?"

The binder asked what he wanted.

The woman stopped and leaned up behind the binder and said point blank "Blood. Ten pints, two for each of us, from the neck and we'll pretend we never saw you".

The Binder pointed out that ten pints from four people could be very unhealthy.

They all just laughed.

The halfling noted that we could just double-cross one of us and the other three would walk away clean. Then he sneered at me and said "Except the little one. But even then she'd bleed enough to make your lives all easier".
I just sneered back. We started talking about how we were gonna divide up the blood letting. I noted, somewhat awkwardly, that me giving up one pint was like anyone else giving up two, as far as dangerous health risks were concerned, since I only had half as much blood (if that) in the first place. I quietly wished that I could turn into autumn again, knowing she could easily give up two or three without much trouble.

In the end, I volunteered one, the binder volunteered 4(!!! mainly because he's got a really high CON, and he can bind Naberius the next day to shrug off the CON and blood loss a lot faster than the rest of us will be able to). The Warmage offered to pick up 3 if the Aristocrat could part with 2... As soon as we reached the number, they moved on us. It was just a blur of pain, fangs, and red streaks everywhere. They were not gentle.

The big one picked me up, chewed half through to my windpipe, and tossed me to the street behind him when he got his pint, moving on the warmage, who was also being bitten by the... yeah. Ect, ect.

We bled.

It was over in two rounds, with the crimson maw actually having crimson maws, and the four of us laying on the streets and trying to slow the bleeding from the brutal neck wounds we'd suffered.

We were dizzy, exhausted, and struggling to move. The Maw just laughed and started walking off into the streets. The Binder called out to them, telling them we were so weak we could barely move, and the halfling just turned back and asked "Whatcha want us to do about it then?". The Binder said we wouldn't be able to fend off an attack if more zombies came by... the halfling just shrugged and said "not our problem izzit? A deals a deal, we're gonna pretend we never saw ya. Have fun!"
And with that they disappeared in the darkness.

We managed to crawl up to each other and help each other up, mustering the strength to stumble into the same house we'd just rescued the survivors from. The Binder and warmage managed to re-barricade the door while me and the aristocrat just passed clean out.

[13_CBS]

Session 2(b)


Blood-tasting

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So as I trailed off last time, the four of us were in the Necropolis of Undead City, And had just stumbled awkwardly through bad lighting towards the nearest shop we could find, in hopes of getting some of those handy-dandy low-light vision goggles we were told about. The shop we could find the fastest though had a small wooden sign hanging above the door that said "Best's Blood".

Not entirely sure what that meant, at first, we headed inside to find a single room shop that looked like the bottom floor of a wine cellar, with criss-crossed shelves holding a number of dark glass wine bottles. We didn't have to ask what was in the bottles. The shop-keep was another unsettling touch, sitting behind the counter with his head cocked in our direction, we could see that he had X's for eyes. Not a cartoonish joke, he didn't have eyes, only having hideous stitchwork in the shape of an X where his occulars should be.

He sniffed in our direction when we came inside, saying "So you're not here to buy. Looking to sell?" When he talked, we could see that he was obviously a vampire.

The Binder responded by somewhat incredulously asking if he meant our blood. The shopkeep just chuckled and said that, of course that's what he meant. He then apologized, saying he should have been able to tell we weren't locals by the air we carried with us. He gave us a brief explanation of his shop, saying that while there was enough blood for the local vampiric citizens to survive with the 'donations' the citizens made, there was no real quality control in what they were drinking. If they wanted something specific, they would have to find that special someone with what they were after.

'Best's Blood' purchased blood by the pint, keeping track of a few key details about the donor (gender, race, whether they were a virgin and such). The Warmage asked if the blood wouldn't go bad being stored in a bottle, to which the shopkeep picked up a small wand and promised (with a very business like air) that all of his blood was carefully tracked and kept under a constant Gentle Repose effect. It wasn't as good as fresh-from-the-neck, but it was the next best thing.

He then asked us again if we had anything to sell.

We asked how much he usually charged/sold for. He let us take a look at a price sheet for most common situations, letting us know that the more rare it was, the more it tended to be worth (with a few exceptions).

Human blood wasn't incredibly valuable, dwarf blood was dirt cheap, elf blood was about twice what a human was worth. Virgin blood tripled the price. Gender price changed based on what race they were.

It was frighteningly detailed.

I couldn't help but ask, given my unusual double-nature, what the blood of an outsider might be worth. The shopkeep looked shocked (as shocked as one can look without eyes I suppose) and asked "Demon? Angel? Where could you get that?"

I said that it wasn't demonic or angelic, that it was just sort of.... "Other" and that I couldn't really provide a detailed explanation because I wasn't 100% sure myself. The shopkeep pondered it for a moment before saying that if I could get him a taste of it, he would let me know what a pint of it was worth.

He also pointed out the donation rules, mentioning that he would only take from the same donor once every two weeks, and only when he needed that type of supply.

We respectfully passed on any immediate donation, but I let him know I might come back with the outsider blood. He smirked. We asked if he had any of the dim-vision goggles that we'd seen people wearing, and he said that he didn't, but that pretty much any other shop would have a pair or two. We asked how much they usually cost, and he raised a finger slowly, pointing at his disfigured face, and saying "I'm... not really sure..." as if we were the dumbest creatures on the planet.

We awkwardly excused ourselves and stumbled back into the shadowy conditions.

***************************************

That's pretty much the end of the session. We managed to find a shop that had some random nick-nacks (though finding a place that had CURE spells in any capacity would prove to be trickier than normal). We found that the goggles were pretty much ridiculously overpriced, which explained why not everyone on the streets was wearing a pair. We pooled in and bought two, figuring we would just have to suck it up and go by the buddy system for getting around safely.

We found a cheap inn and stayed for the night (or day, whatever) to talk about what to do next.

And that was the end of session two. We still didn't level

[Thatguyoverther]

I think you missed session 2(a) of the most current campaign. Other than that hours of awesome. +1 Internets.

[13_CBS]

...seriously? I forgot to put up session 2a?

Damn it. *Feels dumb*

[13_CBS]

Session 2(a)


Big Red

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Our session started with us standing in front of a bank that the workers were no longer fearful of entering to re-open. Despite being lightly signed and smelling faintly of burnt hair, we were told that the ancient great wyrm, 'Big Red' wanted to see us immediately. That's not the kind of social obligation one normally shunts, so we set out trecking to the eastern border of the town (which happened to be at the base of a mountain) and began marching the trail up. After what felt like way too long, we finally made it to the entrance of a cave. A spot check revealed several small pairs of glowing reptilian eyes staring back at us, but not what the eyes were attached to.

Not really having a huge number of options, we stepped into the cave, only to see an entire swarm of kobolds perched at every conceivable angel around the entrance, clinging to the rock faces and chittering quietly to each other. We heard a number of them whispering "Three big one small, on their way". One of the bigger looking ones, who had a faint trace of golden scales running through his features, shuffled up and told us that we had to leave our weapons at the entrance if we were going to see Big Red.

That seemed reasonable in a way (I mean, not like our non-masterwork darts and a cheap farmers scythe were going to have much effect against a two thousand year old dragon the size of a monument). Still, we were stepping into his home, so we disarmed and gave our gear to the incredibly polite kobolds who tenderly tucked them into the nook near the door and stood guard over them.

We went further into the caves, noting an extremely high number of kobolds running here and there and performing various tasks that may or may not have been busy-work to keep them out of trouble. Finally, we made it to a larger cavern... large enough that the incredibly massive dragon resting on an even more massive pile of gold coins and precious stones. The entire pile (and in fact the entire cavern) was ringed with Kobolds in very expensive looking armor, wielding very dangerous looking weapons. The ones closest to the dragon (and perched on ledges behind him) were winged, and very powerful looking, and on closer examination seemed to be half-dragons (both the red and gold variety).

The dragon noticed us coming in, stared at us for an uncomfortably long moment, and then asked if we needed anything before we got down to business. The Warmage mentioned that we were kind of roughed up and injured. The Dragon barked something in Draconic (and we realized, with some discomfort, that the Warmage is the only one of us who SPEAKS draconic. We begged him to stick to common for the time being), and a few seconds later, out of one of the nooks, came what the DM described as "A kobold Butler", complete with black suit, holding a mirrored tray with four tall thin glasses full of greenish liquid. We took the drinks gratefully, but sniffed them before downing them. The DM assured us they smelled and tasted like every other healing potion we've ever had, with a slight mint flavor to boot. It not only healed us to full, we each got 10 temporary hitpoints (that the DM said would last until we lost them violently).

So, at least Big Red was a decent host.

The party just kind of looked around the table, and then settled on me, since I said I was going to be the party face and all. So the tiniest of our group stepped out and started talking to the biggest living creature any of us had ever seen

I asked the dragon if he'd mind conversing in Common, since I didn't speak Draconic. He nodded appreciatively, but didn't say anything.

I asked him if there was any chance we could meet with whoever designed his cities currency, especially the symbol (assuming correctly that the gold dragon had already told him what was going on). The Dragon again nodded appreciatively and announced "A meeting has already been arranged for you". I smiled and thanked him, and asked him when and where the meeting was to take place. The Dragon responded "Here, and approximately one minute ago".

"Oh. You designed the currency? I should have guessed that".

"Don't be too hard on yourself, your races aren't known for being exceptionally intelligent specimens".

...OUCH.

I couldn't really think of a reply to that other than to look at my compatriots. But the dragon just chuckled slightly and went on. "The nature of my cities currency has been a poorly kept secret, already known to more than I would have willingly informed. I would rather have the details be forgotten within a few generations, but a war between our respective cities would promise little monetary gain for either side. In the interest of keeping our unofficial policy of mutual neutrality, I'll share with you some of the more superficial facts about our nations own unique coinage." The Dragon leaned down off of his massive pile of treasure, bringing his face close enough to us that we could feel the heat from his exhalation. He asked if we needed him to use smaller words. I told him that we caught the gist of it, and asked (as politely as the circumstances allowed) for him to continue.

(Note to the readers: I'm not 100% positive I got that little speech word for word. That applies to pretty much every direct line you read, I usually won't remember each syllable uttered, so bear in mind that there's a small creative license being taken with direct quotes).

The dragon leaned back and again barked something in Draconic, and a small group of younger looking kobolds came running out of several nooks, each carrying a handful of cheap copper coins stained different colors. Specifically the chromatic dragon colors.

The Dragon explained that the coins were simply a cheaply manufactured representation of the actual gold contained within the city. White and black coins being worth 1 gold and 5 gold, Green coins being worth 50 gold, Blue coins being worth 500 gold, and of course, Red coins being worth 5000 gold.
The kobolds laid the coins face down so we could see the symbols on the backs. They were all slightly different,but similar enough. The Dragon explained that while most people thought the symbols represented the value in some obscure form, the symbols were actually a type of magical tracers, allowing individuals with the proper knowledge to track who had handled the coin, person by person. It allowed for the patrons of Dragon City to settle disputes concerning high-value deals by tracking who had exchanged the coins person by person and finding where any disparities might arise. It also made it rather easy to convict and execute thieves (though few people knew about that little detail).

The Dragon said one more thing in Draconic, and another kobold came running up to us with the (slightly crumpled and singed) sketch of the symbol on our kingdoms threatening letters. The Dragon apologized, saying he couldn't help us directly, because while the symbol was in fact very similar in style, it wasn't an actual match, and the Dragon himself had never seen that exact symbol before. "Without knowing how the symbol was actually created, or what purpose it serves, there's little anyone can do to 'read' it directly. You have to find the arcanist who designed the symbol for that. From what I understand, that's exactly what you're trying to do. I wish you luck, but I'm afraid this trail is a dead end, little ones."

The Binder asked if, with his advanced intelligence, he had any thoughts about where we might start searching next. The Dragon thought for a moment, and said that the symbols in use on the Dragon currency were more ancient than ancient, existing further back than any member of our races could even trace their own lineage. He suggested that the only creatures that might be able to tell us more would be exceptionally long-lived, like himself.

We looked back and forth at each other, before the Binder said, "like... undead creatures?". The dragon just nodded sagely.

Before we left, the Aristocrat asked the dragon if his name was actually Big Red. The dragon sneered a little and leaned directly into the Aristocrats face, before letting loose with a stream of syllables that I couldn't even begin to re-print accurately here. The dragon then leaned back and said "I know the lesser races struggle with anything requiring their attention for more than eight or so letters. To that end, I don't find it offensive to allow them to call me "Big Red" as an alternative. Will that be all?"

We nodded, edging back to the entrance to the cavern. Before we left though, the dragon stopped us, and leaned down to face me directly, sniffed me once, and then said "You know, half-dragon halflings make fantastic military scouts. Very hardy, very mobile. If you ever want to escape the stink of that farm soil, there may be a home for you here."

I coughed and thanked him for the offer as politely as I could, while mumbling something about my family needing my help and backing with my group towards the exit. The dragon just chuckled and went back to laying on his gold pile.

The kobolds gave us back our weapons without any fuss, and we left quickly.

Chilling Out

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On the way down, we talked about whether or not the dragon was just trying to shift any possible suspicion onto our undead allies by sending us off to that city instead. It was pretty unbelievable that we'd have a near identical symbol matching his kingdoms currency, and then he would casually send us off to a city that didn't even USE his currency in any great quantity. And it's not like he respected our intelligence.

We elected to get our banking done at one of the non-rat infested buildings, but then to stay around in Dragon City for a few more days, officially to rest and stock up on supplies (by doing some odd jobs), but unofficially to scope some of the kingdoms currency and take it with us. Sure, he could trace us through it (and probably scry on it, for all we knew), but it wasn't a lead we were ready to just drop all together.

While we were staying in dragon city, the DM let us know that we started to see greater and greater signs of draconic bloodlines running everywhere. It seemed Big Red and his golden trio got around a lot... probably intentionally to boost their kingdoms strength. We noted half-dragon war-horses being trained and tended to, every now and then a person flying from one location to another, and even a pack of red-scaled and winged attack dogs barking angrily at us from inside a cage.

Home city DID have defenses against air-born attackers, and even trained dragon-slaying knights (not as a hostility, just as a contingency). But the more we stayed in Dragon City, the more we noted that we would certainly not enjoy a war against them.

And we started considering coming back at higher levels to try to talk them into letting us purchase some half-dragon mounts

Guards! Guards!

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Finally convinced that staying in dragon city wasn't going to give us any more clues that didn't involve how draconic leadership spends their friday nights, we decided to take off. We debated returning directly to Home City just to tell the church what we'd learned, but then it occurred to us that we hadn't actually learned anything incredibly relevant yet.

So we decided to head towards Undead City. At least they were our direct allies, so they'd probably not be upset with us showing up and poking around asking questions. We might even be able to get an audience with some higher up royalty, which would be an impressive feat for 1st level characters. Meeting with several powerful leaders in as short a time span as possible has to be some weird kind of record .

On the way up to Undead City though, about halfway there, we came across a guard station posted in the middle of nothing, with the Empires color scheme. Two big, angry looking guards were standing in the middle of the road, while a third one was sitting inside the guard shack.

The barked at us to stop immediately, and we slowed the mules down and parked where we sat. The one approached us cautiously, telling us that we were traveling on an Empire controlled road, and we had to pay a toll of 5 gold pieces for using it.

The Binder (who was currently bound to Aym, and under her influence, and therefor greedy as heck), said that we weren't going to pay a toll just for traveling. I whispered that we should just pay the 5 gold, considering it's a fairly small sum in most respects. Certainly less than the potential damage that might be caused.

The Binder just shook his head and said "No, this can't even be an empire controlled road, it's the road between Dragon City and Undead city".

The guard cocked his head and looked at us like we were lunatics. "I don't care what the road LEADS to, the empire now controls this land. And there was just a sudden hike in toll prices, it's now 10 gold. Each".

The Binder just laughed and shook his head, saying he'd not give a copper piece for traveling on an an open road.

The guards all drew their weapons, while the guard talking to us said "The toll just bumped up to 50 gold each. And 100 each if you want your friend to leave with his tongue attached."

I moved between the binder and the angry guard, trying to calm him down with a diplomacy check, saying I was sorry, that our friend was just very excitable since we were robbed not too long ago, and I asked if there was any way we could just pay the original toll and a few extra coins for the trouble.

The guard just laughed in my face, and said that I was out of my mind if I thought a few extra coins was worth his humiliation, demanding we turn out our pockets right now and maybe he'd leave us enough supplies to reach our next destination.

I looked back at the group, the Warmage gave me a nod and a small smile, and I turned back to the guard and smiled, before saying "Then let the reaping begin". By the time the guard knew what had happened, I'd grown to human sized and knocked him prone, slashing at him with my scythe. The other two guards charged our carriage, jumping onto the drivers seat and slashing at me and the binder.

The Warmage started throwing orbs, while the aristocrat jumped out to join the fight.

It was actually a pretty brutal combat session, as we had them outnumbered by one (and were boosted with temporary hitpoints and all), but the guards had more levels than us (or something) because they knocked us around like punks. By the end of it, the whole group was pushing towards zero hitpoints, and lady autumn was low enough that I willingly ended holding her form before she ran out of hitpoints, shrinking back to a halfling and becoming very fatigued (and what's more, with my low strength, being fatigued actually left me encumbered under my own gear). All I could do was fall back against a tree and start pegging the guards with crossbow bolts.

In the end, we killed all three of them, but it cost us a lot. The whole party was pretty roughed up, and the Binder was in negatives. We had no way to magically heal him at the time, and he needed to be conscious to drink a healing potion, but we managed to stabilize him with an untrained heal check and tuck him safely inside the carriage.

We also covered up the fight as best we could. We took everything that had the empires colors on it,and either scraped the paint off (the armor and shields), or burned it outright (the flags and wooden shack). We took everything, valuable or not, to make sure there was nothing to scry on and find out what happened. We left the bodies in the woods for scavengers, and decided to try to find a shady fence in undead city who wouldn't ask questions when we offloaded the scrapped up gear.

We weren't too upset with the Binder. The situation had been unfair, and the vestiges influence is mostly what drove him to egging the situation on. Still, it made the next day of travel tougher without the extra pair of eyes keeping watch. Once he was conscious, we managed to get him to drink a healing potion, and were mostly good to go again.

Though I remembered that I have Cure spells on my spell list, and cross-class UMD for that matter, (even though I can't cast spells yet), so I made a mental note to shop for some healing scrolls to use on unconscious allies.

We had a brief run in with some wolves too but after we killed one of them, the others ran.

City of the Dead

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Finally, we made it to the outskirts of Undead City. It was a kind of gruesome sight, as approaching the city walls seemed like walking through a massive restless graveyard. There were fields of crops everywhere, but they were all being tended to by skeletons or zombies wearing black masks. Everywhere you looked another mindless corpse was repeating a task over and over. There were also shallow graves dug in perfectly symmetrical rows leading off to the horizon in both directions. A knowledge history check from the Binder revealed that most, if not all of those shallow graves had still active undead creatures buried a foot or so beneath the surface, waiting for the mental command to spring up and attack any invaders.

The idea that we were walking past row after row of hundreds of skeleton-in-a-boxes, didn't really sooth us as we got closer to the black and jagged skyline of the roofed necropolis.

We had no trouble getting into the city, simply casually informing them that we were there on business from Home City. We did have some trouble navigating once we got inside, as the place was roofed off and completely devoid of natural light, with only very dim magical light sources lining the streets. A perpetual noir alley in every direction you looked.

None of us had any kind of nocturnal sight (well, lady autumn had darkvision, but I could only do that for a few minutes a day). It wasn't pitch black, we just couldn't make out a lot of details because it was so dim.

The locals were friendly nonetheless. A lot of them (that is, a lot more than I would have thought) were most assuredly still alive. I guess living populace is encouraged, as all of those corpses have to come from somewhere.

We did notice that a lot of the living people were wearing black goggles of some kind, and we asked one of them what they did. He said they made it easier to see in the dimness, and that any corner market should have a few pairs.

It took us a few minutes of stumbling to find a corner market .

[13_CBS]

Session 3(b)


"Look You Stupid Bastards, You've Got No Blood Left!"

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So I left off with us holed up a run down and boarded up house in the Old quarter, having just been brutalized and left for dead by the Crimson Maw themselves. Me and the aristocrat failed some kind of fortitude roll and passed out clean, but the warmage and binder both soldiered on (despite having lost more blood) and managed to get the place secure and tend to the two of their more frail companions to keep us in the land of the living.
We were unconscious for several hours. During that time, the Crimson Maw managed to mop up what was left of the undead infestation in old quarter and re-establish control over the area. By the time our companions managed to rouse me and the aristocrat from our unconscious state, old quarter had been re-opened and the citizens who lived there were returning to their homes. We discreetly pulled ourselves together, using bandages and high collars to conceal the bites on our necks, and nonchalantly exited old quarter.

We stopped by the home of the would-be-revolutionary to tell him what happened. He thanked us for our bravery, even if we had very little real impact on the course of events. He also became self-righteously furious when we told him what went down with the Crimson Maw, going into a proletariat-esque speech about how the vampiric upper class only pretended to respect the living humans they relied on and such. In the end, we thanked him for his help, he thanked us for ours (and told us to keep the illicit supplies he'd given us),and we parted ways.

Now we were left resuming our side-tracked quest to discover more about the symbol on the threatening letters. Figuring that with the threat in old-quarter taken care of, getting straight answers would probably be easier. Also figuring that, since in our city, the nobles had asked the church for answers, we might do the same thing here. Maybe the, presumably morally neutral (at best) church frequented by the undead would have answers or dark knowledge that our by-default-righteous-and-good church didn't.

So we went to the church where we'd first run into the would-be-revolutionary, and headed inside. The place was about how you would expect a church handled by the undead to look, but wasn't emenating pure evil or anything. Churches are already kind of spooky, this church was just spookier.

What was emanating evil was the FREAKING CRIMSON MAW lounging around the pulpit and poking stuff while looking bored. Only a few hours after they almost killed us, we bump into them in the cities official church. Turns out that they had a reason to be there.

of course, when they noticed we were walking in, the halfling blurted out "Holy hell, they survived!" in a legitimately surprised but still mocking and condescending fashion. The Binder said "We're tougher than we look", and the halfling replied "Right, well, you'd have to be wouldn't you? Cause you look like a stiff breeze could off you."

Before any of us could reply (as noted by the DM holding up his hand), the priest of the church came out and addressed the crimson maw, telling them that the king wanted to talk with them about... and then the priest looked over and noticed he wasn't alone in the room, and continued with "About the earlier subject".

DUN DUN DUNDUNDUN DUUUUUUUUN

The halfling (who was apparently the groups default face) mentioned that they hadn't had time to get anything done before being called back to clean up old quarter, but the priest told him that the king wanted to meet face to face all the same.

The Crimson maw all nodded, dissolved into mist, and floated up through the (previously unnoticed by us) vents in the ceiling. Presumably a network through the city traversed only by vampires?

Then the priest turned to address us with a small bow, and asked what we needed of the church.

We were all questioning the wisdom of bringing the now-suspicious seeming priest in on the troubles befouling our fair city, as evident by our sideways nervous glances at each other. Still, we weren't going to get very far by NOT asking questions... I stepped up and said that we were on a mission from Home city (to which the priest bowed slightly and welcomed us as allies). The Binder then handed him the symbol and asked if he could tell us anything about it.

The priest looked down at the symbol, then back up at us with a confused expression. Then back down at the symbol. Then back up at us with a furious expression. He gestured at the shadows around us, and three halberd wielding guards locked the door and positioned themselves around us.

The Priest flew into a rage (literally flying, btw) and threw the paper onto the ground, screaming at us to explain ourselves.

The Dm actually screamed, by the way, and the binder player just stammered awkwardly that we came from Home City(while the rest of us clammed right the hell up in freaked-out silence). The vampiric priest, still in a rage, said "Yes yes, we've established THAT already, WHY ARE YOU HERE?".

The binder spilled his guts, didn't hold back a single detail. Our royal family had been receiving threatening letters with the symbol, we needed to find out more about it, etc, etc...

And as he babbled his explanation, the priest became visibly less perturbed, floating back to the ground, a thoughtful and concerned expression crossing his face. The guards backed off at his gesture, and he held up a hand to stop our Binder at the tail end of his explanation, holding up his hand, picking up the symbol and telling us simply "My apologies for the misunderstanding. I should think you should speak with our king directly." Then he turned into a mist (symbol sketch in tow) and disappeared into the same vents as the crimson maw.

...CHA CHING. Audience with the ruler! Two for Two baby!

The King and We

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So the halberd wielding guards marched us out of the church and through the city streets. People stared at us as onlookers will, mild concern, more confusion, as to why the four (apparently obvious) outsiders would be getting escorted by heavily armed vampire guards.

The trek was disorienting, so much that we weren't sure exactly how far above or below ground we went. The city was a maze of roofed in streets on top of roofed in streets, with homes and businesses networked through everything in three dimensions. Eventually, we reached what our DM described as an "indoor courtyard", an obvious extravagant building, still INSIDE the darkened city mind you... surrounded by guards and decked out in finery. The guards all allowed us to pass wordlessly, obviously expecting our arrival. We were taken inside, which largely resembled the outside... the whole thing began to get so disorienting that we took an automatic penalty to spot and listen checks, unable to make the saves to keep our bearings in the oh-so unfamiliar city setup.

The Warmage mentioned that fighting people inside a city built with architecture so unlike any other city would probably be about as difficult as fighting the half-dragon armies of Dragon City. That's two cities we don't want to go toe to toe with.

Eventually, we were brought into a throne room, decked out in reds and blacks and whites, a glaring testament to gothic elegance. And sitting on the throne, in a room full of guards (spot checks mostly failed, but a few passes revealed that some were vampires, and some were human), and the crimson maw, sulking around the kings throne like obedient dogs (dogs with razor sharp swords). The priest was also there.

The king acknowledged us with a simple head nod, and a grim expression. We had a long roleplaying session here, where the king explained to us that him and his ilk (read, vampires) were also receiving threatening letters. Featuring the same symbol. He hadn't said anything for basically the same reason Home City hadn't said anything, they were too busy "WTFing" and trying to find more information before revealing their hand.

We were slightly dubious, but only a little. The King reassured us that Undead City and Home City had been allies for longer than any of us could trace our own bloodlines back. He also said that, while Home City might not be too worried about things, being so overwhelmingly prepared for a vicious defense, Undead City was less well protected, and they HAD been very worried.

With the revelation that both of our cities were being threatened (and we managed to blurt out that Dragon City hadn't said anything about being threatened), the king felt it was time to pool our resources and act as a single unit. When we asked what he meant by "pool our resources" he smirked, and said that there were contingency plans in place for strange events such as this. He was going to send us back to Home City... WITH the crimson maw... to alert our royal family that in the event of an emergency, Undead City would be evacuating to Home City.

We asked if we should get approval from Home City first? The King just told us that he had been a friend and ally of our royal family for generation after generation, and that every ranking member of our city knew this was one possibility in the event of war.

So, we were going home. WITH the crimson maw. To help them oversee preparing our city to support a massive vampiric populace.

Feeling incredibly suspicious and paranoid? So were we.

But ultimately it wasn't our place to object to things like this. We were lucky to have talked to the vampire king at ALL, and we didn't know the details of his friendship with our cities royal family. Every blue-blood from Home City grew up meeting him and knowing he was on their side, so he might very well be right and there might simply be no objection to us preparing to be Site A in undead cities evacuation plan...

So we geared up and set out on the road. With the Crimson Maw in tow .

Did You Just Prank A Vampire?

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They were traveling in five very well protected and decked out coffins, and we left our mules in Undead City in favor of skeletal horses. For real. The logic being that we could all take shifts in traveling and make it to Home City way faster without any real stops for the mounts to rest. The Crimson Maw would lead us at night, and we'd lead during sunlight hours, following a very strict "Don't kill us while we sleep, and we won't kill you while you sleep" rule. The Vampire King was very insistent that we were under the PROTECTION of the maw while helping with this.

We were still incredibly nervous falling asleep in a moving carraige led by skeleton horses with five barely-contained monster vampires perched around us. They brought more than enough blood for the trip (and then some), but... still.

Awkward.

The second night out, we were woken up by the female vampire standing in our carriage and slamming something heavy down to wake us up, telling us she was thirsty. We reminded her of the whole "No killing each other in our sleep" condition the king had brought up, but she said she wasn't there to kill us, she was there cause she was thirsty. She was very blunt, very abrupt, and not really up for negotiations. The binder reminded her that they brought more than enough blood on the way, but she just said "Tastes bad. Fresh is better." He tried to tell her off, but she just climbed on top of him and growled "How hungry do you want me to get on this trip?"

He gave her a pint of blood . But he wouldn't let her go for the neck, offered his wrist instead. Made her mad, but she didn't fight him. The Halfling, vicious bastard he was, later apologized to us, (sort of. It wasn't so much "Sorry" as "I know those weren't the rules we agreed to, won't happen again").

We got her back. You might think that it's stupid to get into a prank war with an ancient vampire who already knows what your blood tastes like. You'd be right. We still get her back. Dragged her coffin out into the open air at sunset and put up a tent around it... then the Warmage cast "Light" in the surrounding area as many times as his spell slots would allow, until things were good and bright.

Then we knocked on the coffin, and when she opened it up to come out to take over the travel... we tore the tent away . She screamed in momentary confusion and fear. But by that point the other four vampires were up, and stopped her from tearing us apart.

The halfling couldn't stop laughing. We even earned some small, token respect over that little stunt, because there were no late-night snacking episodes for the rest of the week and a half of travel...

We also earned a little bit of respect from them for one other thing. Around dusk one night, we bumped into another guard post built by the empire. Only this time, there was no attempt to talk our way out of trouble. They saw skeleton horses and a carriage full of coffins, and attacked us outright.
When the sun set, and the crimson maw came out of their coffins, they found us going through the guards valuables and burning the corpses/flags/shack to cover our tracks.
They approved.

In the end, all nine of us (plus the skeleton horses) made it back to Home City safe and sound. We got a few strange looks from our own citizens, but nothing outright bad happened. One of the side effects of having a city full of the undead as an ally is that you WILL see the occasional undead horse... not often, but enough that you can put two and two together and not attack the riders...

Session 3 ended with us in Home City, the Binder reporting in to his church, and the rest of us preparing a meeting with the royal family of our fair city with the crimson maw, to let them know both of us were in this together.

And we finally leveled up to 2nd level .

The Aristocrat took a level of Marshal, and the aura that boosts your fortitude saves. The rest of us stayed single-classes.

[13_CBS]

Session 4(a)


Possibilities

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So things got pretty interesting in this one.

The session opened with us (and our shiny new levels!) seeing the planning from the tail end of our last session coming to fruition. The Crimson Maw were meeting with a rather large grouping of royal family members, including the ruling family itself. We were accompanying them for two reasons. The first was that the Undead king had requested we escort and assist the Crimson Maw during daylight hours while this is going on ANYWAY, so there's no real reason for us to be too far apart. The second being that Home City is actually thankful that we've shed at least a little light on the subject of the mysterious symbol (TM). We are now experiencing a mindor dose of celebrity for being the go-to group when connecting puzzle pieces.

With that all cleared up, we began discussing possibilities we're gearing up to defend ourselves against. We came up with three.

1) As suggested by the Aristocrat/Marshal, is Dragon City. The only of the three major non-empire cities in the region not threatened by the senders. The Binder pointed out that we don't KNOW they're being ignored, and that the dragon leaders of the city might rightfully be playing their hand close to their ches,t just as both of our cities had been doing. There's also the question of, WHY, if they were threatening us both, they would help us connect the dots and start working together against them.

2) I mentioned the possibility of the Empire. They allready hate all three of us, and we have literally no intelligence on their involvement, if any. It's not unreasonable to assume they're positiong themselves as our enemies. The Binder threw out his two cents on this one too though, pointing out that we're talking about subtly and subterfuge from a civilization that's putting up road blocks with armed thugs and extorting coin. He mentioned, rightfully so, that hating us means they aren't likely to threaten us. If they had a way to hurt us, they would probably simply EXECUTE the plan, not warn us about it.

He agreed (without knowing it) with a lot of what posters suggested here, that the Empire is probably being threatened too, and are spreading themselves out in a blind panic reaction.
Which brings us tooooooo...

3) Unknown. Not a very helpful suggestion, but also the most likely. Someone, a group, cult, or gods know what is in the mood to de-stabilize our various societies for reasons we can't pretend to understand.

During the meeting with the crimson maw and royalty, the DM had us roll spot checks. We failed, which ultimately meant we didn't react to anything out of the ordinary. Which meant the meeting ended just before sunrise, with our ruling body agreeing to start preparing the city for a flood of refugees from Undead City should the need arise, and putting our myriad of defenses on, what essentially boils down to DefCon 1 (for non-political or non-US readers, that's basically the USAs way of saying "Holy crap, get ready for something bad to happen")

Critical Failure On A Bluff Check

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We loaded up the Crimson Maws coffins after daylight struck, and took our skeleton-drawn carraige out into the streets to ferry them to the safest place we could think of. We ultimately decided to just leave them where they were, so they would come with us. It's not like the extra weight mattered, undead horses don't get tired.

So we set out into the city and took care of some business. We sold off some gear we'd collected on our travels that we didn't need (AKA, dead-empire-guard stuff with the national colors scrapped off), and counted our sweet delicious monies. We stocked up on some essential supplies and other niceties (such as robe/coverings for the skeleton horses to make them a little less obscene, but no less spooky). We also took the time to pick up some spell scrolls for stuff that might come in handy (not having a real arcanist). Nothing offenseive, Knock spells and things like that. The city shops had a really good selection of arcana-obscura for us to peruse.

That's when the weird hit with full force.

We were traveling down the city streets, in broad daylight mind you, when we got flagged down by... by the human male member of the Crimson Maw. Just casually jogging up to our carraige... in broad daylight. While simultaneously sleeping in a coffin in the backseat.

He waved us down and came to stand next to us when we stopped, trying very hard to sound casual when he said "Hey, I was hoping we could talk on some details of the evacuation plan."

We just stared in confusion.

The vampire. Standing in broad daylight while in two places at once, just looked at us quizzically and asked what was wrong. Then squinted hard and cocked his head. The DM threw us a bone, and the Warmage (with maxed out Spellcraft) identified that whatever was standing in front of us was trying to read our surface thoughts.

A look of confusion, then realization, then abject horror crossed the mans face. It said "Oh *expletive*" in a dialect of common so thick we could barely understand it (sounded kinda like a drunk scottsman saying "Ahwe Shuuot"), and took off running down the street.

Naturally we urged the skeletal horses to max speed in hot pursuit, shouting for anyone to either tackle the man or get out of our way. They did neither unfortunately, and the thing took a right and ducked into some alleys.
Now, as a halfling I have a kinda sad move speed for sprinting like that, so me and the Warmage stayed on the cart while the binder and aristocrat tucked and rolled onto the pavement, taking minimal damage and getting up and running after the imposter while me and the warmage tried to cut off the runner through the city streets.

It didn't work out that way. The thing wasn't too fast, but it was fast enough that the two runners couldn't actually CATCH it, and it was lithe and agile enough that they couldn't pin it our out maneuver it, watching helplessly as it slid under carts, rolled over obstacles, and monk-ran on the sides of walls to bypass crowds.

Worse, the way the paths through the city streets worked out, we came to a spot where we thought we would be able to cut them off, only to discover that we'd actually wound up on a bridge, while the runners were sprinting along a street much further below.

Warmage: "I could true-strike him from here and take his head clean off?"

Me: "I think we want him ALIVE, how far down is it?"

DM: "You have no way of knowing that off the top of your head."

Warmage: "What about some kind of skill check or something? My INT is
high, I should be able to estimate it closely?"

The DM thought about it for a minute, and then said "Yeah, I'll give it to you. Roll a D20, the higher the number, the closer your estimate will be to the truth."

He rolled a ninteen

The DM informed us that it was 80 feet. Now the DM frowns on metagaming, so the pressure to make a decision fast was on. I crossed my fingers and hoped that I remembered how fall damage works correctly.

Me: "Alright, I'll hop off the carraige and jump off the bridge."

Warmage: "Wow, really?"

DM: "You're sure? I'll give you one back-pedal here if you decide right now."

Me: "I'm sure. Because I'm going to shout "REAPER" as I fall and pray for minimal fall damage."

So my tiny little halfling plummeted to her guaranteed death, shouting "REAPER" on the fall and transforming into avatar form. The falling damage worked out about perfectly. I took just enough damage to knock poor Lady Autumn into negatives (-3 actually, autumn is one tough cookie). But the way the champion class works, if the Avatar falls into negatives, they instantly transform back into their normal form.

I transform into Autumn during the fall, hit the ground hard enough to leave a web of cracked stone around me from the impact, and stand up as my normal tiny halfling self, brandishing my crossbow, screaming at the escaping imposter to stop in their tracks.

I'm not unproud of that moment... I spent my daily use in about two and a half seconds, but what a show.

Fallout

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The Imposter scrambled back in confusion and terror, staggered and distracted long enough for the Binder and Aristocrat to tackle and subdue him. Which is when he starts to transform into anger, shifting between forms (long enough for us to spot and remember that he was also one of the servants at the meeting with the royalty!!!) temporarily flickering to his true form... a lanky gray humaoind with alien yellow eyes. A Doppleganger.
He... IT... thought better of that and picked a human form to rest in, but not fast enough that we didn't see what it really was.

We got in touch with as many of the royal family as we could, ultimately calling ALL of them back to where we'd met, AND waking up the crimson maw in the middle of the day (in a windowless room, they were angry, but understood when we showed them WHY... a doppleganger who'd been impersonating one of them. They were even kind of impressed that we'd caught him).

Naturally, we incited a fair degree of justified panic. It was established immediately that no one of any ruling family was to "wander off alone" at any point for any reason. As of that moment, they were forming groups to stay together in until a real plan could be formed.

We didn't want to cause a city-wide panic, but the ruling bodies planned to tell any ranking official and anyone of any relevant power what was going on, as fast as possible, with the same set of rules (a buddy-system that could not be broken for any reason). Also with orders to keep it as secret as possible until we had a better plan in place...

The king even noted this was something there was no current contingency plan for .

The Crimson Maw were the only ones the rule didn't apply to. Being vampires, we could instantly verify wether they were a doppleganger or not with a simple mirrored surface.

We interogated the Doppleganger... got a lot of angry babbeling about how "*expletive* all of you *expletive expletive* so many different types, can't keep you *expletive* straight, thought the little ones couldn't go in the *expletive* sunglight,how was I supposed to know?". It also spat something about how as soon as they found out he'd screwed up so bad, he'd be dead by next sunrise, if not sooner. Didn't give us much more useful information, or anything about who 'they' was.

We stuck it in the deepest, darkest dungeon Home City had, with about a dozen high ranking guards by the entrance with explicit rotation schedules for rest and orders to obey the buddy-system the rest of us were on. For obvious reasons.

Side Notes

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ALSO: Of note to anyone who might be interested in psuedo-epilogues from the Crystal Cantrips campaign. It came up in conversation at our last session that the DM had another epliogue planned for the Dragonborn couple. He was going to have the Dragonborn come home to find the former-changeling tearfully creating a seal and summoning the Drifter as a vestige.

He was going to have to talk her out of it, or watch her bind the Drifter as a vestige and jump through a portal to a new world (where he may or may not chase her).

But after watching me get away, the DM was feeling generous and gave them "Happily Ever After" as an official ending

[woodenbandman]

SilverClawShift your DM is amazing. As is your group. I wish my group was as good as yours.

[Fayd]

Bump for epic-ness.

[Mr White]

Let's hope the campaign gets updated soon enough.

[Tyrmatt]

Apologies for the large gap between posts. I try to post here to remind people, open one of the spoiler boxes and then oh look it's 2am...

A question anyway, rather than making a new thread for a one line answer: Where is the Impenetrable Wall invocation? I'm combing all my books and can't find it anywhere.

[Claudius Maximus]

You really should not have revived the thread for that. There's a simple Q&A thread for such questions.

Anyway, it's in Dragon Magic.

[Lycanthromancer]

With any luck, the bump will get the ball rolling again.

[SilverClawShift]

Actually, interestingly enough, I came up with some more free time and was meaning to slam down the doppleganger campaign (hopefully in time to get a writeup of my own SCP campaign I'm working on). Though I wasn't planning on bumping the archive page, and asked for permission in advance to bump the main story page.

Then my computer crashed and left me with no internet connection for a few days

[DragoonWraith]

Ooh, ooh, I'm so excited !!

[Eldrys]

YAY!!

I loved the journals. i was sad when they left