Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Just a reminder, guys, here's the list of symbols!

A shepherd's crook with the butt etc. burns like a candle, with a single tongue of flame immolating the whole thing on a boulder.
A shepherd's crook etc. tending to a flowerbed on the ground under magma man.
A shepherd's crook etc. in a green disk on a round, gray stone under the obelisk.
A tongue of flame burns dead grass on Pride Rock overlooking the Lake of Death.
A green disk with a black disk superimposed. The black disk has a small tongue of flame emerging carved/painted on the wall in the secret tunnel.

A great tree stands between a bed of flowers and a pile of ashes on the throne of Kith-Kathan.
A shepherd's crook etc. is bent in a circle around a green disk on a tile in the goblin bedroom.
A great tree stands between a bed of flowers and a pile of ashes. The tree and ashes are above a shepherd's crook etc. This is beneath the above tile.

Flowers, reaching down with their leaves, have disturbed a pile of ashes. A great tree nearby has had a branch broken off, and is falling towards the flowers. This is on the ground leading to Refuge.

And, in the book that the Traveler left behind:

The image of the course of someone's life. On the left, a baby crawls. Then an infant walks. By the time you reach the right side, there is an old man, leaning on a cane. Beneath the left side is the shepherd's crook and some flowers. Beneath the right side is a tongue of flame and some dead grass.

A great tree, a pile of ashes, a shepherd's crook etc., and a single tongue of flame, are all encircled by a black line. The whole image has a small golden halo drawn over it.

The silhouette of a humanoid figure. Inside the silhouette are contained a number of flowers and blades of dead grass.

An enormous treant stands next to a broken bowl of ashes. Some sort of flower spirit is standing next to the bowl, with ashes on its hands. The treant is drawing back its clawed hand to destroy the flower spirit.

A tree is bent over, almost as if in mourning, beside a tombstone with a picture of a pile of ashes on it. One of the tree's branches is holding an uprooted flower.

The Essence: The Third Session

Despite illness on the part of the DM, this session happened! So yay.

The PCs continued on down the corridor, they... You know what? Instead of narrating what the PCs did, I'll just describe the things they found out. It's easier that way.

They found a city, called Refuge, populated by a people called the Blessed. The Blessed are made up of all different races, none of which breed true. Gnolls marry elves, kender marry dwarves, and the children produced are of every race under the sun - no half-gnoll-half-elf mixes. All these people live together in peace and harmony, most of their needs provided for by a substance called the Essence.

The story of Refuge is as follows: seven thousand years ago, something called the End of Ages happened. The folk wisdom is that the gods scoured the land for some sin, but who knows how true that is? The surface world was devastated, and people retreated underground. Some, like the dwarves, shadowpeople, and Hest elves already were underground. Some, like the goblins and kobolds already were often underground, and some, like the draconians retreated underground to survive. These races still all survive in their own cities in the Underdark of Krynn.

But other individuals of countless races were all drawn to one cavern. There, they found a town, all made for them. There were fortifications protecting the cavern from the outside world, waiting to be manned. There were buildings waiting to be occupied. There were fields ready to be plowed. And all of this was made of the Essence, a somewhat-translucent, blue substance that gives off a slight glow. The Essence is hard, but not brittle, burns cold, is edible (when in the form of vegetables), and seems to be in limitless supply; if a blacksmith needs more essence to make tools with, he can just go into the back room and get a block, and the pile never runs out. With the bounty of the essence, and the mingling of the races, a harmonious society was created.

A few centuries after the Founding, a man named the Traveler came to Refuge, and taught the Blessed many secrets, like how to plant crops more efficiently, and so forth. Before he left, he gave into the charge of the Blessed a book, to be given to an individual who met a certain description.

Eventually, Refuge grew to the point where the Essence couldn't keep up, and they started making houses and growing food out of mundane materials. So far, this hasn't caused any problems in society. This also explain's Refuge's need of trade, and continued contact with other cities in the Underdark.

The Blessed do not see the PCs as separate people. Rather, they see the PCs as one androgynous person of a race without any real distinguishing characteristics. When a PC picks up an item, this person picks up an item. When two PCs talk over each other, the person makes the noises of two voices at once. If the PCs are more active than one person can handle, other events start happening as if by magic. In fact, this person that the PCs are seen as being perfectly matches the description left by the Traveler, and they were given the book. The book contained a description of them, down to the names and races of the 'identities' this person purports to have.

The book was empty, but for the description and these five images:

The image of the course of someone's life. On the left, a baby crawls. Then an infant walks. By the time you reach the right side, there is an old man, leaning on a cane. Beneath the left side is the shepherd's crook and some flowers. Beneath the right side is a tongue of flame and some dead grass.

A great tree, a pile of ashes, a shepherd's crook etc., and a single tongue of flame, are all encircled by a black line. The whole image has a small golden halo drawn over it.

The silhouette of a humanoid figure. Inside the silhouette are contained a number of flowers and blades of dead grass.

An enormous treant stands next to a broken bowl of ashes. Some sort of flower spirit is standing next to the bowl, with ashes on its hands. The treant is drawing back its clawed hand to destroy the flower spirit.

A tree is bent over, almost as if in mourning, beside a tombstone with a picture of a pile of ashes on it. One of the tree's branches is holding an uprooted flower.


There is one more unusual feature of Refuge: the Wyvern in the Well. At the center of town, there is a deep well, some fifty yards across and two hundred yards deep, with a dry bottom. And at the bottom is an enormous wyvern. Any person can, once in their life, ask the wyvern a question – any question – and the wyvern will answer. The wyvern has never yet failed to answer a question, nor been wrong. In return, the wyvern asks of the questioner one thing.

So the PCs travel to the wyvern (uncertain whether they will get only one question, since there is, apparently, only one of them, or five, since they're pretty sure there are in fact, five of them) and ask it, "How do we get our memories back?" The wyvern replied, "Discover who you really are."

The wyvern then asked the asking PC its question: "Who are you?" The asking PC, of course, didn't know, and the wyvern killed the entire party. The wyvern did take some pity on them, though, and revealed that, of the five images in the book, three were categorizations, and two told the story of the End of Ages.

They ended the session having just woken up. Somewhere.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Into the Darkness: the Second Session

At the start of this session, the PCs were joined by a wildling ardent. They just woke up, and there he was. None of the PCs found this the least bit odd (by DM fiat), and they are all (the ardent included) closer than brothers.

In the second session, the PCs pushed deeper into the Sla-Mori. There, they found the skeleton of Kith-Kathan and his empty scabbard. The skeleton had long since fallen apart, but on the seat of his throne was carved the following image: a great tree stands between a bed of flowers and a pile of ashes.

It might be worth noting at this point that the carvings are of unknown origin. There are no chisel marks, no remnants of magic, no bubbling or scarring from heat melting the rock, no signs that the images were pressed into the rock, no nothing. Arcana, Nature, History, Religion, Dungeoneering, none reveal anything.

The PCs find a tunnel that slopes down. Deep down. Like, twenty stories down. It opens into a cave, complete with stalactites, stalagmites, blind cave fish, the works. At the back of the cave is a carefully-constructed ten-foot-wide tiled-stone tunnel. It leads to a carefully constructed staircase. The stairs seem old, but solid, and there are no 'moons' in the middle of the stairs. ('moons' being the indentations that develop in the center of old stairs, from countless people stepping in the same place over the ages).

At the base of the stairs, there is a crossroads. Constructed in the same building style (ancient, high-quality stonecutting, tiled floors, walls, and ceilings), there are four paths leading out. One is the path leading up to the surface that the PCs came down. One leads off in an indeterminate direction with no markings. One leads the opposite direction, and is marked with the symbol of an anvil. One leads to another flight of stairs, some ten, fifteen stories down.

At this crossroads, there were four goblins waiting for the PCs. The paladin fell into a pit trap, and the goblins ambushed the PCs in the meantime, twice dropping the ardent below 0 HP. Our first-level heroes dealt with the goblins with great skill, and a good time was had by all (including the ardent).

Inside the crossroads were two main rooms: a bedroom (with two beds) and a storeroom. In the bedroom, there was a loose tile. On the underside of this tile was the following image: a shepherd's crook etc. is bent in a circle around a green disk on a tile in the goblin bedroom. Beneath that tile is another tile. On that one, there is the image of a great tree stands between a bed of flowers and a pile of ashes. The tree, and ashes (but not the flowers) are above a shepherd's crook with a trowel for the butt end.

In the storeroom, there are barrels and crates that fall into three types. The contents are all of mundane items, food, and trade goods.
1. These contain objects in an altered form of the elven style. The materials are low-quality, and the craftsmanship is shoddy, and the tradition isn't quite elven, but it's quite close.
2. These contain objects clearly of dwarven craftsmanship. There is an anvil branded onto each crate.
3. These contain objects in an unknown style. Half of these objects are material. Half appear immaterial. They are translucent, and glow faintly blue. However, they can be held and carried, and are otherwise quite solid. The translucent objects reek of godly magic.

The PCs opted to head down the staircase leading deeper into the earth when they found dust with the same blue glow in the cracks of the stairs.

The first session

First, a little about this game. Ever since I read Carteeg's After the End of Ages, I wanted to run a game set in it. I also wanted to run a game in the style of the TV shows LOST and Battlestar Galactica, where there is a great mystery underlying the entire plot. I also wanted to run a game to test my DMing skills, where I would prepare as little as possible, wing as much as I could on the fly, and really improve as a dungeon master. These three goals came together to make this game (though, obviously, I had to prepare the solution to the underlying mystery first).

The players were told that they could make a character of any race or class they wanted (even traditionally Dragonlance-forbidden ones), but that the characters could not worship any god, could not be evil, could not be chaotic, and, while they could (and should) have a personality, they could not have a background.

We're running using 4th edition rules.

The PCs 'woke up' next to an obelisk (not a monolith, you crazy players who keep humming the '2001: A Space Odyssey' theme), and quickly deduced that the obelisk makes all those who approach it lose their memory and trust those they arrived near the obelisk with. Thus, these PCs, never mind that they have no recollections of their past (and have thus never seen each other in their past) are closer than brothers.

They are:
A kalashtar warlock (this should clue you in instantly that this ain't gonna be what you expect out of a DL game)
A revenant paladin mystic
An elven ranger
A halfling artificer

They have an intuitive sense of their location in the world of Krynn and a deep understanding of Krynnish history, up through the age of mortals. Thus, they know that they are standing in Solace, and know a great deal about Solace.

Except Solace isn't there. Where you'd expect to see the mighty vallenwoods, there's a scrubby woodland. And, of course, an obelisk. Thoroughly confused, they decide to head north, to Gateway. Gateway's not there either. In fact, the woodland ends earlier than it should, revealing not the Plains of Abanasinia, but a barren steppe. Concluding that they must be either in the future or in the past, the PCs decide to travel to the Newsea. If it's there, they'll be in the future. If not, they're in the far past. Up to this point, they have met no living soul.

And they continue to meet no one on their trip to the Newsea. However, they do find a boulder. Carved on it is the image of a shepherd's crook with the butt as the blade of a trowel, burning like a candle, with a single tongue of flame immolating the whole thing. Confused by this strange carving, they continue on, and find the shoreline there where it should be. However, instead of the smooth, sandy beach they expected, there is a sheer cliff.

They decide to venture north to Que-Shu. If they're in the future, the stone city may have left a ruin. On the way, they meet someone.

Said someone is nine feet tall. He is sitting cross-legged in the steppe, with his eyes closed. The right side of his body has the appearance of a grizzled middle-aged man, dressed in dented plate armor. The left side of his body is magma, with cooled rock as skin, like a fire dragon. After leaving him alone for several hours, then proceeding to pester and prod him, the PCs manage to provoke this peacefully-sitting man to action – he tells them, "You know I have nothing to say to you." Soon thereafter, after continued pestering, he pulls a whip of fire from nowhere and cleaves one of the PCs in half (the kalashtar warlock). He then pauses and says, "Aahhhhhhh.... You've forgotten." Then, with a half-smile, he sits back down, and cannot be roused further.

The next morning, the cleaved PC is alive again. None of the PCs (by DM fiat) find this the least bit odd, and they continue on their journey. There is no sign of Que-Shu. Returning back the way they came, the PCs find the nine-foot man gone, and in his place, an image burned into the ground: the same shepherd's crook tending to a flowerbed.

Expressing frustration that there is 'nothing to do' (a valid complaint), the players decide to settle down and build a cabin, perhaps next to the obelisk. Passing by the same boulder with the first carving on it, the PCs find such a cabin, where no such cabin was before. At this cabin, they discover something interesting: they cannot separate. If any of them tries to get further than 100 yards from the rest of the group, they find themselves walking back towards the group from the opposite direction, not unlike a game of 'Snake'.

The PCs continue back to the obelisk in Solace, and destroy it, for no real reason. Underneath the obelisk, they find a flat rock. Painted on the flat rock is the image of the same shepherd's crook in a green disk.

At this point, the halfling starts getting a sense (by DM fiat) that there might be something interesting 'in this direction'. By following the halfling's gut (seldom a good idea), the PCs pass by the Lake of Death in Qualenesti. On a rock jutting out over the lake, the PCs find an image of a tongue of flame burning dead grass.

Continuing to follow the halfling's gut, the PCs come to the Sla-Mori: the secret passage to Pax Tharkas. Assuming Pax Tharkas still exists, of course. The PCs haven't seen any other humanoids except the nine-foot magma man. Inside the Sla-Mori, the PCs find the following image: a green disk with a black disk superimposed. The black disk has a small tongue of flame emerging. They resolve to venture into the Sla-Mori next session.

Confused? You better believe the players are.