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BlueFlames' Editorials
Offline Exploits - Part 4 -- Written by BlueFlames
Well, tonight, we finished our journey on the ship without further event. As we had paid for, the ship's captain took care of getting us through customs without incident, and we hit the road for the city built around a major figurehead, known as the Dragonmaster. He's gotta have enough knowledge to identify a massive diamond and enough money to buy it, right?
We followed a major highway to the city through massive plains and farmland. Lots of merchants and not much else met us until we were about a half-day's travel outside of town. We heard a scream come from the other side of one of the fields. All of us, interested in testing out our brand new warhorses, charged into the brush and popped out the other side to see a woman being assaulted by a horrible man wielding a ring made of precious metal. Okay, he was proposing. I sorta wanted to see Dreck (the party tank) run someone through on his lance, but not this time.
After some of the more 'good' characters went about apologizing, and I gauged my odds of swiping the ring (not great), we began to head away, but before we were even off the property, a bunch of ankhegs popped out of the ground, charging us. Torgaash has this problem of getting mediocre HP rolls, so 'getting beaten within an inch of his life' means getting hit by an ankheg once. The full-round withdrawl action and NPC meatshields are quite possibly my favorite two characteristics within this game... Cowardice paid off this time, getting me far enough away to use my composite longbow a bit.
The battle concluded, in the absense of anyone else with the initiative to seek a reward, I went to the couple's door and knocked. After a few minutes, several locks clunked open and the door cracked. The young man, satisfied that I was not another ankheg, come to slaughter them all, opened the door and began awkwardly thanking me. A moment into that, an old lunatic shoved him aside, went on a rant about how I surely expected a reward (which I had yet to actually say anything about). He shoved a sack of 200 coppers into my hands. (It's a tidy sum in this realm, remember.) Torgaash's response? Money compensates for attitude, so he tolerated the rant and the slammed door, and to keep the guise of 'True Neutral w/ a slant toward good' went to split the cash with the party. Suckers. I'll take it right back off of their corpses later.
The rest of the trip to the Dragonmaster's city went without event. Since the day was only about half over, we decided to go for the town's inner gate and make our way to the Dragonmaster's fortress. Of course, it couldn't be as easy as walking up the hill... No, the guards at that gate informed us that the inner gate had been sealed on account of a Wyvern being loose inside. (I should note here that our DM used a pronounciation of 'Wyvern' that I had not heard before, so I thought something was inside that was much tougher. Not that it really mattered, as I was really roleplaying at that point, and Torgaash's actions wouldn't have changed.) They basically presented us with the option of going in and fighting or waiting while the town's compliment of dragon knights flushed the bugger out.
Now, I shall remind you that Torgaash is really Neutral Evil. That means that he 'looks out for number one, and number one is always number me.' Alex (Sorc/Tank), Lana (Bardess), Dreck (Tank), and the party priest decided to volunteer themselves as a sacrifice for the greater good. Rather than being logged as a suicide, I volunteered myself to sacrifice a few tankards of ale to my liver. The other party rogue, who seems to have been following in my footsteps a lot lately also stayed out of combat.
Torgaash isn't a drunkard too often, but if he goes past 'tipsy' he goes for 'wasted.' If you aren't familiar with the dynamics of drinking, when you've got cheap ale and you're starting in midafternoon, you get wicked drunk by evening. This led to an epic tale of four adventurers that were too stupid to listen to good advice and got themselves ripped to tiny pieces by a wyvern.
Logically speaking, four level three characters, unassisted, versus a wyvern, and only one character left with healing spells (two Cure Light Wounds)... Well, an epic tale of four dead humans isn't that far off-base. That is, it's not too far off-base until the wyvren goes through two consecutive combat rounds without landing a hit, only lands one hit in the third, and is destroyed by three nearly consecutive critical hits (one from a freaking scythe) from the party. My character doesn't know this, but I overheard the battle. I'll still be sure that Torgaash continues spreading the tale on his way out of the inn tomorrow (albeit with a little more of a hungover tone to his tale than a drunk tone).
Now, where I get my alone-time with the evil guys in the plot, the rest of the party gets their alone-time with some of the good guys, especially when I chicken out of a battle. There was a good twenty minutes where I was sitting out because of that, and afterward, the session was basically over.
We all got awarded quest experience for getting to the city. The rest of the party got a fair bit more for fighting the wyvern (as well they deserved) and speaking with the Dragonmaster about our massive diamond statue. Some of that was offset by backed-experience that I earned for my escapades with the bard and his elven friends in Laan, so everyone got to hit level four.
I'm now Ranger 2 / Rogue 2, meaning I finally get to dual-wield, because one weapon is never enough. Now, I just need some more sneak attack dice. I'm still looking forward to hitting level 18, taking Greater Two-Weapon Fighting, flanking someone, and making seven sneak attacks in a row. There's a little Timmy, Power Gamer in us all, after all. This is some great roleplaying, stats aside. Having an overall purpose counter to the party's is certainly a fun experience.
Go Back to Part 3 ---- Proceed to Part 5
Offline Exploits - Part 4 -- Written by BlueFlames
Well, tonight, we finished our journey on the ship without further event. As we had paid for, the ship's captain took care of getting us through customs without incident, and we hit the road for the city built around a major figurehead, known as the Dragonmaster. He's gotta have enough knowledge to identify a massive diamond and enough money to buy it, right?
We followed a major highway to the city through massive plains and farmland. Lots of merchants and not much else met us until we were about a half-day's travel outside of town. We heard a scream come from the other side of one of the fields. All of us, interested in testing out our brand new warhorses, charged into the brush and popped out the other side to see a woman being assaulted by a horrible man wielding a ring made of precious metal. Okay, he was proposing. I sorta wanted to see Dreck (the party tank) run someone through on his lance, but not this time.
After some of the more 'good' characters went about apologizing, and I gauged my odds of swiping the ring (not great), we began to head away, but before we were even off the property, a bunch of ankhegs popped out of the ground, charging us. Torgaash has this problem of getting mediocre HP rolls, so 'getting beaten within an inch of his life' means getting hit by an ankheg once. The full-round withdrawl action and NPC meatshields are quite possibly my favorite two characteristics within this game... Cowardice paid off this time, getting me far enough away to use my composite longbow a bit.
The battle concluded, in the absense of anyone else with the initiative to seek a reward, I went to the couple's door and knocked. After a few minutes, several locks clunked open and the door cracked. The young man, satisfied that I was not another ankheg, come to slaughter them all, opened the door and began awkwardly thanking me. A moment into that, an old lunatic shoved him aside, went on a rant about how I surely expected a reward (which I had yet to actually say anything about). He shoved a sack of 200 coppers into my hands. (It's a tidy sum in this realm, remember.) Torgaash's response? Money compensates for attitude, so he tolerated the rant and the slammed door, and to keep the guise of 'True Neutral w/ a slant toward good' went to split the cash with the party. Suckers. I'll take it right back off of their corpses later.
The rest of the trip to the Dragonmaster's city went without event. Since the day was only about half over, we decided to go for the town's inner gate and make our way to the Dragonmaster's fortress. Of course, it couldn't be as easy as walking up the hill... No, the guards at that gate informed us that the inner gate had been sealed on account of a Wyvern being loose inside. (I should note here that our DM used a pronounciation of 'Wyvern' that I had not heard before, so I thought something was inside that was much tougher. Not that it really mattered, as I was really roleplaying at that point, and Torgaash's actions wouldn't have changed.) They basically presented us with the option of going in and fighting or waiting while the town's compliment of dragon knights flushed the bugger out.
Now, I shall remind you that Torgaash is really Neutral Evil. That means that he 'looks out for number one, and number one is always number me.' Alex (Sorc/Tank), Lana (Bardess), Dreck (Tank), and the party priest decided to volunteer themselves as a sacrifice for the greater good. Rather than being logged as a suicide, I volunteered myself to sacrifice a few tankards of ale to my liver. The other party rogue, who seems to have been following in my footsteps a lot lately also stayed out of combat.
Torgaash isn't a drunkard too often, but if he goes past 'tipsy' he goes for 'wasted.' If you aren't familiar with the dynamics of drinking, when you've got cheap ale and you're starting in midafternoon, you get wicked drunk by evening. This led to an epic tale of four adventurers that were too stupid to listen to good advice and got themselves ripped to tiny pieces by a wyvern.
Logically speaking, four level three characters, unassisted, versus a wyvern, and only one character left with healing spells (two Cure Light Wounds)... Well, an epic tale of four dead humans isn't that far off-base. That is, it's not too far off-base until the wyvren goes through two consecutive combat rounds without landing a hit, only lands one hit in the third, and is destroyed by three nearly consecutive critical hits (one from a freaking scythe) from the party. My character doesn't know this, but I overheard the battle. I'll still be sure that Torgaash continues spreading the tale on his way out of the inn tomorrow (albeit with a little more of a hungover tone to his tale than a drunk tone).
Now, where I get my alone-time with the evil guys in the plot, the rest of the party gets their alone-time with some of the good guys, especially when I chicken out of a battle. There was a good twenty minutes where I was sitting out because of that, and afterward, the session was basically over.
We all got awarded quest experience for getting to the city. The rest of the party got a fair bit more for fighting the wyvern (as well they deserved) and speaking with the Dragonmaster about our massive diamond statue. Some of that was offset by backed-experience that I earned for my escapades with the bard and his elven friends in Laan, so everyone got to hit level four.
I'm now Ranger 2 / Rogue 2, meaning I finally get to dual-wield, because one weapon is never enough. Now, I just need some more sneak attack dice. I'm still looking forward to hitting level 18, taking Greater Two-Weapon Fighting, flanking someone, and making seven sneak attacks in a row. There's a little Timmy, Power Gamer in us all, after all. This is some great roleplaying, stats aside. Having an overall purpose counter to the party's is certainly a fun experience.
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Site Design: SSX-Anubis (based
upon a design by
SSX-Killjoy)
Thanks go to SSX-MS for graphical assistance.
Copyright @ SSX 2007, All Rights Reserved