Sunday 26 February 2017

GURPS Free Cities Session 39: The New New Party

Locke Landen - Human Bard (250 points)
Morgan Merkle - Human Mentalist (258 points)
          Brother Maurice- Human Initiate of Avandra, the goddess of freedom and luck (126 points)
Sindri Blackshield - Tiefling Knight (250 points)
Virgil the Grim - Human Barbarian (250 points)

Characters:
Locke Landen aka Davis Connors aka Landen Locke is a totally trustworthy bard who would never tell a lie.  He started adventuring at age 3, slew his first dragon at age 4, and single-handedly stopped the demonic invasion of 2519, but those damned historians covered it all up.

Sindri Blackshield is the son of a Zerakim noble house who had fallen on hard times.  He seeks to enrich his families coffers through adventuring, and to improve public opinion on Tieflings by upholding a chivalric oath and slaying the devils of the Nine Hells.

Virgil the Grim was born in Hell as a slave to the ruling devils, but managed to escape with his brother after he stole a magical sword that could open portals.  Once they had escaped, his brother stole the sword.  Virgil wants to find him and take it back.

Day 114:
Weather: Clear and Warm
Date: Peris 1st, 2526
The party arrived in the city of Adusia, having met on the boat ride there, and decided to look for work with the local branch of the Adventurer's Guild.  While everybody else got a job to put a stop to unusually frequent wild animal attacks that were occurring around trade road near the Iron Forest in the south, Locke went to go "find some accommodations" at the Crimson Boot inn across the street.

Monday 20 February 2017

GURPS Free Cities Session 38: Battle of the Alchemy Lab

Darrude - Human Wizard (252 points)
Grohk - Goliath Barbarian (253 points)
Morgan Merkle - Human Mentalist (252 points)
          Brother Horace - Human Initiate of Avandra, the goddess of freedom and luck (128 points)
Sado Con - Human Martial Artist (257 points)

Day 86 (Cont.):
Weather: Strong Wind
Date: Coreli 17th, 2526
Grohk continued to be pummelled on the ground while he tried to rip the winged Forsaken's legs off, and Sado started crippling hands and feet like a madman.  Darrude smacked the flying one with a Shocking Touch, but was grappled in reutrn.  In an effort to get the big one away from the unconscious Brother Horace, Morgan fired a Kinetic Lash at it.

This worked, and it charged at him instead.  Morgan managed to parry and started backing up the stairs while firing off more Kinetic Lashes, hoping to cripple its legs.  The swollen one, already crippled and on the ground, decided to crawl up the stairs after Morgan as well.

The winged Forsaken switched its grab and started to snap Darrude's neck, stunning him, and Grohk returned the favour by wrenching (and crippling) its leg some more.  Sado took the one he was fighting down, crippling both feet and the weapon hand, but was too late to stop the other Forsaken smashing Grohk with its club just as his Stone Skin ran out, killing him.

Morgan continued to block and retreated up into the scroll room on the second floor, and managed to cripple the big one's weapon hand after several attempts.  Sado knocked the other Forsaken down by crippling both its feet, and it dropped its weapon while trying to attack him, giving him an opening, and Darrude managed to cast Spark Storm, despite casting out of his HP.

The winged Forsaken was stunned and lost its grip, but Sado failed a consciousness check with a 17 and fell over, and Darrude followed after a failed death check while casting another spell out of HP.  Morgan crippled the big one's leg, and ran away, leaving the rest of his party to die.

Notes:
This was a long combat, but by the end we still had about 2 hours of game time left.  The players decided they'd want their new characters to go elsewhere, as they were tired of exploring the dwarven ruins.  There were complaints that they were too big, which is fair.

I pointed out that, much like the slimes in the dwarven tomb, dumb luck made them run into a series of big tough dudes, which was unfortunate, and monotonous.  A lot of the blame here lies on me, because I made it so that such routes were possible.  I'll have to be more careful in the future.

The players asked what else they could have done to win that battle, and, other than things like "listen when I tell you that attacking its skull has no special effect", it came down to mostly meta-decisions.  Taking more useful spells, unarmed martial artists getting buffed up, not being a berserker, etc.

We discussed Berserk, and came to the conclusion that without somebody to help back him up, a berserker is going to die.

Morgan will join up with the new guys in Adusia, sometime later.

XP:
0 due to nothing being accomplished, no loot being cashed (Grohk had it all), and a bunch of people dying without recovering the bodies.

Friday 10 February 2017

GURPS Free Cities Session 37: Into The Ruins

Darrude - Human Wizard (252 points)
Grohk - Goliath Barbarian (253 points)
Morgan Merkle - Human Mentalist (252 points)
          Brother Horace - Human Initiate of Avandra, the goddess of freedom and luck (128 points)
Sado Con - Human Martial Artist (257 points)

Day 85:
Weather: Light Breeze, Clear
Date: Coreli 16th, 2526
Darrude and Morgan went to talk to Hue the Many-Coloured about the things they had seen in the dwarven ruins.  With a bit of help, Morgan figured out that the green light was probably a psionic portal, possibly leading to the Far Realm.  Hue told them that several subspecies of troll had been observed before, though anything psionic was probably due to Far Realm radiation, and he wasn't sure what to make of the glowing stone in the ceiling.  Sadly "we saw a flying blob-thing way off in the distance" wasn't enough to go on.

Meanwhile, Grohk challenged Sado to a drinking contest, which Sado (surprisingly) won.  They then went to the orcs to try to ask for help, but the guards wouldn't let them in to talk to Gordag, so they turned around and headed back to the rest of the party.  Despite Sado's urging that he was fine, they decided to postpone their adventuring by a day so nobody would be drunk.

Darrude used Speed-Reading and Research to find out some things about trolls (nothing they didn't already know) and the ancient dwarven empire Thael Ruthak (for fun), while Morgan tried to find something on the area around them specifically.  Sadly, very few records of Thael Ruthak survived, especially in a small private library in a newly-funded town, and he was unable to find anything of note.

Friday 3 February 2017

GURPS Free Cities Session 36: Troll Hunters

Darrude - Human Wizard (252 points)
Grohk - Goliath Barbarian (250 points)
Morgan Merkle - Human Mentalist (252 points)
          Brother Horace - Human Initiate of Avandra, the goddess of freedom and luck (125 points)
Sado Con - Human Martial Artist (254 points)

Characters:
Grohk (aka Gronk) is a goliath berserker who loves booze and food.  After one too many blackouts, he no longer knows why he started adventuring, and all that matters now is that he has a good time.

Day 84:
Weather: Light Rain
Date: Coreli 15th, 2526
Sado realised he'd be unable to convince Gordag and the orcs to offer more help, took back the backpack full of acid flasks from Brag, and jogged back to the south to rejoin the party at the entrance to the Night Wolves' camp.  On the way, he passed by the hole where they had buried a troll, which was now empty.

Now that there was some time to kill, Brother Horace cast Continual Light on Morgan's left glove and Grohk's helmet to provide them with more than one light source.  Once Sado returned several hours later, the party headed back down into the ruins.  Shortly past the stone gate where they had fought the trolls, they found a cluster of half a dozen orcish huts.  There were also various tools and utensils that were likely dropped as the orcs fled.

Morgan searched the camp but found nothing of note, the orcs clearly having taken everything of value.  After a failure to find a 10' pole in the camp, the party continued to a second stone gate, with a broken iron portcullis that had been bent open from the far side.  Past the gate, their light sources revealed that the tunnel opened up on either side, and that there was a stone handrail about 10' away, with sheer darkness beyond.