Mission Report: Day 8

Lucius,

We decided to stop near the resupplying town half a day out from the mines. However upon arrival we discovered a problem. The town was empty of its inhabitants, the walls had clearly been besieged and all manner of creatures seem to be roaming around the town. We have found evidence of the involvement of some followers of November. Additionally we encountered a collection of Neverborn roaming the town. The others have taken the chance to stock up on supplies for the rest of the journey.

Harlon

Mission Report: Day 4-7

Lucius,

Nothing to report.

Harlon

Mission Report: Day 3

Lucius,

These people are kind of unpleasant. Other than that nothing to report.

Harlon

Mission Report: Day 2

Lucius,

My impression of these recruits isn't improving. It appears they have come grossly unprepared for the mission ahead. I also question their sanity as they also seem highly focused on massacring infants.

Harlon

Mission Report: Day 1

Lucius,

Staven and I have met up with the recruits you wanted me supervise, but my first impression of them isn't great. We found Oblina at the restaurant of her hotel. Annoyingly her first act was attempting to pull a prank on us. The Carnet found us and we managed to find the Janderunconscious in hovel. We were unable to find Godric however.
After collecting everyone we have hit the road and are currently heading towards the mine.

Harlon

Eradine Session One

Aykas is awoken by a sharp kick to the lower ribs. He awakes to find his hands bound, eyes blindfolded and mouth gagged. Underneath and behind him he can feel cold stone though the rags he is wearing.  Through the darkness he can make groans of Cylus, Einarr and Ren as they too are awoken in similar manner.

One by one they are pulled to their feet before pushed forward while being told to "walk". Unable to see they proceed in the direction that they were pushed towards. They take several steps, before finding themselves shoved in a new direction. They continue for several tens of metres before Cylus finds himself stumbling into a set of stairs. They are told to proceed upwards. After reaching the top he continues onwards before walking into what feels like a wooden wall.

Stopping he feels the others bump into him from behind, before hearing the slamming of a door and the sound of a bolt being drawn.

Fumbling around in the dark, the group find themselves locked in a wooden box. After a while it occurs to them that there is nothing stopping them from removing their restraints. Doing so, they confirm that they are indeed trapped in a wooden box with a trickle of light streaming in through a hole in the floor. Slumping down against the walls the group decide wait to see what fate awaits them.

After half an hour the box shudders and the group can feel that the box appears to be moving. Peering down through the hole they can confirm that they appear to be in some sort of carriage. After several hours of movement, the group feel the room tilt as it is loaded onto a ship.

After a week travelling by ship the group, find themselves offloaded who knows where. Unfortunately the monotonous travel did not end there. However during the middle of the fourth night after returning to travelling across the land, the group are awoken to a scream in the night.

Suddenly the door is swung open, with a slender panic stricken human standing outside. The group thinking of escape quickly disembark, and find all their gear has been dragged to the door by the human. As the group quickly attempt to collect their belongings they spot a pair of encroaching goblins and a wolf, as well as a figure being dragged out of the clearing from the opposite side. After a desperate struggle which sees the death of the human who released them, the party take their time to don the rest of their gear as well as bandage their cuts and bruises.

After this brief respite, they attempt to track where the goblins have come from. Following the trail of broken bracken left behind by the dragging on an unconscious man, the party find themselves standing outside the entrance to a cave in a rock outcropping.

Current Status

So after a couple of shit weeks I have once more dived into doing RPG stuff.

So I had been nagging a mate to run a campaign for ages cause I wanted the chance to be a player in one. Consequently he had just started running one for a bunch of his work mates and a close mate of his. He offered me a spot, which I jumped on. So hopefully I will throw up a few entries about that.

Sadly the Starfinder campaign has gone on hiatus due to time commitment issues by a couple of the party. So in its place I volunteered to run a 5E campaign for a couple of the players who more consistently have the spare time. So for this I decided to run a pre-written campaign for the sake of ease. I have chosen Tomb of Annihilation for this purpose

Starfinder Placeholder

In terms of the work campaign I was running, I have had a couple more sessions (missed a couple of sessions because one or more of the players were sick). I will hopefully post a couple of recaps for this campaign as it progresses further. One issue I am having with it, is deciding what direction I want to take it. Writing some of the background has been fun, but it can be very counter productive to writing a story for the players. Especially when you know a lot of it may never even come into play.

Because I am now running more than one campaign and I have previously bought a Cheesex grid mat, I decided I needed some miniatures. However because I will be travelling with my stuff most of the time, I decided the I would go the easy mode and buy the pathfinder cardboard pawns.

The pawn bestiary box

All the pawns

More to come.

Journal Entry 14

Author: Tordark Date: Seventhday, 13 Gozran 317AG Entry: This task is getting weirder and weirder. First biting dogs, then tongue zombies then a ghost and finally an assassin.
We entered a tunnel in the asteroid, within which we found all the monsters you expect in a horror movie. However one thing that was different to those horror movies is apparently ghosts are susceptible to punching them in the face.
We also ran into a hired assassin, who shot Violet! We managed to subdue her, however the others won't let me dispose of her or take her belongings.

Journal Entry 13

Author: Tordark Date: Firstday, 14 Gozran 317AG Entry: Finally a moments breather! We boarded the quarantined ship, and then attacked by these shiny space dogs. They were everywhere! On the place side, I'm told that the dog eggs are made from a valuable material. Somehow Kras made a new friend with a stowaway goblin, it's a thieving little shit.

We are to spacewalk to the asteroid behind the ship to look for more clues.

Journal Entry 12

Author: Tordark Date: Firstday, 14 Gozran 317AG Entry: So the ambassador seems to also be caught up in that legal case, and now he has paid us to also get involved. He wants us to pick up a suspicious package for him that aboard the quarantined ship. He has rented us a really fancy shuttle, I mean really fancy, and has got some tech gurus to get us a recording drone. I wonder if we can salvage a shuttle/ship like this…

World building and Villains

So I am back on the world building bandwagon and I have to say it is one of the most disappointing facets of 5E. Unlike DnD 3.5, 5E severely lacks the scope of source books devoted towards world building. This had resulted in me falling back on reading some 3.5 books. However sourcing the physical copies of 3.5 books is next to impossible.

A group of books i would like to find physical copies of are Gary Gygax's world building books. He had a great one on just naming things. 

The final book that I have heavily relied on is a book about generating a magical medieval society. It explains how to calculate populations, design urban communities and even the layout of cities.

So for the campaign I just started for the fellow graduates at work, I have thrown together the region where the campaign will take place. I have used the above resources to populate the region and calculated the number and sizes of the cities and towns, the number of nobles and gentry, and a general outline for the first small town the players will gravitate towards.

The harder task at this stage is to come out with villains and plots for players to interact with. I have a little bit of an idea what I want one of plots to be, however I'm struggling to come up with bad guys I like. I think this is partly cause I want them to have personality. Towards this, I think I will base them off real people I know, but with slight twists to make them suitable for a fantasy setting.

Journal Entry 11

Author: Tordark Date: Firstday, 14 Gozran 317AG Entry: After we'd returned to the Lorespire tower, we collectively received a letter on black paper, so backwards, inviting us to meet with the Eoxian Ambassador. Most of us seemed perplexed however Violet was little frantic due to lack of appropriate outfit for such an occasion. She hoodwinked me into go shopping with her, cause apparently my clothes leave much to be desired. Oops here she comes with what must be the 10th top in a row that she's tried on.

Journal Entry 10

Author: Tordark Date: Seventhday, 13 Gozran 317AG Entry: We caught up with the other recruit, Kras, before he did anything stupid. We then did something stupid, and assaulted the night club. Half of us took out the guards outside so we can sneak our weapons in while the others disabled the security systems. Haha Ravi, the next bit is the best bit: I made out with Violet and we pushed into a back room under the guise of looking for a quiet spot.
The idiot Vesk Kras, then attempted to choke everyone out with a vile gas grenade of his own making. During the ensuing fight, the Vesk who gunned down Durival showed up and in surprise something inside me clicked and I exploded outwards with a wave of fire.
After dealing with him we proceeded to corner the boss of the Downside Kings. The other started to interrogate her so I took the opportunity to loot their reserves in a storage room. However just as I returned, I witnessed Raia blew the boss's brains out in cold blood.

Starting a New Campaign

So the new graduates at work have been talking about starting a DnD campaign and I drunkenly agreed to be the Dungeon Master. I decided to re-use some of the stuff I had previously written for the other campaign I briefly ran. Hence, I removed some of the stuff I previously posted from my blog so as to not spoil anything.

What I am starting from scratch is the Kingdom the players are starting in. I have started drawing up the map for this Kingdom, so I thought I would post a spoiler.

Facebook Page

So I created a Facebook page to share updates to. It and this look a little bland for now though.

https://www.facebook.com/eternalyouthsden/

Journal Entry 9

Author: Tordark Date: Seventhday, 13 Gozran 317AG Entry: We have found out that the two gangs involved in the shootout were the known as the Level 21 Crew and the Downside Kings, with Durival's murderer originating from the Kings gang. We tracked down someone of note from the Level 21 Crew to find out the source of the grievance between the two gangs. It would seem they have opposing bounties/protections on persons involved in a legal battle.
To be honest the conversation was a little boring. On the plus side I picked up a bottle of Kasathan spirits that I haven't seen in years.
Chissiks has informed us that one of the other candidates has gone to scout out the main Downside Kings night club and requested we join up with that recruit.

Journal Entry 8

Author: Tordark Date: Seventhday, 13 Gozran 317AG Entry: We met with the leader of the Starfinder's, Chissiks, in Lorespire tower, he seemed deeply grieved by the death of Durival. The others attempted to see if he could shed any light on who want to take out Durival. Additionally, they are searching through Durival's quarters to try and find some hints.

Journal Entry 7

Author: Tordark Date: Seventhday, 13 Gozran 317AG Entry: Durival is dead and we have been deemed unnoteworthy by station security. The others managed to save the guy I almost ripped in half, he has been taken away by station security now. Meanwhile all the other combatants are either dead or gone. They are ruling Durival's death an accidental victim in a gang war. We are heading to the Starfinder's home base, The Lorespire Complex.

Journal Entry 6

Author: Tordark Date: Seventhday, 13 Gozran 317AG Entry: Ravi something weird happened again. We entered the docking area, and Durival was on the opposite side. As we started to approach him, a gun fight started out of nowhere. From one group a hulking cloaked figure pulled an artillery laser and gunned down Durival. In the ensuing fight, I wanted to grab a wounded combatant to find out what was going on. Next thing I know his throat was in my hand and he was bleeding out. Station security are here now and we are waiting for things to be sorted out.

Journal Entry 5

Author: Tordark Date: Seventhday, 13 Gozran 317AG Entry: Hahaha, hey Ravi. This will have you turning in that material converter. You know Violet Iduro, yes the Violet who you were always idolising. The one that you always carried a picture of. I got to meet her today. She is also a candidate for the Starfinders!

Journal Entry 4

Author: Tordark Date: Seventhday, 13 Gozran 317AG Entry: I have boarded the shuttle that the Starfinder Association sent to bring me to Absalom Station. It would appear that they are several candidates applying at this time. I met two such candidates on the shuttle. An android by the name of Kry-10, who I could have sworn had a bottle of 'The Hivemind's All-Purpose Surface Cleaner' hooked onto his belt. And a Lashunta by the name of Raia. I can't quite put my finger on it but something seems a little off about her.

Journal Entry 3

Author: Tordark Date: *Date Redacted* Entry: Durival has made contact again informing me of the result of the background vetting. He stated that although I haven't led an exemplary life, they haven't found anything that would disqualify me. In fact sometimes people with difficult backgrounds make for better starfinders. He has arranged a shuttle for me and we will be there to meet me at dock 94 on Absalom Station.

Journal Entry 2

Author: Tordark Date: *Date Redacted* Entry: A dwarf by the name of Durival Krell from the Starfinder Association has made contact with me. He stated that they are currently vetting my background and should nothing untoward arise, he will send a request to attend a probationary trial on the station.

Journal Entry 1

Author: Tordark Date: *Date Redacted* Entry: Ravi always said that I should write down my experiences. Otherwise if I ever ended up on my own, I wouldn't ever be able to recall what happened to me months earlier.

I have reached the point where I am sick of looking over my shoulder. In the hopes of alleviating this paranoia, I have reached out to the Starfinder Association on Absalom Station requesting to join.

Switch and switch again

Sigh, every year I come back to my attempt at maintaining a blog and I always promise that I will post more. So here is this years attempt...

So first thing is first: I was going to migrate from Blogspot to WordPress. I was going to do this to both clean up my past posts and cause WordPress's phone app is blatantly better. However after posting a couple of posts I think I will switch back. Not being able to remove the ads without paying and the customisation options are limited.

Fingers crossed I stick to posting regularly this time.