House rules: Magic item and intrinsic creation

Magic item and intrinsic creation

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Player characters wishing to create permanent magic items or enhance themselves with new intrinsic abilities will follow this procedure for preparing and then creating a magic item.

These rules apply to creating any kind of magic item or supernatural ability, with the exception of magic scrolls and magic potions. The standard rules for the creation of potions and scrolls still apply, including costs, time, and prerequisite feats.

Overview

1. Prerequisites:

   • you must have one of the new feats, either Craft Magic Item or Imbue Supernatural Ability.
   • When using craft Magic Item, you must be able to use the item you are trying to create.

2. Spend money preparing a raw, non-magical item. If you have the appropriate crafting feat, you may make a crafting check to reduce the overall cost. The amount you spend determines bonuses to the final check.

   • If you wish to prepare an item for a particular purpose or ability, you must include some aspect of the final product as a specific raw material.

3. Attempt to perform a binding act to imbue the object or individual with magical power. Announce what kind of magic item is being bound.

4. If the binding act is successful, determine the total bonus to the item creation roll. Bonuses are determined by amount spent in the initial creation and appropriateness of the binding act, and may be modified by whether a specific item is being attempted, whether an item which is already magical is being enhanced, and whether the enhancement is an improvement to the existing ability or is an unrelated new power.

5. Determine the value of the item created; GM and player discuss and agree on the exact stats of the item created using the value as a guideline.

Prerequisites In Depth

To create a magic item other than a scroll or a potion, the process is detailed here.

New Feats

Craft Magic Item

This feat replaces Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Rod, Craft Staff, Craft Wand, Craft Wondrous Item, and Forge Ring. (The Brew Potion and Scribe Scroll feats remain unchanged.)

Prerequisite

Total Class Levels 6.

Benefit

This feat allows you to perform a binding act which creates a magic item from a prepared item.

The prepared item must be an item that the character can use without penalties or making a special check such as Use Magic Device. Armor or weapons for which the character does not have the requisite feat may not be created with this feat. The character does not need to have prepared the item himself.

Details about the use of this feat are discussed below.

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Imbue Supernatural Ability

Prerequisite

Craft Magic Item, total Class Levels 10.

Benefit

This feat allows you to perform a binding act which imbues the character himself with an intrinsic power. It requires that the character has prepared himself as if preparing a magic item to use Craft Magic Item.

Details about the use of this feat are discussed below.

Encounter Challenge Rating

To create a magical item or imbue oneself with a special ability, the character needs an encounter with a CR at least equal to the character's total character level. Thus a binding act to create a magic item always requires at least a CR6 encounter; a binding act to imbue oneself with a supernatural ability always requires at least a CR 10 encounter. More details about the nature of the encounter may be found below.

Preparation in Depth

Most of the following is meant to apply to both magical item creation, and the use of Imbue Supernatural Ability to give oneself an intrinsic ability.

In order to create a magic item, the character must prepare the item in advance. The first, required, step is that the character must spend a certain amount of money on materials, ceremonies and craftsmanship making the item. The amounts to spend are given below, broken down by category. There is a minimum cost, and an additional amount which may be spent to get a bonus to the final roll. See table below. On the left is the character's total character level. On the right are the amounts to spend to get a bonus to the binding roll. No amount of additional money will grant a preparation bonus greater than +5, regardless of level.

This cost in GP represents time and effort spent making the item as appropriate as possible a vessel for magical energy. For weapons and armor, it usually represents crafting a masterwork blade or suit of plate mail, out of rare and arcane materials.

When the character is attempting a binding act which will grant an intrinsic ability, this represents time and money spent preparing oneself for the binding. It may literally involve personal adornments (artificial teeth to get a magical bite attack, tattoos to bind spell-like abilities, and so on) or it may represent the time spent physically preparing oneself, visiting remote masters for guidance, and so on.

Table 1 - Binding roll bonuses by amount spent

This table displays the binding roll bonus given for preparing an item, by the amount spent on the item and the character level of the character doing the binding (not the character doing the preparing).

Total CL [*]	+0	+1	+2	+3	+4	+5
6	1000	1900	3000	4400	6200	7500
7	1250	2350	3750	5550	7850	10850
8	1500	2900	4700	7000	10000	14000
9	1750	3550	5850	8850	12850	17350
10	2000	4300	7300	11300	15800	21800
11	2500	5500	9500	14000	21000	30000
12	3000	7000	10500	18500	27500	37500
13	3500	8000	15000	24000	34000	48000
14	4000	11000	20000	30000	44000	61000
15	5000	14000	24000	38000	55000	76000
16	6000	16000	30000	47000	58000	83000
17	8000	22000	39000	50000	75000	105000
18	10000	27000	36000	63000	93000	128000
19	12000	33000	58000	88000	123000	163000
20	15000	40000	60000	105000	145000	190000

[*]

Note that the actual bonus may not be the same as what the character expected when doing the preparation. For example, if a level 6 character spends 7500gp on preparation, then gains 2 levels before attempting the binding act, the bonus is only +3 in accordance with the table for a level 8 character, not +5 (as it would have been at level 6).

The second, optional step gives the character the ability to prepare the item for a particular purpose. This gives a separate bonus on the final roll, but only if the encounter is thematically related to the purpose for which the character prepared (see guidelines below for binding act themes).

Preparing an item for a particular purpose grants you a +1 bonus to the binding roll, if the encounter is themed similarly to the purpose. For example, if you prepared an item by adding a rare metallic poison to its construction to get magical poison damage added to the attack, you will only receive the bonus if you fight something poisonous. If you end up binding the weapon with a non-poison-related theme, you do not receive the +1 binding roll bonus.

Binding Acts in Depth

A binding act occurs when a player announces her intent to create a magic item, and the character has already prepared an item in advance and has it on her person. Only one binding act may be attempted at a time.

Upon announcing that she is going to perform a binding act:

1. She asks to create an item with a particular theme. For example, "I want to add additional critical hit damage to my longsword", or "I want to turn this wand into a wand of lightning bolt."

2. The GM announces a trial that must be met. The trial will be in some way related to the power requested by the player. For example, must successfully score a critical hit during the next encounter, or the character must kill one creature in the encounter with a lightning bolt. The difficulty of the challenge may also depend on how difficult the encounter is.

   Challenges usually involve only a single encounter, but not necessarily. For example, to create a sword vs. orckind, the GM may create a challenge that involves slaying 50 orcs. However, if a binding act requires more than one encounter, the character must not rest between encounters. Stopping to do anything else during a binding act is an automatic failure.

   Challenges should involve the direct action of the player, but if the challenge is to defeat an enemy, with your party, the character performing the challenge only needs to be involved.

   The encounter and challenge need not be combat-related.

3. The encounter or encounters run as usual. The GM determines whether the challenge has been met.

4. If the challenge is met, the binding act is complete and a magic item is created (pending the binding roll, see below). If the challenge is not met, the item is always either destroyed or cursed. Binding acts to imbue with a supernatural ability which fail result in the character being cursed; see [1].

Themes

Encounters, and magic items, have particular themes. They may have many, in fact. For example, a fight with a huge earth elemental is earth themed. It may also be brawn-themed. Depending on the actions of the characters, other themes may come into play; for example, if the party kills it primarily with fire-based attacks, the encounter may be fire-themed. The actual themes are at the GM's discretion.

The challenge should be related to the theme of the encounter, and the encounter theme should be related to the theme of the power. Non-combat encounter themes will tend to create items that are not destructive in nature. Conversely, it is usually not possible to create a non-combat item in a combat encounter.

The equipment being created is also themed. The player decides what kind of item they are attempting to create, and is free to interpret the theme of the encounter as they do so. For example, in an encounter with a greater basilisk, they may decide to create a helm of stoneskin. They do not have to, though. If the item requested is not obviously tied to the encounter's theme, it is up to the GM to come up with a challenge that suits it.

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Challenges

Examples:

• with your party, defeat the gorgon
• in the next battle, fight the kraken, and land a hit on it that does at least 25 damage
• kill at least 20 orcs without rest
• succesfully negotiate a treaty with the warlord
• assist your party through the swinging blades trap without anyone getting injured

Drawbacks

One final way the character can enhance the item or ability is by requesting that the GM attach a drawback to it. This is some flaw, penalty, or restriction on the item which makes it either somewhat dangerous or somewhat harder to use.

If the player elects to give the item a drawback, the character will receive up to +4 on the binding roll, depending on how severe the drawback is.

For the GM, when selecting a drawback, consider that drawbacks should be fun to roleplay, but must represent a genuine challenge to the player using the item. The drawback should be suited to the theme of the item. For example, a ring of diplomacy with a drawback might, on a roll of 1 in 1d20, cause the user to speak in the wrong language when the item is being used.

Also consider that drawbacks should not render the item so dangerous or hard to use that it is effectively useless.

Binding Roll in Depth

Once the challenge is completed, the final step of binding a magic item is the binding roll. Determine bonuses to the roll according to the following chart:

Table 2 - Binding Roll Modifiers

Other modifiers to the binding roll.

Bonus to Binding Roll	Reason
Up to +5	Additional money spent in preparation
+1	Prepared for a purpose and appropriately-themed encounter
+2	Item has a moderate drawback
+4	Item has a severe drawback
Up to +2	Theme of the encounter matches theme of the item extremely well (GM's discretion)
+1	Item is already magical, and power being added aligns with theme
-5	Item is already magical, and power being added is not thematically aligned

Then roll 1d20 on the following chart. Down the left column is CR of the encounter which occurred during the binding act (GM's discretion, if the binding act actually involved several encounters in series). For example, if the party fought a huge earth elemental, that creature is CR7, so find the CR 7 row and read across.

Table 3 - Item Value

Look up the CR of the encounter along the left, and the result of the roll after applying modifiers, and consult the table to find out the value of the item created by the binding act.

CR	1 or less [†]	2-17	18-19	20-21	22-23	24-25	26-27	28-29	30+
6	Item destroyed	6000	7800	10000	12800	16400	21000	27000	35000
7	Item destroyed	7800	10000	12800	16400	21000	27000	35000	44000
8	Item destroyed	10000	12800	16400	21000	27000	35000	44000	58000
9	Item destroyed	12800	16400	21000	27000	35000	44000	58000	76000
10	Item cursed [1]	16400	21000	27000	35000	44000	58000	76000	96000
11	Item cursed [1]	21000	27000	35000	44000	58000	76000	96000	124000
12	Item cursed [1]	27000	35000	44000	58000	76000	96000	124000	158000
13	Item cursed [1]	35000	44000	58000	76000	96000	124000	158000	200000
14	Item cursed [1]	44000	58000	76000	96000	124000	158000	200000	250000
15	Item cursed [1]	58000	76000	96000	124000	158000	200000	250000	300000
16	Item cursed [1]	76000	96000	124000	158000	200000	250000	300000	350000
17	Item cursed [1]	96000	124000	158000	200000	250000	300000	350000	400000
18	Item cursed [1]	124000	158000	200000	250000	300000	350000	400000	450000
19	Item cursed [1]	158000	200000	250000	300000	350000	400000	450000	500000
20	Item cursed [1]	200000	250000	300000	350000	400000	450000	500000	550000

[†]	On a roll of natural 1, the binding is always a failure, regardless of modifiers. Nothing special happens on a natural 20.

[1]

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) Nature of the cursed item is at the GM's discretion. When an item which already had abilities is cursed, there may be additional consequences. When the character is using Imbue Supernatural Ability, the curse is on the character herself, and is permanent. It can only be removed by a limited wish, wish, or miracle.

Now the GM and the player should decide on what the actual powers the item will have, or on the nature of the intrinsic ability. Use, as a guideline, the market prices for magic items given in the magic item tables you are using for your campaign.

If the character succeeds in their binding roll but the value of the ability or item they desire is more than the value they rolled, the GM should substitute a similar but less-powerful ability or item near the value rolled.

Spell-Like Abilities

When determining the market price of a supernatural spell-like ability, use the following formula (similar to the market price for wands):

level of the spell x uses per day x total CL x 750gp

So, to get an innate fireball ability that can be used once per day, the market price of an equivalent magic item for a level 10 character would be 3 x 1 x 10 x 750 = 22500gp.

The caster level for innate spell-like ability is equal to one-half the character's CL, or the lowest level caster necessary to cast the spell, whichever is greater. For the fireball example above, the caster level for the ability will be 5 since that is the lowest level of any class that can cast fireball.

House rules: alignment change

Alignments should not be chosen lightly; they determine the effects of lots of game mechanics while simultaneously dictating a certain style of play.  Character is everything in role-playing, and sticking to your character makes the game more fun, so to the extent that alignment determines character, it should be stable.

Still, sometimes people decide that they want to play a differently aligned character (or that they have been, all along).  They should be able to do so, but not lightly.  There are two ways to change alignment in the world of the Nest of Candles: By Quest, or By Ability Drain.

By Quest

Changing your alignment By Quest means you arrange with the GM in advance for a solo adventure, the primary outcome of which will be to change your alignment.  If you change your alignment By Quest, the GM will design a quest which has trivial or no benefits whatsoever, other than the alignment change.  It should fall in line with the existing story and make sense in the context of both the character you have been playing and the one you want to change.

By Ability Drain

A character can change alignment at any time by agreeing to an alignment drain.  The penalty is: -2 wisdom, and -2 to ability score of the player's choice, per notch on each axis.  For example, Ferdinand the level 7 Berserker wishes to change from Chaotic Good to Chaotic Evil.  This involves no change in the Ethics axis (Chaotic->Chaotic) but two notches shifted on the Morals axis (Good->Neutral->Evil).  Ferdinand chooses to penalize Charisma, and therefore takes a -4 wisdom penalty and -4 charisma penalty.

The ability drain may not be restored by any spell; it goes away on its own the next time the character gains a level, and prior to applying any other level increase benefits.  At level 8, Ferdinand gains back his charisma and wisdom, and then gains his permanent ability score increase, as usual.

It should be noted that the guaranteed wisdom drain means that clerics will be penalized more heavily for alignment changes than other classes.  This is intentional, as clerics' dieties do not take lightly to alignment changes.  In most  cases a cleric will not need to choose a new diety (as gods of Gabbent are not explicitly aligned), but may choose to do so at the same time as they make the alignment change.

In addition the ability drain, any other penalties related to class or race or special circumstances (such as a paladin losing all class abilities) that accrue due to the alignment change still apply.  Any penalties that accrue due to changing a worshipped diety also apply.

Selt Lat

The characters reach the underground town of Selt Lat.  Here's a synopsis of some things that happened:

• The characters first enter the impoverished shantytown where the bugbears live, but find nothing of interest there.

• They next visit the orcs. A large group of box zombies passes by them, and the rest of the inhabitants give it a wide berth. The zombies pay no attention to the party.

• There they also meet a female orc apothecarist (who helps them identify potions), and a grotesquely rotund orc weapon dealer.

• The orc apothecarist tells them of Mohjgan, a beneficent individual who wishes to lift the orcs up above all other races by destroying them.

• They purchase a non-magical shield and a ton of arrows from the weapon dealer, who also shows them a few magical items he has for sale, including a very valuable shapeshifter's sorrow (longsword). Tiffy vows to steal it.

• They pass through a checkpoint separating the largest orc area from the largest lizard area. Orcs guard it on the west side, lizard men on the east. One of the lizard guards reaches out to stop the party and question them, but another lizard man stops him and lets them go by.

• The visit the jeweler's in lizard territory and sell gems.

• They visit the tavern in lizard territory. There they encounter a gargoyle named Cul-de-Gil and his two gargoyle friends. Cul-de-Gil asks the party to destroy some boats, in exchange for a large ruby he owns. He will not say why he wants the boats destroyed, or why he won't do it himself. He does show the party where they can be found. The party hears an accompanying rumor that the boats were left there by a Valkyrie, who failed to bring a number of viking ships to Valhalla.

• In the tavern they also hear these rumors:

  • Mohjgan is conducting a violent campaign against the "scum" races to elevate lizard mankind above all other races;
  • Don't eat the fish from the fishmonger;
  • A vampire, in the form of a flock of birds, was seen flying through Selt Lat recently, but nobody can agree on which way he went;
  • The bugbear chieftain was murdered by a medusa named Carcatta.

• On the subject of Carcatta, Dev recalls that she assisted the party when they were fighting the grimlocks; she was their shaman, until she determined that the party could help her, at which point she briefly fought with them against the grimlocks.

• The party stays the night in a lizard inn. When they wake up, Meraud is hysterical; it seems that Jago has disappeared in the night, and she claims that it is "impossible" that he left on his own.

  • She explains that vampires exist because of their "contract", which somehow makes them possessed by a single mortal master. They must obey the master.
  • Jago had his contract transferred to Meraud long ago.
  • Since Jago was ordered not to leave her side he could not have left on his own, and he must have been physically stolen.

• The party decides to go find Carcatta in bugbear-town. There they meet Carcatta, who has once again set herself up as the shaman of a tribe. The bugbear chieftain is still around and alive, although they do not meet him.

  • Carcatta asks the party to go find her sisters and shows them where her sisters can be found.
  • She asks them to bring her sisters back; she promises that if they bring a message to her sisters, she will use her network of contacts in Selt Lat to find Jago.
  • Everyone in the party (except Ellira) allows Carcatta to inject them (by snake) with a special poison. She says it will have no ill effects, but will allow her sisters to smell them and identify them as her friends.

Side Quest #2: Maurice vs. the Vampire

An episode from Maurice's past.

Maurice Fitzcecil is travelling west out of Catam, away from unspecified troubles he has had in the empire, away from Catamrab, the capital city.  He is down on his luck and almost out of cash, but he moves on, hoping for a better payoff in a future adventure.

He stops in a small town named Dagger Rock in western Catam, where he eats a meal with a strange, lonely merchant who drinks too much and talks too loudly.  The merchant, himself feeling the sting of recent poverty, tells a rum-doused tale about a treasure hidden in the nearby graveyard.  An ancient exporter, powerful and wealthy when alive, is buried there, he says, entombed with his favorite weapon.  That weapon is a sword forged of Abyssal ice, and he says it will still be there and its powerful magic still active.  He wants to steal that sword, and any other treasures they may find, and sell it all for enough money to put him back on his feet financially and re-establish his trade caravan.  Maurice agrees to go help him.

In the deep night they stumble drunkenly through the outskirts of town and arrive at the crypt.  There, Veikko (the merchant) tries the door to the crypt and finds a way in - the door is inexplicably unlocked, and the merchant stumbles in first.  They set about searching the crypts, looking for an ancient merchant's sepulcher.  Maurice finds one that indeed might fit the bill, but when he goes to bring Veikko to see, he hears the merchant fighting with someone else, and they are talking to each other as if they knew each other already!  Maurice senses trouble and decides to flee, but something flies out after him in the night, catches him, and orders him to walk straight back to the crypt.  Maurice is helpless to resist.

When they get there, Veikko and Riikka, the vampire, tussle with each other as Riikka reveals his true purpose: to kill Veikko and avenge a bad debt on behalf of an employer in Catamrab.  Maurice manages to shake his domination, and when Riikka kills the hapless merchant, Maurice finds the sword he came to find in the first place; but it turns out to have been Riikka's sword all along.  He brandishes it, and Riikka explains his true purpose and the reason Maurice is there in the first place.  The vampire was magically ordered to have a witness present when he murdered Veikko, and he tricked Veikko into bringing along his own witness.  Part of the ruse was to have been the hidden sword (to match the story Veikko would tell), but Riikka in a lapse of judgement forgets to reclaim the sword.  Now that Maurice has it, the balance of power has shifted.

Threatened with the sword, Riikka explains that he cannot kill Maurice anyway; he must bring him back to Catamrab alive to be his witness, or the magical geas will destroy him.  Maurice agrees to do so in exchange for the sword, and its lore.  They set off together the next day.

After a hard ride back toward Catamrab, Maurice insists on a rest, and Riikka agrees to stand guard at night.  But a short time later, Maurice is woken up by a dire wolverine sniffing at his backpack.  Soon he finds himself attacked in the middle of the night by two of the insane beasts, driven there by Riikka.  On the point of death, he hears Riikka explain: "I control them.  Give up the sword and I won't allow them to knock you unconscious."  Maurice agrees to toss the sword back to the vampire, but in the meantime he has wounded both animals with the evil, greedy blade.

This turns out to save his life.  The wolverines, confused by the power of the blade, no longer obey the vampire; in fact, they turn on him and attack!  Maurice manages to pick the sword back up, and he and Riikka take turns for a while fighting the animals off as they seem to have no idea whom they wish to kill.  Riikka manages to ignore most of the injuries, his vampiric powers keeping him safe, but he is unable to gain a clear advantage.  Maurice attempts to turn the vampire, but this action has no effect.  The vampire in turn attempts to dominate Maurice, but cannot command him to do anything before the wolverines tear him down again, and Maurice protects himself from the domination with a protection from evil spell.

Maurice finally manages to break the standoff by attacking the vampire directly with the blade.  This destroys the Abyssal weapon and its black shards melt into the ground as the vampire, his magic broken somehow by the evil weapon, collases and expires.  The last remaining wolverine is finally driven off by Maurice.

The cleric is victorious over the vampire, and travels off into the sunset, with but one token of the events: a black shard of ice, still permanently frozen, left over from the Abyssal weapon.

The Road to Selt Lat

The party begins to explore an extensive and intricate cave system underneath Grimcatch, looking for a way down to Dol Gemen Lom.

They find the place mostly barren and deserted.  They track bare footprints through the dust for a while that seem to go nowhere, and in the empty echoing halls find the skulls of grimlocks, spiked to the walls with sharp iron stakes, and another skeleton spiked to the ground (and a potion and a gem nearby).  There are wide, maddeningly deep chasms crossed by rope bridges (which are at least in good repair), and a lot of twists and turns and dead ends in the rock.

They come upon a place where a tribe of primitive humanoids has made a home, but find that it is quite recently scoured by fire, and all the humanoids are dead, their paleolithic artifacts left where they lay and a pile of burned bodies off to one side of the cave.  (Mixed among those bodies, there are also the bodies of zombies, the less-recently dead.)  Near that, they find a very strange zombie with a wooden crate instead of a head.  This creature has had its arms and legs destroyed by the fire, and it strikes itself in the head repeatedly with its remaining arm stump.  Tiffy stabs it to death, and then pries the lid off the box but finds nothing but an infestation of spiders and some kind of recently-living internal organ on top of its neck.
After a bit of investigation, they discover that the box is some kind of spell container.  Written on its front, in infernal, is the word "Purge".  On the inside they find the spell summon swarm (spiders).

Deeper still into the caves, the party finds another chasm and another bridge.  This time they spot a bunch of the zombies standing near a lit torch.  They start to move toward the heroes, but Maurice cows them with a powerful rebuke, and only a few are left to attack.  Tiffy and Ellira begin to spray them with lightning, but this has an odd effect; spells seem to go off randomly every time one of the zombies loses its head.  When the party finally manages to immobilize all the zombies with webs and rebukes, one ill-timed lightning bolt splits open a crate that causes a powerful fireball, which consumes several more zombies, causing lightning bolts to fire back at the party, a magic mouth to start screaming, and other strange effects.  Ellira ends the threat of the remaining zombies by magically warping the bridge to drop them into the void, and the party continues on.

Finally, they arrive at Selt Lat.  This appears to be some kind of underground haven for monstrous humanoids.

Down and Dirty

The heroes make a decision: they are going to accompany Jago and Meraud, and try to find out whether anything bad has happened to Dol Gemen Lom.

They climb down the chain to the cage where they entered the Soft World through a lacuna.  There, Meraud drops a little bombshell: by virtue of having spent time in the green air of the Soft World, they are all infected with something called "ice ash", which has two cures: remove disease, and waiting out the infection.  (The latter option results in painful death within 6-8 hours, she duly informs everyone.)  Since they do not have enough spells to cure the ice ash for everyone at once, they decide to rest again inside the cage and fix that.

Fortunately nothing happens to them while they're in there and everyone manages to get remove disease prepped.  When they advance through the lacuna, they quickly cure themselves of the ice ash infections and shortly decide that the best way to reach Dol Gemen Lom is by going back to Jeraslan and transitting Grimcatch one more time.  On the way there they are blocked by a camp of Catamese army soldiers, but they use invisibility and bluff their way through with a story about trying to find truffles at the behest of Xabier Lubo and his fickle taste buds.

They find Grimcatch still burned, the way they left it.  Everyone ties handkerchiefs around their noses and proceeds.  A series of barely-glimpsed movements and phantom sounds dogs at them as they proceed through the tomb-like lost home of the grimlock tribe.  A mysterious voice taunts Jago at one point, laughing and saying his name, and Jago responds by unleashing a torrent of small black birds which seek out the meddler.  In response, another swarm of birds mingles with his swarms, but nobody is revealed in the area.

Finally the party finds the locked iron door that they never explored, and unlocks it.

Make Like a Shepherd

Jago and Meraud bicker, then everyone decides to put their cards on the table. Meraud explains what the war of keyholes is, omitting only what she doesn't know, which is why the herons are fighting. Meraud explicitly explains that the Truss being broken means that Dol Gemen Lom might be missing, and if that's the case, all of Blue Gabbent might be at risk.

They proceed back to the broken bridge in an orderly fashion. There, they kill a few vultures and while fighting the vultures notice the black shadow of a tar orphan flying overhead.

Jago and Ellira fly across, Jago in blueling form and Ellira in white owl form. Maurice summons a hippogriff and carries first himself, and then Tiffy and Meraud across. Dev is last, and does not manage to cross before the tar orphan claws its way through and attacks.

Tiffy and Ellira rake it with lightning while Dev, finally rescued by the hippogriff, fires arrows into its back. It manages to injure the entire party with its wings, claw the hell out of Tiffy and Ellira and finally expire.

Meanwhile, however, two similar tar orphans have appeared, stealing what appears to be the entrance to a cave.  The party observes Occulke's tentacles tearing apart these thieves, off in the distance.

Secrets of the Blue Agents

[This summary was created by Nate.  Thanks Nate!]

Dev and Jago talk while Meraud and the others sleep.  The highlights:

• Jago confirms off-handedly that he is a vampire.
• They struggle to establish trust without disclosing any potentially damaging information.
• Dev says outright that he doesn't trust Jago or Meraud.
• Jago is aware that Dev is Iluvien's brother, but since he didn't trust Iluvien either, this doesn't help.
• In a gesture of goodwill, Jago tells Dev more of Occulke and the War of Keyholes.  Apparently Clattermouth directed the tar orphans (the headless flyers) and the ghasts that were attacking us.  Occulke sent/controlled the tentacle thing.  "Occulke protects his own".  But because his argument does not build upon anything Dev already knows, it doesn't give Dev a reason to trust.  Jago could be lying, and the entire episode with the ghasts, the flyers, and the tentacles could be a ruse to drive us to Jago and Meraud.
• Jago begs Dev to give him a reason to trust him.  Dev takes a risk and tells him about finding the heron-marked coins in the caverns below the roots.  Jago says this confirms something he had already suspected - something about "Jester" - but does not elaborate.  Apparently this is not sufficient.
• Still searching for a path to common ground, Dev asks Jago what he needs to trust him.  Jago asks "what have you done for us recently?".  Dev mentions killing ghasts, fighting harpies and gnolls, killing grimlocks.  He mentions fighting the blue dragon, which elicits surprise and skepticism from Jago.  When Jago realizes that the fight with the dragon occurred in Olemheiden - far from the blue dragon's natural habitat - he becomes alarmed.  He asks where the dragon came from.  Dev replies that he doesn't know, but that he suspects that the dragon may have come from beneath the orulins, which further agitates Jago.
• Finally, Jago asks what else has happened in Olemheiden recently.  When Dev mentions the earthquake, Jago starts using ALL CAPS.  HE WAKES MERAUD AND YELLS THAT THE TRUSS IS BROKEN.

Game Session, 2009.04.27

Posted to Google Docs.

Hunted & Saved

The party, depleted of its magic, attempts to rest in the maze.  This does not go as planned, however.  To give Dev a chance to rest, Crom takes a spell at the watch.  Maurice appoints the fallen babau, newly risen as a zombie, to assist with the watch at another corridor.  Almost immediately, ghasts start appearing, tearing at the zombie demon and the berserking human with no apparent care for their existence.  But soon it becomes clear that this is not an isolated series of attacks, but an assault, as more and more undead keep arriving, climbing over the walls and at the same time pushing the babau zombie back with a mass of bodies.  Crom cannot hold back the tide on his own and he wakes the rest of the party up, but it's already too late.. there are too many enemies and not enough swords, and then Crom himself falls, paralyzed by an early attack.

The party is already depleted, and there seems to be no recourse except immediate retreat, but without Crom.  As they slowly come to this realization, two dark, non-ghast-shaped figures arrive and exhort the party with loud screams to follow them.  The characters do so quickly after it becomes apparent that Crom is going to get torn apart anyway, and the babau is probably beyond saving as well.  More and more ghasts and hunting the team, and coming from every direction.  Soon, however, a keening wail from above announces more, and more deadly trouble: two tar orphans, the headless fliers of the Soft World, are flapping around overhead, apparently looking for a gap in the flood of undead to make their attack.

The characters chase headlong after the two mysterious arrivals, who lead the party to a trapdoor in the glass ground, and start pushing the heroes through it to safety.  Even as this happens, the tar orphans decide to make their move, and smash through the glass walls of the maze, sending deadly fragments flying everywhere.  But their attack is halted as two great lashing tentacles grab and crush them, sending their bodies off into oblivion.  The tentacles then begin pummeling and tossing ghasts, giving the saviors and the heroes time to get to safety.

Just before she ducks through, Tiffy tries one last-ditch effort to save Crom, and with her final magic summons a great beetle to push back the hordes and try to pull the body out of the fray.  Then they all scramble into the bolthole and latch the trapdoor behind them.

Once inside they are introduced to their saviors, a woman named Meraud and a man named Jago.  It is clear immediately that the plan to save the heroes from the ghasts was not unanimously approved, as the woman holds out a holy symbol, a disk bearing the heron symbol they have seen before, and attempts to turn the party members.  Nobody flinches, and she agrees to let them stay.

The party rests, but Dev agrees, once again, to stand watch, this time to discuss the immediate future with Jago.

Welcome Page, updated

This entry should help new players to the game get acquainted with how things work.

If you do nothing else, join the Google Group linked below so you can ask questions about the rest.

Important links for players:

Google Group: link

We have an email component. Apply to join this group if you are interested. This is a great place to seek help, ask questions, meet the players and play by email. I also make announcements on here.

IRC: #vellum on freenode

Games are conducted on IRC. Use an IRC client such as mIRC, Pidgin, Xchat, etc. to join us in #vellum on freenode - our server and channel.

If you are having any trouble with any of the software or character creation, please join us on IRC in this channel where it will be easiest for us to help you.

RPTools Maptool: download link

Make sure to download Version 1.3 of Maptool. Maptool is the "virtual game table" - how I help players visualize the map they're in.

Halfrest: link

This is an online character pastebin. You may create your character directly in here by using the Template button or create it elsewhere and paste it here, but your character will be available online from here. Our character pages are editable plain text (actually a format known as RestructuredText which is easy to read and write and formats nicely).

The DM recommends using Its All Text, a Firefox extension, for editing the character sheet in Halfrest.

Intro Story: link

Condensed version of events to this point, for catching up and figuring out your character's background story.

Game Sessions Calendar:

We play approximately 2 sessions a month, usually on Tuesday evenings (PST).

And, if you're curious about my maps and want to make your own: I use Dundjinni.

From the Lower Planes

A thing from the Abyss has attacked the party.  In a whirlwind of action, Ellira illuminates the scene with daylight while the rest of the party desperately tries to hit the monster, to no avail.  Crom, seeing Tiffy's mortal danger, rushes the monster but it simply knocks him back, snarling and laughing in its gory language.

But Maurice manages to strike first, inflicting wounds on it with a spell and drawing its wrath.  It lashes back at him when he tries to make a move across the battlefield, and as the other party members strike, it seems to heal from all injuries and deal back twice as much damage as they would have caused.

Soon Crom is bleeding, but still protecting Tiffy as her spells whittle away at the demon's hit points with missile after missile.  Dev flails in vain, unable to do much worse than scratches to this thing which simply ignores steel weapons.  But Maurice has a solution: he casts align weapon on Crom and Dev's weapons while Tiffy continues to plug away with the magic missiles.

Between Dev's bow, Crom's Ungarik, Tiffy's missiles and the babau's claws and teeth, the battlefield becomes a shower of blood but when it clears, the party stands over the underworlder's vacant corpse.

Maurice celebrates the occasion by animating it as a zombie.

Game Session, 2009.04.07

Posted to Google Docs.

Side Quest #1: Ellira Investigates a Ghost

An episode from Ellira's past.

As a younger adventurer, Ellira worked for the Olemcorro arborist, Brais Lino.  As the most experienced arborist anywhere in Olemheiden, he often gets called on to investigate mysterious tree-related phenomena.  When he gets a report of a mysterious, ethereal stone statue that has suddenly appeared in the bark of Tamangawn, he sends Ellira to check it out.

At the site of the statue, Ellira uses her sensory concert ability and learns that unnatural, undead-seeming creatures are nearby, but the statue is not actually a ghost as everyone has thought.  Above a neighborhood restaurant, in a musty storeroom, Ellira is attacked by invisible creatures which she can see only in flashes.  (These later turn out to be ethereal marauders.)  Their attacks injure her, but not badly, and she manages to kill one and drive the other away with lightning.  Left in the storeroom is the mostly eaten corpse of an elf, apparently killed by the creatures.

She talks to Joris, the local bookstore owner next, and turns on her charm to the maximum, convincing him to let her look around his store.  He is taken with her, and agrees to let her snoop, but is ultimately no help with the statue.

Ellira takes a closer peek at the tree where the statue has appeared and decides to cut a hole in the tree with wood shape  and climb through.  She finds an empty shelf-lined storeroom and a passage leading away.  She also finds the statue inside.  It seems that some kind of glamer has made the statue blur around its true location, which is how the Tamangawn elves were able to see it outside of the tree.  Exploring further, she trips over a symbol of pain, and when the constables find her later, they agree to help her talk to the bookstore owner over the mysterious rooms that aren't supposed to be above his shop.  He stymies the investigation, but she is able to convince the constabulary that the statue is a real object and not a ghost by showing it to them.  Ellira explores the hidden passages, finding more traps but nothing that convincingly implicates the bookstore owner until she steals the statue and devotes several days to trying to dispel the obvious transmutation that has been cast on it.  She finally succeeds, freeing a dryad!

The dryad tells of using tree walk to travel to Tamangawn to speak to Tjaard, the local arborist and give him a message.  When she came through, she stepped on a glyph of warding and inadvertantly freed the ethereal marauders.  She promises a boon to Ellira for freeing her.

Now having a solid witness to an actual crime, Ellira recruits the local constables and then, late in the evening, she and the officers enter the closed shop and find a secret door into the back rooms.

Ellira, in a rare lapse of judgement, decides to investigate Joris herself while the constables go off to collect weapons to capture the store owner.  Behind another hidden door, she finds his hidden apartment, but he is ready for her.  They exchange words; he refuses to give himself up.  A brief magical battle ensues; he tries to hold person on her, unsuccessfully, and she tries to call lightning on him, but it is deflected by his lesser globe of invulnerability.  Finally, realizing that his crime spree is over, Joris casts teleport and carries his carefully hoarded knowledge away with him.

In return for her rescue, the dryad teaches Ellira how to cast displacement as a third-level spell.

Maze of Sharps

Having been worn down by the monsters, the party decides to rest.  But they're not back in the woods yet; this is still the Glass Arcade, and danger is lurking.  As the spellcasters rest to recover their spells, Dev keeps watch, and is soon attacked by the everpresent vultures.  With a flurry of arrows he dispatches them, and except for occasionally noticing the turned ghasts watching them from afar, the remainder of the rest period passes uneventfully.

The party is then faced with crossing a worn-smooth glass tube that connects their platform to the next one.  Though the ghasts have disappeared, their threat seems ever-present.  They begin to cross to the other side, finding their a maze of some kind, its 9' tall walls made of spines of sharp glass.  Despite the danger of falling, all of the party manages to reach the other side safely . . . but one.  Tiffy still remains on the tube when the ghasts finally reappear.  One of them bounds over the wall and makes a beeline for her, taking blows along the way but pursuing her with a single-minded desire to knock her off to her doom.

As more ghasts jump over the wall and attack the party, Tiffy is forced to defend herself from the creature's attacks, surviving and managing to remain un-paralyzed until Maurice, thinking quickly, destroys it with positive healing energy, scattering its ashes over Tiffy.  Dev and Ellira take out the other two with arrows and spells, leaving the world once again in silence.

But they are not alone.  The sounds of movement and wailing and growling echo through the maze.  They begin to pursue, finding the passageways mostly empty, the only evidence of occupation a devoured vulture.  (The vultures continue to circle overhead.)  They cautiously round corner after corner, staying together for safety, and get nothing but the echoes of running feet coming from who-knows-how-far away.

Suddenly, as they round a corner, the green world goes black, the first time they have encountered darkness in this place.  A magical darkness spell has been cast and everyone is enveloped within.  As the party braces for battle, a mysterious foe attacks Tiffy, nearly killing her with a single surprise attack, and we stop here.

Game Session, 2009.03.17

Posted to Google Docs.

Glass Arcade, cont'd

After turning away a bunch of ghasts, the party collects the treasure of the creatures, having to retch only a few times at the corrupt odor hanging over it.  Once they sack away their loot, they pursue, and discover the ghasts have climbed up a series of glassy vines to the other side.

Crom, feeling bored, pursues the monsters up the vine, expecting to chase them onto another platform.  He is surprised, however, when he reaches the midpoint between the platforms and suddenly finds himself falling towards the undead monsters!  He slips and crashes to the ground.  Dev, also in hot pursuit makes the same blunder, and soon the ghasts have paralyzed both of the prone party members.  The rest of the party manages to keep disaster at bay though, for, before the killing strike lands, Maurice once again turns the creatures, and Ellira finishes the last remaining one off with a spell that renders its flesh into earthy moss.

Game Session, 2009.03.03

Posted to Google Docs.

Penny Arcade D&D Podcast - this one has Wil Wheaton

The newest series of PA D&D Podcasts has started out at the maximum level for funny.  I was literally - not figuratively, not "LOL" but literally by which I mean with my literal lungs - walking around laughing out loud at this in a supermarket.

(First series starts here, but get a podcatcher and subscribe to the feed you technophobe.)

The Glass is Half Cracked

The adventurers come out on a glass platform that seems to alter in response to their presence.  They use a grappling hook to move from the chain to the platform, then notice that glass trees are growing from the platform, and undulating glass blobs are moving toward them in the sky.

While investigating the blobs, Crom is surprised by some kind of gray undead humanoid, which moves very fast down the chain.  Crom flees back onto the platform, but the humanoids leap down onto the heroes as a flock of vultures moves in.  Maurice turns the undead and the party quickly slaughters the vultures and undead, with Tiffy supplying the final killing fire.

The characters move north, where they find a glass gangway separating two glass platforms.  The glass on either side of the gangway is thin, while the middle section is massively thick and heavy.  As they cross one by one, the thin sections become progressively more cracked, until Crom manages to break the platform completely!  The party's forethought at tying a rope at either end saves Crom from a fall to his doom, but Crom is still left hanging on for dear life when a bunch of the humanoid undead attack from the northern platform.

Once again Maurice turns the undead, and Dev picks off another vulture, while Tiffy hauls Crom back to safety.

Game Session, 2009.02.19

Posted to Google docs.

Revisiting the Soft World

The party decides to return to the hole where Iluvien disappeared from Olemheiden.  They leave Olemcorro in the middle of the night and trek through the forest, encountering one Catamese encampment.  They successfully convince this camp that they are incompetent skirmishers searching the forest and pass on by.  Toward morning, as they near Iluvien's point of departure, a crashing noise alerts them to animals.

Soon they are jumped by a pair of massive dire boars who surround them and strike from either side!  Tiffy and Ellira are badly gored, and Tiffy feels death's cold breath down her neck.  In a pitched battle involving entanglement, a summoned centipede, and Dev's precise arrows, they manage to slow down the boars enough to destroy them.  After everyone is healed again, they slaughter one of the boars, and Maurice the cleric animates one of them into a shambling boar zombie.

The next morning they reach the point where Iluvien disappeared, and Dev is able to recognize it by a cairn he had left there the previous time.  Inside the portal they find another cage, this one newer-looking than the last.  They leave the zombie boar on the other side and explore the cage, finding yet another scratched heron mark on the cage bars.

There is also a locked door.  Dev proceeds to pick the lock, getting blasted by a trap in the process.  This trap is a wave of blue light that engulfs him, but he feels no pain and it quickly dissipates.  It is at this point that the party first hears a mysterious, loud sound from very far away.  Becoming concerned, Maurice casts an augury spell to ask the question, "Should we leave the cage through the door?" and hears his god telling him emphatically yes.  Another quick augury and Ellira's god suggests that yes, they should climb up the cage's chain.

A quick scramble out of the cage, and then the sound gets louder and they look over to see another rusty cage falling through space, one even more massive than the one they are in.  It's going to hit them.  Thinking fast, Tiffy covers the party in web, binding them fast to the chain, just seconds before the falling cage smashes into bits against theirs, sending them rocketing through space.  When it settles down again, they find that they are safe, although the zombie boar, not completely outside of the portal, lost a leg in the concussion.

The danger clear, the party carefully climbs the chain through the hazy green world.  At the top of it they find a strange platform of smoky glass, topped by another one, upside-down.  The session ended here.

Game Session, 2009.02.05

The heroes try to follow Iluvien Ir'Wyran footsteps and travel through the portal.

Posted to Google Docs.

New Players' Guide added

I have posted a new players' guide to the website.  It covers all the story elements so far.

New Players' Guide¤

In which the story finally advances

Party: Tiffy, Dvethen, Ellira, Crom, Jaleese

Olemcorro and the Borehole

• Characters return to town, and seduce a priest of The Daghda into providing them with a free divination on how best to fight and damage shadows.  The reply is "Neither flame nor my pure influence - alone - will destroy them."  The characters respond by creating and acquiring some holy water.
• Using the holy water and magical attacks, the character manage to dispatch two shadows and an allip, and reach the top of the borehole.
• There, they find a cabinet.  After disarming a mysterious trap (which unleashes a staggeringly loud bird-of-prey shriek) and picking the lock on the cabinet open, they find only a few scraps of paper . . . and a blue shield of energy, floating fixed in the center of the cabinet.  After examining it for a bit, Crom reaches into it.  As he does so, a strangely accented voice says, "Companion, the Map of the Truss is yours."  He withdraws a crystalline sphere of cloudy black.
• The sphere turns out to be a literal map.  But it requires a blue light to see.  When they realize this, they manage to draw a map of bright blue lights that correspond to the locations of the orulins, and little color-changing ones around them.
• When they turn the map at an angle, they see that there is a huge red wound, apparently in the ground underneath Olemheiden.  It is wrapped in bands of blue light in the map, and these bands connect all the orulins except Jeraslan.
• When the party leaves the secret blue archives, the elves are in an excited state.  PCs investigate and see, in the distance, a battle of white lights flickering from the sky to the ground, and purple lights from the ground to the sky.  The lights eventually cease, and a reptilian scream echoes through the air.
• The characters learn that a human army is present in Olemheiden.
• Panicked harpies blunder into the orulin, and the characters kill them, but Jaleese dies in the battle, killed in stirge form by a harpy.
• After some dithering, the characters decide to rest again, and hear that the human army has encamped and is not leaving.

Olemheiden and the World of Moss

• They descend to the forest floor, despite the guards warning them that elves are being captured.  Then they cross it quickly, and uneventfully.  They notice a human skirmisher patrol crossing their path from south to north, but the group does not stop them.
• They reach the place where the Map of the Truss shows some kind of color-shifting dot near Olemcorro.
• Investigating, they discover that bringing the Map near a certain place causes it to become visible as a flickering red-purple-blue globe, suspended in the air 8 feet up.  The closer they bring the Map to it, the more constant it becomes.
• They decide to try to climb through it.  They manage this by tying a rope to the tree and descending into it.  First Crom, then the rest of the party.  Once inside they see a mossy cage 60 feet in diameter suspended from a chain in a nearly infinite expanse of green in all directions.  There are other mossy green globes suspended around them off in the distance.  They notice an (apparently huge) black flying creature that has reptilian rear claws, wings and tail, but no forward torso or head, nothing forward of the wings at all.  The creature disappears, then a cry of something gigantic and angry is heard.  Then the flying thing returns, grabs one of the globes, and begins flying into the air with it, straight up.
• Crom attempts to summon the flying creature by making imitating the noise it made with ghost sound.  In response, another cry off in the distance, and then the globe they saw being carried away suddenly drops to the end of its chain, jerking and bouncing off its momentum.  A moment later, a dismembered body of the black creature falls and hits the globe, then bounces off into the green void.
• Their final observation in the green world was another cry, this one much louder, followed by something black and ropelike snaking down the chain and toward them in the globe.  They escape by dangling a rope from the top of the cage into the portal, and climbing down through it, just as the tentacle pulls the rope right through their hands and into the other world.
• Their rapid escape draws a patrol of humans from the army, who attempt to detain them, but the characters defeat them and capture the sergeant.  They bring the sergeant back to Olemcorro, to be interrogated by the elven leaders.

Camp of the Catamese Army

• They go out again and attempt to encounter another patrol so they can follow them back to the human camp.  The first time this happens, the patrol demands they drop their weapons, and meets a swift end.  The second time, the party convinces the patrol that they are mercenaries looking for work, and are taken back to the camp.
• On their way through the forest they discover the humans are rapidly deforesting a large circular area, where they are encamped.  A pavilion tent is surrounded by many smaller tents.
• The characters sign up for officer wages in Xabier Lubo's army after observing a line of elite guards guarding one exit to the administrative area of the tent.
• Leading up to, and then at the banquet (at which they are served authentic blue dragon meat, cut from the massive corpse of the blue dragon), the characters talk to the other soldiers and learn several things:
  

• Facts:

1. The western towns of Catam must rebuild the damage Egar Geza caused
2. The general leading the army is named Xabier Lubo
3. Zuchar is the name of a powerful wizard who stays near Xabier Lubo
4. Many weapons were left in the body of the dragon, unclaimed by the now-dead soldiers

•   Rumors:

1. Zuchar launched the attack because he wanted to acquire the dragon's skin
2. Xabier Lubo launched the attack because he hates these elves
3. The elves are angry because the dragon was their pet, and now it's dead

• Crom and Tiffy cull the pile of weapons that were pulled from the dragon's body, finding a flail +1 and Ungarik Greatbleeder.
• Dev searches the outside of the tent by secretly making slits in the fabric and peeking through.  He gets caught on only one occasion, and Tiffy bluffs they they were looking for a place to tryst.
• Dev steals a map from a table in the tent.  They return to Olemcorro to provide the maps to the conclave.

Another game session

Just want to get down some notes about what happened the last game session:

- Ellira was near death.  The party waited for her to rest up enough to heal herself.
- Crom climbed down to the main branches and got taken into custody by elven officers of the law.
- They interrogated him.  Eventually they let him go.
- Crom apparently failed in his goal of convincing the elves that a paladin had fallen fighting the blue dragon, and of warning them that monsters were inside their tree.