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.