First Time Playing: Out of the Ashes

Between Pathfinder 2, Symbaroum and Forbidden Lands, I'm firmly of the opinion that I have enough fantasy games already, but when Paul Mitchener, the creator of Liminal, shows up with one, I've got to at least take a look.

Out of the Ashes is a fantasy game set in the aftermath of a war against a terrible evil that's left the world close to ruin.  Characters will undertake quests to fight the remnants of said evil and rebuild their community.  The setting reminds me of Forbidden Lands, while the play style made me think rather of Mutant: Year Zero.

The system bears no resemblence to these Year Zero engine games, however, using a 2d10 mechanic that's a modification of Liminal.  Success is slightly harder to achieve than in Liminal, reflecting the very different type of game that's happening here, and the various methods for improving rolls all have some kind of roleplay hook attached.

But the important thing is whether it's fun to play, and I loved it.  You could look at the setting and system individually, but what makes this so good is that just like in Liminal, the two sides work together to complement each other.  Things like the skill list including Song, which backs up the importance of music in the setting.

Then there's the monsters, in the form of the Tainted, who are thoroughly creepy.  The main concern with fantasy games for me is whether it's just going to be a rehash of everything I already know from years of playing D&D and Pathfinder.  No; this game has its own theme and the corrupted remnants of what used to be humans fit right in here.

Naturally one of the first things we did (much like when Paul's GMed Liminal games for us) was to head straight for the pub.  Besides that we had two problems to deal with, one requiring planning and subterfuge and the other heading out into the wilderness to fight monsters.  This game has the flexibility to do both well.

I'm a difficult sell on a fantasy game.  I can't see me embracing this quite as wholeheartedly as I have Liminal as there are so many good options in this genre.  But to create a fantasy game that I find exciting and refreshing and want to play more of is quite an achievement.

Out of the Ashes is fully funded on Kickstarter at the moment, with just a few days to go.  Our Actual Play is available on YouTube now if you want to see what it looks like on the (virtual) table.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Revisited

My first experience of DCC was at a convention, back when they still happened face to face, and it wasn't great.  While my normal convention experience ranges from good to great, this was merely OK.  I can think of three factors that contributed to that:

• The GM planned for 4-6 players and only two of us signed up.
• I'm quiet, the GM was a little hard of hearing, and the room was loud due to a group coming in to play video games so we struggled to communicate.
• I'd never heard of a funnel before so had no idea what was going on with these multiple character sheets or how any of it was supposed to work.

So I figured I owed DCC a second shot, and when a friend offered a one-shot of Creep, Skrag, Creep! I decided to give it a go.  This time I knew what a funnel was, we had the four players the GM had planned for, and...well, we had some internet problems so maybe the sound wasn't all it could have been, but at least we could all hear each other.

The adventure itself is a fun horror-themed scenario, which I suspect takes some inspiration from the Alien franchise.  One of my peasants was dead within five minutes.  Another followed shortly afterwards.  Since one thing I did like about the previous DCC game was the big red stamp the GM used on dead characters, I decided to improvise with MS Paint:

Going in knowing what a funnel was certainly improved the experience, and I was impressed by how the GM handled the fact that there were quite a lot of PCs in play, even after the initial massacre.  There's definitely fun to be found in attempting to guide your team of hapless potato farmers through a situation they're entirely unequipped to deal with, and a feeling of victory when any of them make it out alive.

That said, I doubt I'll sign up for many more funnels.  They're good for an occasional bit of fun, but not really what I'm looking for most of the time when playing an RPG.  I wonder what the game looks like once you're playing a character with levels rather than a random peasant though.  I've seen the core book and it's enormous - there has to be a lot more in there than what I've seen so far.

It looks like I'm going to have to revisit DCC at least once more to really get a feel for what it's like.  There's a massive DCC Humble Bundle currently available though, with a bunch of level 1 and higher adventures, so maybe I'll get the chance.

First time playing: Symbaroum

I picked up the Symbaroum PDF when Fria Ligan were doing a one-day free giveaway, but hadn't actually got round to looking at it.  Then our Coriolis GM asked if anyone was interested in a one-shot.

We were offered a selection of pre-gen characters.  I picked up Magdala, the barbarian witch, because she was a witch.  Last time I played a witch it was in Pathfinder, when the APG came out and we wanted to try out the new classes.  She was an early casualty of the Player Massacre of 2010.  But back to Symbaroum.

I love dark Germanic flavour fantasy, and I've played Warhammer FRP a couple of times, but I always feel like it suffers a bit from the fundamentally comic nature of some of the races.  Mohawk-wearing dwarves and pie-obsessed halflings don't make for a dark and gritty game.  (See Diversity Hires for what the last game of WFRP I played was like.)  Symbaroum gives me the same flavour but without the comic elements.  The playable races are humans, changelings, ogres and goblins, who feel far more like they wandered out of some ancient fairy tale than the standard Lord of the Rings style party.  The world feels smaller, and a little claustrobic, but there's certainly room for a campaign in there.

The system is uncomplicated - just a row of stats to roll under, and a few special abilities - but still feels flexible.  My first level witch has only one spell, but each spell can be cast at three different levels with different effects.  There are no spell slots.  The only limitation is that each spell cast gives her an amount of temporary corruption, and with that amount being rolled it can vary wildly.  With a threshold to avoid crossing, each spell becomes a gamble.  In one stroke, the game has both done away with Vancian magic and given magic more thematic flavour.  I love it.

Besides magic, I'm also enjoying the fact that the monsters don't roll to attack - the players roll to defend.  This is a mechanic I've only recently encountered in games (The d6 Hack, specifically) and I like it a lot - just as much fun for the players but with fewer dice rolls.  Some of the mechanics are being slightly hidden from us by the VTT (Fantasygrounds appear to have excellent support for Symbaroum) but I can see enough to know I'd be just as happy playing this on a real table.

Like everything else I've seen from Järnringen / Fria Ligan, the art is gorgeous and evocative.  No surprise to see there's an art book available, and a bunch of it has made it onto All Rolled Up products as well.

We played the one-shot introductory adventure, The Promised Land, and enjoyed it so much we agreed to come back for more.  So we're now diving into The Copper Crown, and I eagerly look forward to what terrible places it will take us to.

Pretty much the only criticism I've seen of Symbaroum is that there's not a lot to it, and that's all from early reviews.  There's a bunch of extra stuff available from Modiphius, which hopefully fills in any gaps.

In short, if you like dark fantasy and aren't wedded to WFRP, this is definitely worth playing.  Especially if you managed to pick it up for free.

Black Void Quickstart Reviewed

About time I did another quickstart review.  Black Void is available from Modiphius.  Let's have a look.

Content

This quickstart comes in at an apparently minimal 33 pages, although don't be fooled into thinking it's lighter than the previous quickstarts I've looked at.  Quite the opposite.

We start out with a bit of backstory - useful, since the name Black Void isn't exactly telling us a lot - which in combination with the cover art does give me some idea what's going on here.

Then we have a contents page with some introductory information.  Useful stuff like what kind of game this actually is, and already I'm getting the impression this is to fantasy what Coriolis is to sci-fi.  Plus there's the information you really want to know - what kind of dice does it use?  (The answer is d12s.)

After this, the document is broken down into four sections: character creation, equipment, playing the game, and the arbiter's guide because god forbid anyone just calls a GM a GM any more.

The character creation rules presented here are a slimmed down version of the actual rules, but there's still plenty going on here.  First there's eight traits (what a certain other fantasy game would call attributes) and a set of talents you can add on to higher traits, with two options given for each trait, so a decent amount of customisation is available.

There are two pools of points for character creation: one for traits, and one for literally everything else, including talents and everything further down the page, all under the heading of abilities.

The first ability after talents is backgrounds, which come with a mix of flavour and mechanical benefits.  Hard to say how useful any of these are at this point, but the flavour does give me a feel for what kind of game we're looking at here.

Next is attributes, which you can only get if you picked up the half-blood background, which lets you have things like wings and claws.

Then there's powers, which I was expecting given that we're in a fantasy setting.  With this being a slimmed down version, we're not seeing all the powers here, but the one they've chosen to show us is blood rituals - literally sacrificing creatures to imbue yourself and others with power or practice divination.  Not everyone is going to like this, and I think that makes it an excellent choice for the quickstart.  If the idea of blood soaked oracles puts you off, best to find out now.  If it does appeal, you're going to want to know more.

Finally we have skills, split into general skills and combat skills.  Nothing particularly notable here, although it's worth mentioning that most skills have several associated traits.  I'm not quite sure what this means mechanically at this point, although my guess is when you add up your bonuses you decide which trait goes with the skills.  Stealth can use agility if you're moving silently or intelligence if you're analysing patterns of guard movements.  It's an extra layer of complexity but certainly an intriguing one.

Then there's a couple of pages on various bits and pieces - health, movement, wealth, and rather more unusual things like sanity, enlightenment and wastah, which the internet tells me is an Arabic word that roughly translates to 'clout' or 'who you know'.

The equipment chapter is limited to weapons and armour, and has thankfully listed things with generic names like 'sword' and saved words like 'scimitar' and 'talwar' for the flavour text.  The Middle Eastern theme of this game is really shining through but they're not putting up linguistic boundaries to play it.

And fittingly we're now on to chapter 3: playing the game.  Finally we get the dice mechanic - d12 + modifiers versus a target number that's normally 7.  And here's where it gets confusing, because you don't add your trait, you add your trait modifier, which ranges from -3 to +2 with a trait of 3 being 0.  And skill ratings do seem to add on directly, but not having a skill means -3.  And then there's further modifiers for bad weather.  Hopefully this is laid out more clearly in the main book, because the table that appears here is not helping.

Once you've actually figured out what you're rolling though, things are pretty straightforward.  There are some combat manoeuvres that resemble the feats from certain well known fantasy games, but otherwise not too much complexity.  It's a pretty clear level of crunch, and I've got a good grasp of how much I'm likely to enjoy it.

A single page on the subject of sanity and fear saves, and then we're on to character advancement.  I'm not entirely convinced this is necessary in a quickstart document.  At the point where you're engaging in character advancement, surely it's time to buy the book?

The arbiter's guide section is pretty standard stuff, except for some reason this is where you'll find the tables for crits and fumbles (here called exceptional hits and mishaps - why is everyone so desperate to rename standard terms?)

Well, that was quite a slog.  What you won't find here is a sample adventure or any pregen characters.  These are available in separate documents which are linked at the end of the quickstart.

Presentation

In short, it looks great.  It's got a ton of art, from full colour illustrations to black and white sketches, and it all brings the setting to life.  The page design is gorgeous.  The layout is clear and easy to read.  The only hiccups are the skills and talents pages, where the two column layout used everywhere else inexplicably turns into three columns.

What it would be like to print, I'm not sure.  Even if you can not print the page backgrounds, there's still full colour art on quite a lot of pages.  For screen use however, it's a fully bookmarked PDF and everything is very easy to find.

For what's in this document, the ordering is fine.  I think I would have liked some more setting info at the start, and maybe the basic mechanics so I knew what I was doing when going through the character creation section, but that's pretty minor.

What can I do with it?

You can get a feel for what kind of game this is and whether it's relevant to your interests.  You can't actually run an adventure with only this document - there's just not enough here - but you can pick up the two other documents and use those to run an adventure in conjunction with this, and I might just do that.

Conclusion

Much like Cold And Dark, there's too much in here for it to really be called a quickstart.  I would be inclined to ditch a lot of the character creation stuff in favour of including the pre-gen characters in the document, and focus on the rules needed to run the sample adventure.  However, it's done its job of getting me interested in the game.  Assuming I enjoy running the sample adventure there's a good chance of me buying the main book.  So on that basis, it's done its job.

Ylva Talks to the Faires, part 14: Endgame

Hello, little ones.  I'm back.  For good this time.

We had to stop the wendigo.  It was the only way.  So with some careful planning to make sure we didn't end up running away in the middle of things, we headed for the heart of the forest.

The hobgoblin settlement was devastated.  Most of the bodies we found were elderly or children, with expressions of terror on their faces, although some looked like they'd been stamped on with iron boots.  It wasn't long before we found the redcaps, now living inside the hobgoblins' old hall.

I went in first to talk to them.  Yes, I know they're horrible, but they're still fey, and we had quite a nice talk really.  Yes, they were eating hobgoblins, and before you ask, I didn't eat any.

They told us about something that had been going around sucking people's brains out, and showed us one of its victims.  It was horrible.  It was obvious we were going to have to deal with this before we could take on the wendigo.  Even if there wasn't the risk of surprise brain sucking in the middle of the fight, it wasn't right to leave it preying on the redcaps.

I don't know what it was.  I didn't even get a good look at it.  I just saw Vared fighting with something invisible.  I enlarged Turgut and summoned a unicorn, as it would be able to smell where the creature was, but it didn't help much in the end.  The others destroyed the creature - some kind of glabrous sloth - and I had the unicorn cast its healing magic on Vared and Aunold.

Then Aunold made a suggestion.  We'd cast several spells in that fight that were still working.  Should we take the fight to the wendigo now?

I climbed on the unicorn's back, after casting fly to make sure I wouldn't fall if I failed at riding, and we went into the cave.  It's strange, but I felt sorry for it, seeing it lying there.  So cold, and hungry, and alone.  I wish there had been another way.  But I'm sure that's just wishful thinking.

Aunold and I flew up to rain down fireballs while Turgut and Vared took the fight to it.  It summoned some kind of earth monsters while the unicorn charged in.  We had remembered its weaknesses, and between the fireballs and Turgut's axe, we were weakening it.  We lost the unicorn to one of the fireballs, and the earth monsters were proving hard to damage, but I was feeling optimistic.

And then it suddenly leapt into the air, flew outside, and turned into something so monstrously huge we could see nothing but its face through the mouth of the cave.  As we continued to battle the earth monsters, a sudden wave of necromancy swept across us, draining the moisture out of us.  Poor Mittens.  Aunold's little bird died too.  Another attack like that would have killed us all.

I knew we'd hurt it badly, and I wondered if another fireball might be enough to stop it.  But before I could try, Aunold flew up to it holding his staff of power and broke it over his head.

For a few moments I was blinded by the sudden flash of light.  And when it cleared, the wendigo was gone.  So was Aunold.  When I looked back to the others I saw Turgut collapse, his obligation now complete.

We didn't fail.  But that's not a price I wanted to pay.

I summoned another unicorn to heal Vared and myself, and then hugged it until it had to leave.  Vared collected up all the valuables from the cave, and then we came home.  Everything seems to be settling down.  The hobgoblin leader lost his powers when the wendigo died, so the Gallians have defeated his army and gone home.  With Turgut gone, I've been made Khan.  I've asked Tonk to write some songs about Aunold and Turgut so everyone will remember what they did.  And I've heard from Taint that there is chaos in the heavens but that Aunold has taken his place amongst the gods.

All I ever wanted was my home in the Greenwood.  But I was born from the blood of the bear and the blood of the forest, and this is where my path has been leading me.  This is where I belong.

Ylva Talks to the Fairies, part 13: A Narrow Escape

That could have gone better.

Things are fairly peaceful in the Greenwood right now.  Turgut is officially the leader of all the tribes.  We still have our agreement with Gallia though, and the enchantress showed up to talk to us.  Lord Vexil has gone mad.  We explained something of what had happened with the White Witch of Gallia, but not really understanding what happened myself, I don't think it was a very clear explanation.

Some of the forest fae also showed up, to warn us that some redcaps had now gone to join up with the wendigo.  At some point we would have to deal with them, but that didn't necessarily mean having to fight them.  I don't want to fight my own people.

We came up with a plan where we would hide our tribes' forces and lure the hobgoblins into an ambush, while the enchantress arranged for a distraction at the walls of Gallia, and we would sneak in and try to deal with their leadership.

Well, we tried.

We got in without attracting attention, following Vared's lead.  I enlarged Turgut and we went in to fight.  We were up against a formidable enemy - the lead hobgoblin and his pet wolf, the lesser wendigo, and some kind of devil.  Yes, a very impressive beard, and he stuck it right into Aunold.

What happened?  Well, the wolf got blown up by Aunold's first fireball.  Turgut took on the lesser wendigo, and a joint effort between Aunold, Vared and me dealt with the devil.  But the hobgoblin leader was horrific.  He managed to knock out Vared just with the power of his words.  And he almost killed all the rest of us with some kind of necromancy.  Aunold was taken down, and the only reason I survived was because I was just outside the spell's range.  Turgut, being undead, was healed rather than injured by the spell.

I ran.  Or rather, I flew, shouting to Turgut to run away.  We were in no state to fight this creature.  We got Vared and Aunold back, with some help from the enchantress.  Now we have to decide what to do next.  The hobgoblin siege will hopefully be broken with our tribes' help, even with their leader still alive.  But there is still the wendigo.

I know, you want me to be the leader.  The child of the forest.  It's not what I sought out, but if we are able to fight the wendigo then Turgut's obligation will be complete and he will be no more.  Someone has to step up then, and I will not say no to you.  But that will only happen if we succeed where our ancestors failed.  I don't know if I'm ready for any of this.  But I have to try.

Ylva Talks to the Fairies, part 12: Giants

It has been nice being back in the forest, even with everything we've had to deal with.

Once Aunold had stopped being a squirrel we had to decide what to do next.  Our own people were safe from the undead threat, but there were still the giants attacking the Blood Druids, the hobgoblins attacking Gallia, the sea devils attacking the port, and of course the White Witch of Gallia and the ongoing threat of the wendigo.

We concluded that while the Blood Druids were our enemy, they were our enemy, and we didn't want them to lose, especially not now that we'd heard that Taint had survived being nailed to a tree and had become their religious leader.

No, I don't know what happened to the tree, but I doubt it came out of the experience intact.

We headed for the giant's camp, and Aunold and me put on our cloaks and flew over to scout.  Quite a lot of them weren't actually giants.  If we called on the remains of our tribe, they would be well able to handle the smaller threats while we took on the leader and his fellow giants.

We began in our usual style, with Aunold and me sending in some fireballs.  I summoned a flytrap to provide Turgut with some melee backup.  And it would have all gone smoothly if the leader hadn't turned out to be some kind of shaman like Aunold.  Fighting someone who couldn't be hurt by spells was quite a challenge.  The invisible wall he put up wasn't helpful either.  All in all it was quite an embarrassing fight.

It would have been more embarrassing if we'd lost, of course.  Once you've won it's much easier to triumphantly appear on top of a hill and declare your magnificent victory.

The White Witch showed up again afterwards, apparently not unhappy with us.  It probably helped that certain people shut up and let me do the talking, of course.  I seem to have a little of the fairy charm that my tribespeople lack.  I still don't really understand what her plan was, and why it involved quite so many armies and manipulating people into fighting them, but she has promised to release her control over Lord Vexil.  Whether that turns out to be a good thing I couldn't start to guess.

Then she turned into a silver dragon, which by this point didn't really surprise me at all.

I think we're going to help the Gallians next.  We have an agreement, after all.

I really hope this isn't what the wendigo wants.

Ylva Talks to the Fairies, part 11: A Second Chance

Hello, little ones.  It's good to be back in the forest.

We went back to the enchantress's home once we'd recovered a little from the encounter at the bothy.  Vared and Aunold made magic cloaks for us.  We got a lot of messages over the next few days, and all of them were terrible.  Sea devils coming to shore at the iron docks.  Hobgoblins marching on Gallia.  An army of the undead approaching the Greenwood from one side, and a horde of giants and dragons attacking from the other.  And of course, the wendigo.

Taint left for the north, muttering about mountains and bear hearts, with Tonk following to keep an eye on him.  We discussed where the rest of us were going to go, but there was only one place I wanted to be and that's home.

So we left Gallia for the Greenwood, avoiding the hobgoblin army, and went back to the Winter Bears where we belong.  The Elthani are with us, and the Blood Druids are to the north, taking on the giants and dragons with support from Tonk and Taint.  We went to take on the undead.

Aunold and me can both fly now, and the new cloaks let us turn invisible, so we went to scout ahead.  Most of the army were mindless undead, but they did have a commander.  One we'd seen before.  One I knew all too intimately.

We came up with a plan and it wasn't a very good one, as we soon realised.  Aunold's bird drew away the mindless undead for us, and we were able to get to his two zombie guards and the helmet that he was currently possessing.  We sent in the usual fireballs to cut down the guards, but before we could smash the helmet and bring him out into the sunlight, he possessed Vared again.

Another awful fight followed, as I tried to give Vared the strength to drive the thing out and the others did what they could to restrain him.  I didn't dare come close for fear that he'd possess me again and turn my power against my friends.

But at last Vared was unconscious, and the ghost jumped from him into Turgut's sword.  We smashed into fragments and the ghost emerged, paralysed in the sunlight.  I summoned a unicorn, and the blessed creature was able to not only destroy the ghost but to heal mine and Vared's wounds.  Since his transformation, there was nothing it could do for Turgut, but Aunold has the magic to repair him now.

We have lost a powerful item in Turgut's sword, but we all agreed it was worth it to destroy that monster once and for all.

His destruction brought the attention of his master, who came to visit us.  She calls herself Eloise Vexil, but we are calling her the White Witch.  Yes, I am a witch, but I see myself more as a green witch, especially with this new cloak.  And she wears white.  Very impractical for forests.  But that's not my point.

She wants to rule Gallia.  I have no doubt that she can do it, even against the wishes of the Enchantress.  She seems inclined to leave the Greenwood alone, providing we don't interfere.  A tempting offer, aside from the fact that we would have to break an agreement with the Gallians.  I talked to her about the wendigo.  If I could persuade her to take it on then perhaps we would be rid of at least one problem.  But I don't think that is going to save us.

She also turned Aunold into a squirrel, but I think it's wearing off.

I don't know what to do, little ones.  Everything is too big.  It would be easy to take the White Witch's offer but I don't think it would do us any favours in the long run.  Somehow we have to do the right thing.  I wish I knew what that was.

A Dark Path

D&D and its sibling game Pathfinder are, basically, heroic fantasy games.  They're not the games I would instinctively look at for running a dark fantasy campaign.  I'd be going for something like Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, or maybe one of the newer arrivals like Symbaroum.  But that doesn't mean you can't use them for dark fantasy.

Our current Pathfinder campaign is doing it pretty well.  Here's what I think is making it work.

1. Player buy-in

This is absolutely crucial.  If you've been following my game write-ups you might have noticed that the characters created by the Thursday group can be a bit...wacky.  However, with this game the GM was up front that he wanted to run a dark and gritty game and we've made characters to fit in with that.

2. The right setting

There's nothing wrong with the nice temperate biome where Standard Fantasyland appears to exist, but things just don't feel that dark when you've got the glory of Fantasy New Zealand spread out in front of you.

Our current campaign takes place in a region that's a mix of boreal forest and tundra.  The cold is constant, and snow can be as big a threat as any monster - bigger, even, because you can shoot a wolf but you can't kill the weather.  Our people are foragers, and we value the Greenwood where we make our home as much as any god.

This doesn't come up much from a mechanical point of view.  Our characters are mostly human, all from the same tribe, and know how to survive in harsh conditions.  Only in extreme circumstances are we making rolls for survival.  But the narrative threat of freezing or starving is constantly there.

3. A formidable threat

Death isn't scary.  Death is an inherent part of Pathfinder.  Characters die, you make a new one and carry on.

You know what's scary?  A monster you can't fight.

As the saying goes, if it has stats you can kill it.  But at the level this thing is at, we might as well be up against Cthulhu, and anyway, being killed by it is the least of our concerns.  What matters is the corrupting effect it's having on the inhabitants of the Greenwood.

War is threatened from multiple sides, and if it happens it will be devastating.  Our homelands ravaged, our way of life destroyed.  Entire tribes, including our own, could be completely wiped out.  One of the city lords is pushing for war, and right now he's winning.  Killing him won't help - at best someone else will take his place, and at worst we'll be blamed and the war will happen faster and be our fault.  When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die, but he's a master player and we don't even know the rules.  How in the world are we going to stop him?

We might be amazing at taking down appropriately levelled monsters, but in the face of the current situation we are small and weak.

4. Loss of control.

Characters are very accustomed to having their bodies damaged.  The same can't be said for their minds.  It's one thing to fight a monster, but quite another when the monster is possessing you and forcing you to hurt your friends and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

We encountered some kind of ghost that was able to possess one of us and take control.  I'm not sure who had it worse; the one who critcally failed and could only watch helplessly as the ghost puppeted their body around, or the one who merely failed and could fight back each round - but still failed every time.

We all lived.  But that came at a price.

Losing hit points isn't scary.  Helplessness is.  Whether on the small scale, with the ghostly possession, or on the large scale with the monster we can't fight and the politics we can't stop.  This Pathfinder campaign is darker than any game of WFRP I've played, because between the players and the GM, we're playing it that way.

Ylva Talks to the Fairies, part 10: Scary Bothy

Come close, little ones.  I don't feel well.

I refreshed my memory on remorhazes, and we decided we weren't quite ready to take it on yet.  We did have an idea where I could try charming it, then use my conversational skills to convince it to go away, but unfortunately they only speak jotun, and while Aunold is good at learning new languages, I just don't have the knack.

So we took a short break at the enchantress's mansion.  Vared made some magic things in her lab, while I decided to immerse myself in magic and see if any new spells showed up.  I can create stinking clouds now.  No!  Why would I do that?  That would be rude.

Then we headed for the port, since we'd heard there was more trouble going on there.  Lord Vexil wants to build some warships, and I thought that having him sail off somewhere in a warship would be quite a good thing since it's not like you can sail a boat into the Greenwood.  They were glad to see us when we got there, as apparently they had an undead problem.  We agreed to try to sort it out.

Ironic, really.

We followed tracks through the tundra, until we spotted a bothy.  Normally bothies are quite welcoming, but this one wasn't.  I felt quite scared just going near it, and Vared wouldn't approach it at all.  But we were definitely in the right place, and I could see tracks that told me the place was in regular use.  So we decided to wait and see who showed up.

I turned into a tree, and the others hid in my branches until someone showed.  Two men, and two large zombies.  Vared and Turgut approached them.  Aunold and me hung back.  Oh yes, I did stop being a tree.  We both flung fireballs.  One of the men opened some kind of doorway and disappeared.  Vared and Turget engaged with the others.

It didn't go well.  We dropped a couple more fireballs, but they were still there.  The man cast a spell to blind Turgut.  I sent in a gremlin to help out, and the giant zombies were dealt with, but the other man disappeared.  Vared started running away from the fight, and we realised that he'd been possessed.

I tried to fascinate everyone, to calm everything down until we could figure out the best thing to do.  But it didn't work on Vared, and moments later I felt my mind being invaded.

He used my gremlin to attack Turgut, who could hardly fight back while both blind and attempting to restrain me, until he lay bleeding on the ground.  I fought back as he tried to take control of my arms, but he was too strong for me and I could only watch as he used me to fire lightning bolts at Aunold and Vared.

It was a relief when Vared's arrows and Aunold's spells finally connected and I slipped into unconsiousness.  I didn't expect to wake up again.  Killing me would have driven out the phantom.  But Aunold found another way.

A while ago in the Greenwood we'd found a barrow, occupied by a barrow wight who'd been tasked with a responsibility.  Turgut agreed to take on that responsibility so that he could rest at last.

So Aunold killed Turgut, who rose again as a barrow wight.  And his presence was enough to convince the phantom to leave.

I feel sick.  This is all my fault.  If I'd been just a bit stronger I could have kept him out of my head.  Now I've hurt my friends and Turgut...

Thank you, Mittens.  It helps.

Ylva Talks to the Fairies, part 9: White Wedding

We didn't fight the remorhaz in the end.  We left Tonk and Taint to keep an eye on things, and the enchantress teleported the rest of us back into the city for the wedding.

I got given all these flowers to wear.  They're lovely, aren't they?  Although they won't last long.  And I got a little gift bag with some strange sweets inside.  Some people got better gift bags though, with silver rings inside.  Aunold and me checked one out, and it was definitely magic.  Abduration, so probably some kind of protection.  We assumed we would find out what soon enough.

The bride and groom appeared, but didn't touch each other.  They didn't even kiss, which seemed odd for a wedding.  We started up a chant in the crowd, but couldn't persuade them.  We weren't surprised when we found out that it wasn't them at all, but a projection of them.  The actual bride and groom were still inside the brothel.

So definitely a witch.

Then these two dragons showed up, both about the size of a horse, and froze everything.  Lots of people died, although not the people wearing the silver rings so they must have been for protection from cold.  We could use a few of those on winter nights, although they don't seem to be very well made and probably won't last to the next day.

Aunold and me tried to save people by herding them into the brothel, and while the guards were reluctant, we did manage to save some of them while Turgut and Vared killed the dragons (which may have actually been frost drakes, now I come to think of it - not enough legs.)

Amazingly enough, the drakes managed to kill just enough members of the city council for Lord Vexil to be able to be in control.  This seems like a terrible way to run anything, let alone a city.  But I don't understand how it works.  Lord Vexil is also claiming that Ralsoth the warlord is massing an army to march on Gallia, which we're pretty certain is not the case.  What would we want with this stupid city when we have the Greenwood?  But then, maybe Lord Vexil wants the Greenwood?

All this politics stuff is making my head hurt, especially since it's all being talked about in Common, which I've only just learned to speak.  At least Mittens understands me.

An unusually epic game

Yesterday I played a nine-hour game of D&D 5e with eight players.

It's part of an ongoing campaign with very irregular meet-ups.  This was my second session.  My character is an arcane tricker rogue forest gnome called Marian - I believe I was thinking about Maid Marian and her Merry Men when I created her.

Rather than a full write-up, I've just done some edited highlights...

D&D 5e game about to start. 8 players. No idea who anyone is, IC or OC. Should we do name badges?

My character sheet has gone missing but fortunately I have a copy on my phone. Fifth edition character app is excellent. But you can't write the other characters' names on the back.

There is about 6 feet of 3D terrain on the table. It looks amazing. We are here to convert the orcs to the worship of Bast. We are the Bastards.

Currently rolling to see what happened on the journey to our current location. Thanks to a number of failed rolls we have visited an orc brothel, got on the wrong side of an elf gang, and are being pursued by an angry badger.

The badger has caught up with us. It's an angry MUTANT badger. It's trying to eat me! It's fine. The dragonborn has my back.

Now engaged in an epic battle with some giant crabs, unhappy that we ate their friends for breakfast. I am now using one of the half orcs as an artillery platform, having remembered that I can cast fire bolt.

Apparently that was the orcs' meat farm. Whoops. Now for a swim. Can we make flotation devices out of dead arachnid parts?

This boat has a safety rail. I find this immensely suspicious. Since when has anything health and safety related existed in D&D? The wizard is making friends with the boat. It's working better than I expected.

My argument that we have not taken this boat because it has not moved did not prove compelling. Now we have to fight 37 orcs. What a funny time to find out the cleric has no healing spells.

I'm starting to think this boat is evil. Just saved a half orc from sirens with a minor illusion. Now back to the orc brothel for a long rest. I hope they'll accept the loan of an unseen servant and some prestidigitation as payment. Bast is not impressed with our performance.

 

"Oi, Fenris! Fetch!" We are now on driftwood, floating towards some rocks, where a bunch of sirens are waiting. Damn.

What impressed me most is that D&D 5e can actually handle an 8 player game.  Part of it is the highly structured combat, combined with the GM using combat order markers on the GM screen, which meant we could not only see whose turn it was but also see how many people there were to go before our next turn so we could be prepared.  I thoroughly recommend these for any game using initiative order, even if it's just slips of paper with the character names hung off the GM screen.  Every game I've played with them has been better for it.

Ylva Talks to the Fairies, part 8: The Heartbreak of Remorhaz

It...wasn't so bad.  I sent a lightning bolt through two hobgoblins and the lesser wendigo. That and Aunold's fireball meant the others had little difficulty taking down the hobgoblins.  Even my little sprite managed to help.  We didn't get the wendigo though.  It disappeared, and Aunold said it ran away.

We're still not sure what to do with the wendigo, but we might be able to transfer some of its power into magic items.  That's what our ancestors were trying to do, but didn't do well enough.  We have to succeed where they failed.

We thought about going to Tonk's home on the Isle of Dreams in the hope of having visions, but that would mean a trip across the sea in treacherous waters, or else a walk across thin ice.  So first we decided to visit Gallia again.

There's so much going on here.  I can hardly take it all in.  There's talk that the warlord is leading an army towards Gallia, which we're sure isn't true.  Lord Vexil is getting married.  There's a plague of the undead.  And the Enchantress had to leave an important meeting because her people were being attacked by a manticore, although now we're actually at the enchantress's house, she says it's not a manticore but a remorhaz.  Both ridiculous looking creatures...yes, I know, you have the back end of a grasshopper, but at least your bum isn't on fire.

I'm sure there's something suspicious going on with the wedding.  It all seems far too complicated.  From what little we know of Lord Vexil, he doesn't seem the type to marry a commoner, so I think his bride is secretly a witch.  Yes, I am a witch.  So I should know.  And doesn't Mittens look lovely in her new hat?

We dealt with the enchantress's ghost problem, although it hurt me badly and nearly killed Turgut.  I was afraid we might have to kill him too, but we finished off the ghosts just in time.  We hoped that we might be able to deal with the remorhaz the same night, but with the state Turgut is in that's not going to happen.  We all need rest.  We'll just have to hope we can find it in the morning with enough time left over to get back into town for the wedding.

Something stinks in this town.  I wish I was back in the Greenwood, but the only way we can keep the Greenwood safe is to stop the wendigo.  And right now it seems the best place we can be is here.  Stay with me, little ones.  The ghost hurt me.  I need to remember my home.

Ylva Talks to the Fairies, part 7: Dream Guided

A slight gap as I had to miss a session.  We pick up as the PCs are heading, as so often happens in RPG towns, into the sewers.

Towns are very unhygienic.  Why would you build special tunnels just for poo?

We met some Blood Druids, hiding behind an illusionary wall.  There was nearly a fight, but they wanted to talk, so I let the fairy I summoned go without causing any dance parties, and we had a conversation instead.  They said the leaders of the Blood Druids had gone insane.  Not in a cannibalism type of way, but they were so desperate for a new king they were trying to put everyone through the ritual to determine whether someone was fit to be king.  Since that involved nailing people to trees, they'd decided they'd rather leave.

Yes, quite understandable.  And the time I've spent studying the common language has paid off.  I can mostly understand the cloth wearers when they talk now.

The Blood Druids we'd just met had been hired to smash the library windows and then set fire to it.  So we hired them not to, and then we all went to see the enchantress again.

Something strange had happened at her house.  It was all black inside.  The guard was very confused.  Something wasn't working.  I asked Mittens to fly up and have a look through the windows, but she said it was all black in there too.

Some of the others went inside, and found themselves in a huge featureless black space.  I stayed outside with Tonk.  After a while the blackness disappeared, along with our friends, and the enchantress showed up.  It was all very confusing, but she did bring them back again.

The others explained what we knew, and then we headed back out of the city, with the newly renamed Blood Bears in tow, because Tonk had had a dream about where she came from and wanted to talk to the elf in the dream.  We met him at the meeting place and learned that her dream had been true.  She had come from the Isle of Dreams on a boat.  Most of the gnomes had died, but someone had carried her through the snow until he died too.  And then the elf had found her.

It is good to know where you came from.  I feel more at peace since meeting my mother, even in all this confusion.  And we have had a lot of strange dreams recently.  I dreamed about a hobgoblin giving a very inspirational speech, and so did the others, except for Aunold.  He had a dream about hobgoblins gassing us all, so we made some masks to keep ourselves safe.

We went to the big meeting place.  Everyone was there - all the tribes, and the hobgoblins.  We showed the other Winter Bears and the people we knew in the other tribes how to make the masks.  Somehow Taint ended up offering to be nailed to a tree.  It was either that or get pushed off a mountain, I think.  His dreams have also been very strange.

The hobgoblins told us their plan, which was to make the wendigo ascend to godhood, so that it would be the gods' problem instead of ours and we could go back to warring with each other again.  We weren't completely convinced by that one.

Then a lesser wendigo arrived, and the clouds of green gas appeared, so we went and fought some trolls.  Trolls burn very easily.  Even my little sprite managed to hurt one.  He was very brave.  The lesser wendigo is waiting.  I will be brave too.

Diversity Hires, part 13: Yan Again

We last saw our heroes exploring a particularly disgusting haunted mansion.

After a cursory look at the rest of the house, which was mostly covered in shit and chaos bees, we left. Mormacar set the building on fire, and we headed for the hedge maze.

The first few layers of the maze were incinerated by Gildiril's fireballs, but after we disturbed some surprisingly belligerent flowers, Burlok took over and navigated to the centre. There we found a hideous domed fleshy mass, which opened at our approach like a giant sphincter, something none of us wanted to see.

There was no other option for getting into the plague temple though, so we followed Mormacar's example and dived in. The initial horror was followed by a significantly less awful stone staircase. We proceeded cautiously through a series of rooms, carefully avoiding touching anything (we had quite enough diseases between us already, not that any of us knew that yet) except for a crazed prisoner in a cell. We put him out of his misery/insanity without getting too close and continued on our way.

At last we reached the temple itself, where some kind of ceremony was happening involving Karl, Yan (who was somehow still not dead despite having definitely been killed before) and some other guy, presumably the high priest. There were also a bunch of mutants. We paused briefly to plan our attack and for Gildiril to magic up our weapons.

The high priest proved rather unpleasant to attack, covering Mormacar in bees when he tried it, so we focused ranged attacks on Yan while the melee fighters took out the various mutants. We’d made significant progress when two more vampires showed up. They weren’t Sophia’s friends - in fact they were from two different vampire teams. Making the fight into a sort of bizarre five-way with us, three different vampires, and the plague cultists.

By the end, the high priest was dead, Yan had done his turning into a monster thing again and left through a hole in the wall, and we were left negotiating terms with the three vampires regarding Karl. There was some kind of truce between the vampires preventing them attacking each other, but none of them were comfortable leaving Karl with any of the others. Finally it was agreed by one of the new arrivals that Karl would stay with us, providing one of the party acted as the vampire’s agent, and that Sophia left. Burlok, who was interested in vampirism but had been rejected by the sexy lesbian vampire clan for reasons, volunteered.

All three vampires departed (much to Frida’s disappointment) and we were left with Karl.

What next?

And that's where we left things, with most of the party infected with multiple diseases, and Frida...well, that's between me and the GM.  However you're supposed to play this campaign, I'm pretty sure this wasn't it.  But we had a bloody good laugh.

Diversity Hires, part 12: Vampire Visit

We last saw the team dealing with a slight cultist problem. Despite the fact they had a plague bearer with them, we were victorious.

Gildiril and Frida missed the next encounter with the vampires, due to having a quick nap, but the rest of the team encountered the vampires again and put in a good word for Frida.

We needed to get to Wolfenburg, and with no river or carriage available we had to walk. The journey was proving fairly uneventful until a snotling carrying a rattly stick and a kettle jumped out at us.

The initial snotling proved easily flattenable, but his one hundred friends took a little more effort. Gildiril let loose with his magic, giving himself a nosebleed and causing unsettling cold drafts with the magical fallout as he set fire to multiple snotlings. Burlok squashed many of them with his pick while Armando skewered them on his sword. Frida largely missed with her flail, despite the target rich environment, but did annihilate them when she actually made contact.

Then one of the snotlings actually survived a hit from Mormacar, and while the others bowed down to worship him, he climbed up Mormacar and prepared to do obscene things to his face. Mormacar responded by biting the snotling's penis off.

(At this point there was a brief OC discussion about whether Mormacar could use his Mighty Blow ability on this particular attack, with the final conclusion being that Mighty Blowjob was sufficiently funny to be allowed. I swear we are all adults.)

At last the final snotling was splattered into mush, and we continued on our way, stopping off briefly for a wash in a river. Unfortunately, these lands were heavily tainted by the chaos war and the river water gave several of us green pox. Not that any of us know that yet.

We made it to Wolfenburg and headed straight for the pub as usual. We were in search of somewhere described as a 'plague temple' and the Hahn house a few miles out of town seemed like the best place to look for it. Once again the vampires were present, and Lady Sophia Margrave joined us in the pub. She mentioned something about pet humans, and one of us asked her if she'd ever have a pet halfling. She had not. Frida asked her if she'd like one.
 
Having decided that we would be visiting the Hahn house at night, the better to catch evil cultists doing their evil cult stuff, Frida invited Sophia to join us. Rather embarrassed, she explained that she would have to ask her mum.

We set out after some food, assuming that Sophia would have no trouble catching us up. An hour or so of walking (perhaps a little more at dwarf speed) brought us to the Hahn house. It was not a pretty sight. Overgrown, with clouds of flies buzzing around, but clearly recently in use given the wheel ruts leading towards the wrecked gates. The whole building seemed to be coated in some kind of oil, unpleasant gases emerged from the ground, and a feeling of general malaise seemed to hang over the whole estate.

Sophia, who'd caught up with us by this point, thought it was great.

We ignored the suspicious maze and dread gazebo and headed straight for the manor itself. We entered through the double doors, ornamented with the symbol of Handrich, god of commerce, and found ourselves in a building covered in mould and hornets. Some muddy tracks lead us into the main hall.

From there we explored the house. In the dining room was a ghost, rather unhelpfully telling us to 'kill the killer' without offering any guidance on who that might actually be. Fortunately the ghost in the wine cellar proved a little more forthcoming, and told us about his sons, one of whom had been a great disappointment. He also had a giant beetle on his back, which we disposed of in our usual style.

Upstairs we found a room with a small girl crying, a disturbed looking adventurer, a mutilated dead woman, and a horrifying mass of inchoate flesh that appeared to be made of two people fused together into a tentacled monstrosity covered in flies.

We attacked the flesh monster, which promptly responded by paralysing Frida (and incidentally giving her a case of nurglish rot). Mormacar picked her up and took her out of the fight, delivering her into the waiting arms of Sophia, while the others flattened the monster.

We'd had enough of the manor. There was no sign of any plague temple here, just a lot of goo and spoiled wine. We decide to investigate outside instead.

Will the team discover the plague temple in the hedge maze or the gazebo? How long will it take for everyone's diseases to manifest? Has Frida succumbed to Sophia's vampiric embrace? Find out next time on Diversity Hires!

Diversity Hires, part 11: River Cruise

We last saw the team boarding a river boat in the hope of making it to Ruhrhoff before the vampires.

The journey was for the most part uneventful. We passed a town consisting mostly of wineries, but inexplicably weren't able to stop. We also saw a chaos troll on the side of the river, but given that it was a mutant with only one leg it seemed unnecessarily cruel to go attacking it, and we left it hopping along. We also saw a tree with several corpses hanging from it, but decided we didn't want to get involved with whatever that was.

We did stop to deal with some mutants who had some bandits tied up and were taking them to make them touch a warpstone. Burlok had ambitions to become an outlaw chief, a profession that naturally required some outlaws to be the chief of. Accordingly we rescued the bandits from the mutants and took them with us on the boat, a process that involved Armando leaping dramatically off the boat, firing his pistols as he went, in a spectacularly display that may even have included successfully shooting someone as well as looking cool.

Eventually we ran out of river and had to continue on foot. We were very glad to find the village of Kietchdorf, which had an inn that served beer, and decided to stop off for a drink. Burlok sent his outlaws to the general store to buy a weapon for them to share. On discovering the village was afflicted by plague, Frida donned her leather doctoring outfit and went out to investigate. Having observed that the landlord and other inn dwellers seemed unaffected by the plague, she recommended to the afflicted that they should stop drinking water and drink beer instead. And also rub themselves with raw onions. Because medicine.

In the inn, we learned about a missing teenager who was wearing a family ring. It appeared he was most likely in Ruhrhoff, and we made a note to look out for him when we got there. We also paid a visit to the well, so Gildiril could check it for magic. It wasn't, but on a hunch we decided to keep watch at night and see if anything happened.

Something did indeed happen. We caught the culprit, who continued to deny having done anything despite the fact we literally saw him pouring something into the well. Frida finally got to use her manacles, but he didn't seem to mind being tortured. Eventually he was persuaded to talk by more ethical means, and we learned that it was indeed a plot by Nurgle cultists to try to convert the villagers to the ruinous powers.

Frida prescribed more beer for everyone and we continued on our way.

The town of Ruhrhoff was something of a disappointment, having been ruined at some point. We made our way to Schoenstrasse and found the house we were looking for. It was similarly a ruin, and we headed straight for the cellar. The cellar was appalling, covered in blood and bits of dried flesh, with an outline showing where the necklace had once been. Frida left immediately, feeling a little unwell. Naturally this was the moment when the cultists showed up.

Will Burlok's outlaws stay with him after having to fight Nurgle cultists? Will the team catch up with the vampires, the cult, or whoever has kidnapped/stolen who/what at this point? Find out next time on Diversity Hires!

Diversity Hires, part 10: Library Truce

We left our heroes fighting a particularly disgusting wizard...

Gildiril continued to stare blankly into space. Burlok concentrated on taking out Yan's henchmen. Armando fired at the vampire, but did nothing useful. Frida threw rocks ineffectually. And then Mormacar rejoined us, and things got weird...

Yan, apparently not wanting to fight a vampire any more than we did, vanished from sight. Mormacar also vanished, although in a more prosaic manner, by being blasted out of the window in a manner that would definitely have killed him had he not had the fortune to land in a tree. Yan reappeared, tripping over the edge of the curtain that he'd teleported behind, where Burlok gave him a good thumping and Frida deployed an unusually vigorous rock, leaving him on the point of death, at which point he decided to leave properly.

The vampire turned out to be slightly more reasonable about things than Yan. With the team of dodgy witch hunters approaching, a temporary truce was called. With the special books room now open (without party intervention, as for some reason we really wanted plausible deniability), she began searching for the book, along with Burlok, although his inability to read made him less than useful. Frida followed them in and found it immediately, unfortunately lacking the skills to keep this in any way a secret.

The team left, via the window. The vampire carried Frida to help break her fall. Gildiril had his happy reverie broken, and Mormacar was retrieved from the tree, now with a white streak in his hair, which Frida immediately offered to dye the colour of his choice.

We wanted to go somewhere out of the way to examine the book without interruption from witch hunters. The book shop cellar that we'd previously visited seemed like a good choice, but the moment sewers were mentioned the vampire refused, and given that she was carrying both Frida and the book it didn't seem like a good time to argue. We went to the pub instead, with Frida restyling the vampire's hair along the way.

After a few beers, we read the book. We learned that the house where we should look for the necklace was on Shoenstrasse in Ruhrhoff. We also learned that the necklace apparently didn't do what it was supposed to do, being prone to turning the subject into an enraged murder beast instead of making them love you - or at least, that's what happened when Ansel had tried it.

We made some notes to ensure we didn't forget anything important, and the vampire left with the original, much to the disappointment of Frida who'd grown quite attached in the brief time they'd spent together.

The fastest way to get to Ruhrhoff was by boat, and Frida reckoned that if vampires couldn't cross running water they might not do too well with boats, so we could potentially get a head start. We booked passage on a boat, and did some shopping in Altdorf while we still had the chance. Some of the group bought some nicer clothes. Burlok and Mormacar hired an entertainer to keep them occupied during the voyage. Frida bought a disguise kit, four pigeons and some pink hair dye.

Can the party survive all being on the same boat for so long? Will they make it to Ruhrhoff before the vampires? How fashionable will Mormacar look with a pink streak in his hair? Has Frida found love in dubious vampiric form? Find out in next week's thrilling episode of Diversity Hires!

Diversity Hires, part 9: Actors and Armpits

While hanging around Altdorf, a city increasing descending into riots as food supplies decreased, we began investigating the location of the mysterious Ansel. All of us except Mormacar who had been misplaced in a brothel somewhere, that is.

Burlok, who had recently learned to read thief sign, was able to identify a local butcher as a fence. He queued up along with Frida to buy some sausages and also question him. In addition to some information, we also got some excellent sausages made of named meat. The butcher told us they would go well with some good bread and beer. Having recently been in a pub where the bread and beer were excellent but the sausages were terrible, we were very pleased with the purchase.

More importantly, for those slightly less motivated by sausages than Frida, we had also obtained some information on Ansel - or at least, someone meeting his description. A thin man with a scar on his forehead had apparently been seen around the Temple of Sigmar, and while his name was Axel rather than Ansel, we decided it was worth a look. Frida also noticed that the description could also fit the vigilante known as The Vengeance, a mysterious masked figure known for taking out mutants and witches with a 100% accuracy rate, in contrast to the rather high false positives of the actual witch hunters, who was also known to hammer a tin badge in the shape of the twin comets of Sigmar into his victims' foreheads.

We'd encountered a tin badge seller earlier in the pub, but despite buying a cake and a symbol of Shallya from him, Frida hadn't managed to get him to talk.

We headed for the temple to look for Axel. Somehow we felt the rose garden would be the best place to look for him, but what we actually found there was an actor. He was initially inclined to dismiss us as unworthy poor people, but since interaction began with Frida turning on her charm and complimenting his shoes, he rapidly became more friendly.

Being unpleasant to poor people turned out to be his favourite hobby. We asked why he was doing it here rather than in the poor quarter where targets were easier to find, but he didn't like visiting that part of town. We suggested he could stand on the wall at the edge of the quarter and throw things at the poor, like coins. He wasn't entirely sold on that idea until Armando suggested loading the coins into a blunderbuss. There followed an extensive discussion on the practicalities and uses of the coin blunderbuss and the best position for a poor person to stand relative to it when it was fired.

Eventually discussion of tormenting the poor wound down, and we were invited to attend the theatre the following night, before heading off in search of Axel in the library.

Axel was not in the library, but his boss was, and was rather annoyed about him being missing. We decided to visit his house to check up on him.

Axel was not in a good condition when we found him, and was able to live just long enough to explain that he had previously been known as Ansel. He had some mutations - feathery armpit gills that allowed him to sniff out other mutants. What was it with mutated armpits?

More useful were his journals. We learned the strange and disturbing story of a man whose obsession with an uninterested woman had lead to stalking and dark magic, ultimately sending him in search of a magical necklace that would cause the one who wore it to love the person who put it on them. Ansel/Axel had eventually got over himself after some unspecified incident, but now somebody wanted the necklace to get control of Karl the scion/demon child.

Chapter 10, the one that would tell us how to actually find the necklace, was missing, but a clue suggested we could find it in a holy book in the temple library. Getting into the library again proved more of a challenge, as it was after closing time and everyone had gone to the pub.
Not that we needed much persuasion to go to the pub.

The head of the library had no intention of leaving his theosophical pub club to open up the library for them, and neither Gildiril's attempt to bribe him with brandy nor Frida's attempts to persuade him to loan them the key proved convincing.

We did eventually get the key off him, along with a beer mat with his signature, and headed for the library. Going through the catalogue we learned there were three copies of the book we wanted in the library. Naturally the one we wanted was in a separate room for special books, which had a separate lock that none of us knew how to open.

We decided to spend the rest of the night in the library, so that we'd be there ready when either the librarian got back with the key or a bunch of evil cultists showed up for a fight. Burlok, despite being a dwarf in plate armour, managed to hide himself completely convincingly by pretending to be a statue. Everybody else hid very badly.

As expected, the evil cult showed up next. There was an evil goth pigeon outside the window (which Frida totally failed to notice despite being literally hiding in the window), a wizard who appeared to be Yan again, and a couple of minions. Fortunately Gildiril's enhanced elven hearing meant we had warning of their arrival and he was able to magic up a couple of weapons before they arrived. Not that that helped much. Burlok couldn't get much of a swing up on his pick, Frida failed to hit anything with her tiny rocks, Armando missed with his pistols and then failed at parkour to get to the balcony where Yan stood, and Gildiril was hit by Yan's Golden Torrent spell, which was as awful as it sounded and required a jar of urine to cast. It wasn't long before Yan had also flooded the room with an unpleasant green smog (this time using the tears of a diseased child) and we were all struggling to achieve anything at all.

It was at this point that a vampire popped up behind Yan, deploying daggers from drop sheathes into each hand...

Will the team survive the cavalcade of bodily fluid based magic? Will Mormacar turn up in time to make inappropriate jokes? Will we all end up as mutant vampires? Find out next time on Diversity Hires!

Diversity Hires, part 8: A Dance of Diseases

We left our heroes in the middle of a fight with a sorcerer, with approaching cultists...

The sorcerer fired a cone of maggots and awful at Mormacar, failing to reach him by inches. Burlok through himself into melee with the sorcerer, closely followed by Gildiril who applied an enchantment to Burlok's pick. Armando threw his sword into the air, drew two pistols and fired at the sorcerer, entirely failing to hit him. Frida threw rocks at the approaching cultists.

Then the sorcerer created a ring of disgustingness that covered himself, Burlok, Gildiril and Armando, the latter of whom immediately fled in terror, which given the effects of staying in the circle wasn't exactly a bad idea.

A few attacks later, the sorcerer had split in half, converting him into basically a tumour on legs, the cultists had grabbed the coffin containing Karl, Gildiril had miraculously escaped death, and a bunch of vampires had shown up. Burlok's pick ultimately took out the tumour creature, and the cultist numbers were slightly reduced, but the others had still fled with the coffin, pursued by vampires.

Frida patched up the rest of the team. Burlok decided to head into town, while the others went back to the camp to retrieve Armando before joining Burlok in Altdorf. By some miracle, despite most of the party suffering from Nurgle's rot, nobody spontaneously turned into a plaguebearer of Nurgle, and a local hospital was able to treat them after some persuasion by Frida.

Burlok had acquired a note from somewhere, and once those party members who could read had had a look at it, we learned that we needed to talk to someone called Estlemann. Frida found out that he was actually in the hospital, and having convinced the staff that she was a doctor, was allowed to visit him.

The resulting conversation was short, given that a gang of witch hunters were looking for him, but we did find out about his bookshop that had been burned down (we were all outraged by the wanton destruction of extremely valuable property) and the connected underground room with the special collection. Estlemann begged us to kill him, so that the witch hunters couldn't torture him. Frida enthusiastically agreed. She'd been waiting a long time for the opportunity to torture someone, and was absolutely not letting anybody else get to do it. Burlok broke his neck and threw him out of the window.

There was a brief altercation with the witch hunters, who were reluctant to acknowledge the authority of people working for Roderick, although Mormacar did note that the leader of the group was rather attractive. Somehow we avoided getting arrested, and with the assistance of a surprise flash mob, we were able to leave in search of the bookshop.

The shop was still a bit on fire, so ultimately Burlok decided to put his mining skills to use and dig his way into the sewers to reach the special collection via a less burny route.

Gildiril, as resident book expert, investigated and found a lot of labels with names on. Burlok's note had mentioned the name Ansel, and sure enough the labels included Ansel Vorman. It seemed we were on the right track.

Will the team locate the elusive Ansel and find out about the mysterious necklace mentioned in the note? Will Mormacar and Frida ever achieve their dream of retiring to open a beauty salon? Find out in the next episode of Diversity Hires.