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Post by zipp on Jun 26, 2008 13:13:19 GMT -5
Well, I'm not sure I want to reveal what the amulet was quite yet. But if enough people post their thoughts on it, I'm sure I won't be able to resist revealing the truth ^_^
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Post by Al on Jun 26, 2008 15:57:45 GMT -5
Cat also made some perception/sense motive roll well enough to spot Al's behaviour, so was goign to betray Al (for his own good) the second they'd gotte nthe amulet  The irony of that is that IIRC, my motive was to make sure it got back to the Brotherhood! |
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Post by Beowuuf on Jun 26, 2008 16:04:33 GMT -5
Call yourself a pirate!
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Post by Al on Jun 26, 2008 16:08:40 GMT -5
I do! (Or at least did). Doing the job I got paid to do, that is how I was looking at it. Hard to impress the new boss if you go and muck up your first assignment! |
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Post by Bewildered Badger on Mar 9, 2009 13:14:59 GMT -5
Sad to say, I now do not consider it realistic that we will ever get this running again. So what do you say to letting us know what would have been in store for us, Zipp?
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Post by zipp on Mar 10, 2009 3:42:42 GMT -5
Sure thing. It has sort've moved past the realm of feasible, unfortunately, that it will start up again. Note that what follows isn't what exactly might have happened. When I run a game, I leave a lot of wiggle room to react to whatever players come up with, so you'll probably notice these come off more as notes than as detailed plot lines. Also, I'm working off of memory. Somewhere I have written down a more exact plot, but who knows where that is now? Probably in one of my many writing notebooks.
Anyways, the spot where we ended was based on a plot called "Spiders" from "Where the Eagle Flies," Ekblad's (our resident Telchoi) old site and my first online LW experience. During the mission, you were to gain possession of a spider effigy, which was attracting the spiders and causing them to grow in size. The effigy had washed ashore, part of a treasure that had fallen into the sea. The treasure had originally been aboard a ship that Al's character had been on.
Al had a back story which saw him escorting a scholar to one of the islands that rings Magnamund, to investigate an ancient culture. This, unknowingly, set in motion a series of events which would seem like side plots through the majority of the campaign, but which would eventually become the main plot.
Continuing on, after offing the Spiders, everyone would be heading back to Toran to report on the success of their mission. On the way, the Blood Hound would find you, and thus would begin the expansion (can't even remember it's name right now... blood moon rising or something?) during the course of this adventure, the effigy would be stolen by the Red Ghosts, the cultists in Red Robes that had been mentioned early in the game.
In the expansions Mongoose released, a noble is mentioned as being a helghast. Again, names escape me at the moment, but it was a female noble in either Slovia or Lyris or thereabouts and Mongoose mentioned the natural place to take the story after Blood Moon Rising was to her, since the characters would now have decent evidence that she was a Helghast.
And thus would begin the fourth chapter, in which you would be sent on a faux-diplomatic mission to Slovia/Lyris/wherever it was. Though in actuality the mission was to expose the helghast in front of the court, ostensibly the matter would be to discuss economics and trade, to this end you had along several ACTUAL diiplomats whom you had to escort. One of them, a young talented female, would be attacked during the journey, again by the red robes. Their goal would be to kidnap her. Depending on player actions, they might succeed.
Eventually, the group would reach their destination only to discover the helghast gone. After investigation, it would appear she was kidnapped by the Red Robes. Put in the bizarre situation of having to rescue their quarry, the party would head after the Red Robes, eventually finding them in an ancient temple buried in the mountains. here they were preparing some kind of dark ceremony, and they were using the effigy as some kind of catalyst. They also had sacrifices, among them the noble and the diplomat.
Ultimately, their sacrifice fails, because the noble is a helghast. The helghast is killed in the process, and the Red Robes are destroyed by the players. That seems to be an end to the legacy of the effigy, but there's more to come...
... but not tonight. That's the end of Act I, and I believe I had three or four acts planned. I remember most of the rest, so I'll post some more tomorrow.
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Post by Bewildered Badger on Mar 10, 2009 7:10:00 GMT -5
Well this makes for fascinating reading, and I'm just saddened by the fact that we never got to do it 'for real'!
Looking forward to the next part!
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Post by zipp on Mar 10, 2009 12:26:27 GMT -5
By the way, the amulet was a red herring. It had once belonged to a Darklord, but was stolen by a... er... my LW vocab is in need of some serious work... it's those lesser Darklords, you know? Anyways, the amulet didn't have much real power in the hands of good aligned creatures, but simply acted as an object of desire for the party, with which to try and convert them to do evil deeds. The longer you guys held on to it, the harder it was going to get to throw it away, and the more damaging it was going to be to the group. In act II, which is coming up tonight, a very tense political situation arises, and the different nationalities of the group were going to be strained. The amulet would increase this strain.
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Post by Beowuuf on Mar 10, 2009 13:18:28 GMT -5
Xagash!
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Post by Doomy on Mar 10, 2009 14:11:21 GMT -5
Gesundheit!
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Post by zipp on Mar 10, 2009 23:36:12 GMT -5
Ha ha ha!
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Post by Balgin Stondraeg on Mar 15, 2009 10:25:10 GMT -5
You know, disturbingly, I could still place a hand on Adric's character sheet within a matter of moments if need be (it's still within arm's reach of my computer but under things so there'd be some lifting and searching involved). Something just occurred to me. When the team found the mysterious invisibility causing artifact, I got a PM from Zipp describing what impressions I got from it. This included the fact that certain members of the team (I'm not pointing fingers here, but if I was I'd be pointing at a downward angle  ) wished to get there own hands on it for various purposes. What I was wondering was, was this the natural result of various team members having various different goals? Or was there a subtle magical influence being cast upon us all? At the time I thought it was the former and reacted accordingly but looking back I'm not so sure. Thoughts please! I recieved no messages from Zipp about anything influecing Adric's behaviour. It was purely in character motivation to destroy it on my part. It was a nice twist as many of the characters I've played have had no desire to destroy possibly harmful items such as this but contain them ('till they could be dealt with). So in Adric's case it fitted in with his rather rigid line of thinking and offered me anice chance to do something different for a change. I then think other folk caught on and the selfish greed spread like wildfire (or an infectious epidemic). Of course if anyone else had failed will saves and was being affected then I knew nothing about it ('cause Adric had a reasonably good will save and I hadn't been told it had failed him  ). Slovia. It's actualy the main reason the events of The Long Arm of Darkness took place in Ruanon (as that's on the way to Slovia). The merchant the group were escorting would give up (roads too dangerous) and they'd hopefuly head back towards Sommerlund, run into the Blood Moon Rising adventure which, in turn, would then send them south to Slovia (which would chain into another link to the Drakkarim warlord). This Drakkarim warlord was effectively gaining levels in the dark cultist class and I did have the idea of him being forced to retreat to Kalte (ideally after a big sea battle type scene) where he could fulfill the "betray a trusted ally unto death" requirement to make it to another level in his dark cultist profession. Then Mongoose brought out the Kalte adventure and I sawa blatant 1, 2, 3 progression where the three could be chained together and thought I should probably give that a go but never got round to it. |
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Post by Beowuuf on Mar 15, 2009 11:33:54 GMT -5
I forget how much of my amulet obsession was Zipp nudging and how much was going with the flow of the character... I think it was a bit of each. Certainly the curiosity and good intentions came from the character, and the distrust and justifications for lies came from the perceived influence
Balgin, if you ever want to hold another game again, Al, eviltb, myself or Doomy should be able to set you up a trusted GM account pretty quickly to set up your board and game over at the new LWRPGoL proboards place
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Post by Balgin Stondraeg on Mar 15, 2009 13:01:54 GMT -5
Balgin, if you ever want to hold another game again, Al, eviltb, myself or Doomy should be able to set you up a trusted GM account pretty quickly to set up your board and game over at the new LWRPGoL proboards place I'd consider it but I'm still running 4 pbf's (3 of which I was running when I ran my old game). They're abit inactive (players dawdling) but I don't want to get drawn into another one while I should be updating those. I might (since it's Magnamund) but now I've told you all all my good ideas I need to come up with some more. I'd still like to run the 3 Mongoose adventures at some point in the future but I reckon Zipp having already run one of them would kind of spoil it for the rest of you. My version of it would differ in many ways but also be far too familiar for it to be much fun. |
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Post by zipp on Mar 16, 2009 2:31:37 GMT -5
More story coming, I promise. Just hard to fit it in with everything, especially when I'm hesitant to dig into my memory when i KNOW those notes are somewhere around here...
As for the will saves, if I recall, Balgin passed his easily, but I don't think I told him. I think, instead, I verified his thoughts that the amulet was evil, or I may have been about to when the crash occurred.
Balgin's attitude ended up working very well with the amulet's intentions to spread distrust through the group. The dwarf was already held in suspicion by a few party members because he was naturally secretive about his own mission (which was to capture a dwarven mercenary gone bad, which was one of those things I had notes on how to tie into the main story... another reason i want to find them). When Balgin wanted to destroy the amulet, it triggered natural reactions in a few party members, reactions I pushed forward because they failed their will saves. Cather was one, I can't remember who else failed. Maybe the Kundi? Or Tyrste? Or had Shannie already stopped playing?
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) wished to get there own hands on it for various purposes.
).