Shadows of the Black Feather IV: Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves

Waking up after a long night of partying with the townsfolk of Barovia at the Blood o' the Vine Inn, the adventurers decided that they oughtta go see this Madam Eva they hear so much about, and get their fortunes read or something. The players then all agreed to use Skype as voice chat, and it sped up our game considerably.



So Garsome the Dwarf, Cedric the Priest, and Milo the Halfling made some last minute purchases at Bildrath's Mercantile to get some Anti-Ghost Oil and Vampire Repellant and started meandering their way westward along Old Svalich Road. While they didn't take a map, and didn't really ask directions, in their triumphantly over-confident heroic wisdom they figured that the gypsies must be somewhere to the west, due to the fact that they came from the east, and following the road and wandering around Barovia was a good a plan as any.

But the heroes were ambushed along the road by elves! Not just elves either, but werewolf elves! Welves! After a small bit of parlay where the elves tried to look innocent, Milo noticed the werewolves sneaking around to flank the party, and raised the alarm. Between Milo's masterwork silver dagger, and Garsome's non-silver but hard-hitting axe, the Welves were quickly put down without a single party member contracting Lycanthropy! :(



Continuing on their way the trio came to the crossroads, where folks are hanged from the gallows and found a sign pointing towards three different places 1) "East to the Village of Barovia", 2) "West to Castle Ravenloft," 3) "North to Tser Pool." Since they were pretty sure they just came from the village, and they were really sure they didn't want to go to Castle Ravenloft, the correct direction to find the gypsies looked fairly obvious.

But suddenly, nebulous ghostly beings made of utter darkness (or something sinister like that) rose up out of the nearby potter's field and attacked a passerby knight! The man clearly wouldn't last long against the incorporeal foes, so the party dove into the attack! Cedric challenged the ghosts to a preach-off and the spirits simply couldn't take the holy awesome of Crom (or whatever god supplement he's using), and Garsome coated his axe in anti-ghost oil and chopped through the rest of the suckers. The trio healed the unconscious man and Milo begrudgingly gave his possessions back to him, eventually. The young knight introduced himself as "Sir Ulrik Von Lichtenstein" and explained he was on his way to Castle Ravenloft to save his Lord, the great undead slayer known as "Lord Quinn Aplanc, Savior of the Seven Dales and Grand Master of Crawford Manor." Garsome matter-of-factly explained to Ulrik that if he couldn't handle the ghost-beasts he wouldn't stand a chance in Castle Ravenloft, so Ulrik agreed to join the party to learn from Garsome's undead-hunting tactics (hit 'em hard and keep a cleric about).


The now party of four tromped their way up to the Tser Pool encampment of gypsies, where they were invited in. The gypsies of course knew they were coming and that evening they sat down with Madam Eva to get some fortunes told. After the players waited a while to see if she would just start spouting off fortunes, they finally started asking questions, consisting of just ways to throw out key words like "So what's this I hear about a Sunsword?"


Madam Eva's fortune telling finished, the heroes learn that one of the items (magic sword) is hidden nearby, and so pay a Vistani gypsy boy to go find it for them. None of them really use swords so they stuck it in Garsome's pack and forgot about it.

Madam Eva told the players that the witches they seek meet at the ruins atop Lysaga Hill every night summoning their dark lord who will finally appear during the new moon, only two nights away! So team "kill 'em all" decide to head them off at the pass and sprint on up to Lysaga hill one night early so as not to have risk Garsome having to make a Will save to face Cthulhu. What they found on Lysaga Hill are your standard cultists mid-ritual, accompanied by an evil Hag leading the chant, and an avatar of the Daemon Chernovog standing nearby, no doubt the district manager.


So the party quietly surrounded the cultists while they mulled over what to do about the deamon-guy, but then Cedric tripped on his shoelaces and made a big ruckus, attracting the attention of the cultists and the battle was on! Milo and Ulrik backstabbed and frontstabbed (respectively) cultists as the cultists shot scorching rays at them, and Garsome turned on the afterburners and went after the Hag. Cedric ran around atop the wall casting protective spells and then jumped into the fray and healed folks as best he could. Garsome ran into some major trouble and lost not only his axe but also his backup dagger of venom to some crappy rolls, so ended up having no choice but to punch the Hag to death, which admittedly is pretty awesome in the end.

Then the big deamon guy who was shooting warlocky eldritch blasts and spells at the party decided to stomp into the melee action, and got knee-deep in some adventurer's faces. The party was taking a pretty big beating, and Cedric could barely keep up with the healing. Suddenly, on Ulric's smite-evil attack he actually rolled two crits, doing some major damage to the deamon and opening up the opportunity for Milo to snatch Garsome's axe and deliver it to the dwarf via the tumble-express. Once the axe was back in his dwarfy hands, Garsome made short work of the wounded Mr. Bigpants.


The party searched around and found a trap door leading down into the ruins. This is where we ended the game. Will the party find anything of value within the ruins, or only their doom? We'll find out in Part V of...

Shadows of the Black Feather: Expedition to Castle Ravenloft!

The Zombocalypse is inevitable...

...because people are selfish pricks.

As an example, oh say..take this guy, to protect his identity we'll call him Personal Injury Attorney Andrew S. On May 10th of this year he was told by the CDC he was infected with multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis, and told not to go on any flights as it would take a while to determine what kind of TB it was. Instead, he flew to Rome in Mid-May with his new wife for their honeymoon. The CDC then tracked him down in Rome and told him that his form of Tuberculosis was actually the extensively drug-resistant form (the most dangerous type), and to turn himself in to Italian health officials or US Embassy immediately for quarantine. Instead of doing that, he avoided Italian health officials and bypassed the USA's no-fly list (which he was on) by flying to Canada, getting on two separate flights, and then drove into the US.


Upon arriving in the United States, he then contacted the CDC about his condition. Of course, this is after he was already home, meaning that the people on those flights were already who-knows-where. Then the CDC flew him in a private plane to Denver for treatment (which they would've done from Rome), and now has been tracking down all the passengers from those two international flights and asking them to get TB tests (its hard enough to get people to call you back). Keep in mind a lot of these people aren't even US citizens, and the CDC is hardly swimming in cash.

Now, there's already plenty of reason to hate this guy...but, besides the fact that he's a lawyer, he also put all those other people at risk of contracting a highly dangerous infection, who by definition are traveling to all parts of the world. Its not like he walked into Lost Nation community center where the folks infected could be kept track of, he got on two separate flights of travelers who by definition were in transit to other places. Probably a lot of them to see their families. Probably quite a few hugged and kissed their kids when they got home, or will hug and kiss their kids sometime in the future when the bacteria has even more time to incubate.

Andrew's father-in-law works on highly drug-resistant TB at the CDC, coincidentally enough, but regardless of how Andrew got infected, he chose after being fully informed of its dangers, to put a lot of other people at needless risk of being infected. Now imagine this wasn't the fairly well-understood drug-resistant tuberculosis, but was the T-virus developed by the Umbrella Corporation. Now you're starting to see the big picture.


Even if a person is told in crystal clear terms that they have a very dangerous and infectious disease, they will still put many hundreds or thousands of others at risk if it means they can be slightly more comfortable. If even lawyers can't be trusted to care about the public good, what hope is there for us?

Shadows of the Black Feather Part III: Zombie Smackdown

Three day weekends are great weekends for gaming.

So in our third session of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, Garsome the ex-retired Dwarf Mercenary, Milo the Halfling Rogue, Cedric the Human Cleric, and Ashlyn the Human Paladin decided to travel up to the village church to see what had become of the village priest, and to investigate the rumored source of the necromantic infection. They were in for some surprises.

First they chopped thier way through some ghasts and zombies hanging around in the streets on their way with little difficulty. Garsim had one noteworthy moment where he Great Cleaved two ghasts and a zombie in one swing. Milo also got to try out his alchemical flare stake on a zombie and burnt it to a cinder.

Then they approached the church, which was clearly decrepit and had recently been defiled. They waltzed in guns a-blazin, sure in the power of whatever it is they believe in (deus ex machina?).

The Evil Priest surprised them as they entered with a hearty blend of mass inflict moderate wounds scrolls empowered by an earlier casting of unhallow. The PCs were not pleased. To their credit I got no whining about the lack of rolling for initiative before springing that on them (the adventure actually calls for a surprise Circle of Death casting, but that's just sloppy playtesting).

The priest won initiative, and the first order of business was to cast dispel magic on the pesky dwarf. Cedric likes to cast magic circle of protection on Garsome's beard, and that just isn't compatible with my preferences to make Garsome roll Will saves vs. domination, so that had to go. The protection spell was dispelled as well as all his magic items became dormant (except his ring of protection) for 1d4 rounds, which was nice for me.

A lack of magical arms and armor didn't phase Garsome though, and he still charged the priest as zombies and deathlocks (undead wizards) burst through the neighboring doors to surround the non-dwarf members of the party. Cedric re-cast magic circle of protection vs. evil while turning undead and the evil priest cast protection from good and later summon giant crocodile! Garsome eventually finished the priest off with his Dagger of Venom, which was the first weapon to regain its magical charge, and the priest fell through the hole in the center of the church, into the darkness below.

The players knew that the priest was wearing some good stuff (he was a high level NPC after all), so they healed up with Cedric's wand of cure light wounds and trudged down the steps to the basement to ransack the place, where they found the priest's son made into a huge franken-monster waiting for them along with some reanimated ex-companions of NPC paladin Ashlyn Lightbringer.

The PCs took it in stride and attacked the monster like the stalwart heroes they are, until they found out that one bite from the Blaspheme resulted in a psychic shock to the PC making him lose his next turn (no save!) if he was anything but evil, as well as a souped-up version of Necromantic Zombie Fever which even Garsome failed his save against!

Cedric made ample use of his Bolstered Quickened Maximized Turn ability and Milo rolled around and jammed exploding wooden stakes into every undead he could get to. The brave little guy even took a bite from the superbeast for the team, ringing a little bell he found to get its attention.

Between Ashlyn's 'Smite Evil' and Garsome's 'Smite Everything' the creature was eventually felled, and the magical plague that was animating the corpses around Barovia was eradicated. The PCs buried the ex-companions of Ashlyn and bid her farewell, and if they needed her help in the future they could find her at the Blood o' the Vine Tavern (backup PC).

For their trouble, the 3 PCs eventually hauled off 1416 gold each, a suit of magical full plate, a magical shield, a magical silver greatsword, an evil-looking tome about creating undead, a good-looking journal about fighting undead, a few scrolls, a few potions, and a hefty "thanks" from the villagers.

Now that the zombie plague is taken care of, maybe they can actually get to investigating the witches that are described in the letter they got from the dark and mysterious gypsy three sessions ago.


Cheesy video for the players:

Shadows of the Black Feather part II: Village of the Damned!

My players logged onto the server on Thursday and they continued their trek through the zombie-infested village of Barovia, on their quest to right wrongs and left rights.


The human following them around finally broke out of his teleportation mishap-inflicted amnesia and introduced himself as Father Cedric Finalrest, cleric of Kelemvor and general enemy to undead-types. He asked if he could join the party. With that introduction the role-playing gods nodded their satisfaction and two became three, as Cedric joined Garsome and Milo.

The trio marched their way down the streets of Barovia and came across a dead body being devoured by giant maggots. The cleric with his fancy detect evil ability could sense the zombie ambush waiting to happen from the doorways on either side of the house, and prepared accordingly. Two flying evil heads flew out of one of the windows but were immediately put down by a couple of throwing axes launched from Garsome. Then the zombies did their B-movie pop-out attack and between Garsome's Great Cleave and Cedric's Holification rituals they were put down pretty quickly. Milo managed to help the group by taking most of the hits and getting hurt pretty bad. But like a good rogue he was the first to loot the dead body.


They searched the body and found some papers detailing that the man was named Viktor Litmunova, and strangely he hadn't succumbed to infection. Well, they didn't really comment on this fact between healing themselves and looking for gold, but at least the cleric said some "Hail Mary's" for the guy after he did his battery-of-healing party restore. I swear Devin's on autopilot with the healing and protection spells, he throws them out so fast. I think I could hear him hitting "Alt-Q" every thirty seconds.

Continuing on, they barely got a sentence of descriptive boxed text after that battle before they "Heard the sounds of battle coming from the center of town!" They rushed to the town square and stumbled into a mass zombie rave. Barricades had been set up in the center of town but one of them was busted and the zombies poured in to get at the besieged villagers. A lone paladin was fighting off the zombies but was hard-pressed. One of the zombie-creatures was actually an Entomber, and could magically bury people alive, which it subsequently did to the paladin. So the party rushed in and Garsome's axe went a-swingin. Cedric flew over the crowd of zombies and started doing his turning-undead pulse attack, while at the same time casting protective spells on the land-based dwarf. Milo drank a potion of barkskin and sincerely wished we could stop fighting sneak attack-resistant zombies all the goddamn time.

When Garsome reached the Entomber he was not nimble enough to avoid being swallowed up by the earth, and Garsome was buried alive! Cedric flew down to melee range to give the Entomber a taste of some seriously channeled positive energy, but failed his cast defensively roll and the Entomber grabbed him by the ankle and overhead slammed the cleric into the ground, which sucked him under. Upon seeing his two kick-ass companions put into early graves, Milo, who was engaged with some very determined zombies, decided to "lead the zombies away" and took off running from the battle and off the map.

Holding his breath, Cedric tried to turn undead from underground but failed his concentration checks, while Garsome slowly clawed his way upward and back toward air. The zombies gathered around the sound of digging and as soon as his head popped up they all whack-a-moled the stout dwarf. Cedric, for his part, decided that being buried alive was for the birds and called upon his granted power from the Traveller domain, and the loose earth above him gave way as easily as if it were air and Cedric flew out of the grave to bathe the zombies in the 8 levels of glorious awesome that is the holy god Kelemvor. Six zombies immediately burst into flame at the sight of the quasi-resurrected cleric and Garsome took out the remaining zombie as well as the troublesome Entomber with some well-placed axe strikes.

After digging out the paladin, they learned her name was Ashlyn Lightbringer and she and her companions had arrived in the village just three days ago during the zombie infestation. Her companions went to the defiled church to find the source of the necromantic infection but never returned, and Ashlyn implored the adventurers to help her find them. This is where the DM misinterpreted the probable immediate goals of the party. I figured that they'd want to rest and memorize spells, as well as buy and sell some items at the shop as they had finally reached the center of town which was a respite from constant zombie attack, and up till now it just had been nonstop combat. So I prepared for a lot of role-playing and price haggling for such an event, as well as alchemical item preparation, rumor-dropping opportunities, and innkeeper surliness, thinking the players would want to actually prepare for another foray through the zombified village.

Instead, Garsome the dwarf, even though he had gotten pretty beat up in the last battle, was fully ready to go to the church and rescue her companions, immediately. And Cedric had no problem wrapping up any loose ends with his cleric buffing and healing spells. So I had to play her both ways, where she wanted to them to help her, but to wait until morning. Here's how the conversation basically went:

Ashlyn: I implore you good adventurers, my companions have not returned for three days from whence they ventured to the church, and I would have them saved! Will you join me in my quest to the church upon the morn?

Garsome: Sure, let's go lady!

Ashyln: Uh, don't you want to look around the town square first? I mean, we should rest and pray to good Lathander for our spells, and there surely are merchants here who would trade their magic wares with you. I can introduce you to...

Garsome: But you said they were in trouble! We should head out right now.

Ashlyn: 'Tis true, good dwarf, they are in trouble, but we cannot help them if we are wounded and die en route! The church is on the other side of town and we may encounter many perils! Plus the villagers will need us here until the sun rises in case of another zombie onslaught during the night!

Cedric: No prob, we're not wounded. I cast three cure moderates on the dwarf, cured Milo's disease and channeled some hp to him, cast consecrate on the town square, plus our 10' magic circles of protection vs. evil still have 768 rounds left on them. I can cast hold portal on the building's doors to protect the villagers while we're gone. Oh yeah, and you get, *rolls,* 18 hit points healed. Let's go!

Ashlyn: Uh...do you not wish to see Bildrath's wares over at the Mercantile? He may have items that can help us in our quest...

Garsome: I just need this axe and a head to chop it into.

Ashlyn: ...

Garsome: I'm a fighter.

Fortunately they eventually got the hint (railroad) and resigned themselves to interacting with the NPCs. They bought some undead-hunting equipment, learned about a magic sword and magic holy pendant that are lost somewhere around here, questioned the burgomaster's son, found out about a gypsy encampment where some lady will read your fortune, and generally humored me until morning. Delp (Milo) had to go to work early the next day and he lives 3 hours into the future on the east coast so we wrapped up the game for the night.



UPDATE: While I was writing this post, Brando sent me a hilarious email on the same subject with his interpretation of the conversation:

Holy Avenger Lady: I fear my friends are in dire need of help.

Garsome: Well, then let's go get them right now.

Holy Avenger Lady: But there is a shop we must go to first, the situation is very dire.

Garsome: OK, after we go to the shop we can just head to the church and check it out. Like pronto.

Holy Avenger: Mayhap we aught to rest a spell at the Inn.

Garsome: C'MON! It's not complicated. The undead are over there. We're undead slayers. It's a match made in heaven. Just freaking point the way!"

Holy Avenger: But there is some lady that lives out of town that must be consulted.

Garsome: Christ! Look. I don't really care where we go at this point. Just as long as it isn't standing in the middle of the road where the ground is going to swallow me up again. You wanna go talk to the country lady? Fine with me. You wanna go to the church and kill heckavuas. Also just fine. If you want to go to the shop and buy ghost water, it's all gravy to me. But stop listing things that we have to do, and then immediately say that you don't want to do it.

Holy Avenger: The Burgermeister's daughter has had a very rough time recently.

Garsome: ..........

Holy Avenger: But we can't go there first. That just wouldn't be proper.

Video:

Ziggurat Con!

Alright you apes, listen up!

I just got forwarded some interesting info from the Eugene chapter of Browncoats.

Ziggurat Con: Where R.P.G. isn't just a
Rocket Propelled Grenade Any More!

To be held at Camp Adler/Kalil Airbase near the Ziggurat of UR.

That's their subtitle, not mine. Its a gamer convention put on in Iraq by the US soldiers! Since there aren't any FLGS's or anything up there they are asking for private donations to the event from gamer-patriots.

From the Ziggurat con staff/creators:

"We're pretty much looking for anything gaming related.
Source books for AD&D, Shadowrun, Gurps,Nrifts, Xcrawl, Magic
theGathering cards(9th edition sealed deck and boosters), miniatures, dice, dice bags, play mats(for the miniatures), mechanical pencils.
Anything vaguely gamer related.
The only thing you shouldn't send would be anything with pictures of topless or nude women."

It takes 8 to 11 days to get a package to Iraq so in order for things
to get there in time for the con; they need to be in the mail by May
26th. All involved (including me as I write the post) recognize the
time constraints on this. We implore you, DO NOT LET THE TIME FRAME DAUNT YOU. Stuff sent after the con will still be used, as the gathering will surly encourage new gamers.

You'll be boosting the morale of your fellow geek.

The ultimate goal of the Con is to give every coalition service
member, and civilian contractor in attendance at least one item to
take home and keep.

Another great idea, they need some art! Very few things are
grimer than a military tent/hut.

They're also really happy to get snacks, DVDs and videos

Snacks have to be able to survive 120 degree heat

Mentioned specifically are:
Jerky
Caramel popcorn
Nuts
Drink Mix
Twizzlers
Ramen Noodles
Cup of anything nukeable"

Donations can also be sent to SPC Amberson directly at the following address:

SPC David Amberson
A Co 86th Sig Bn
APO, AE 09331

As soon as I got this I knew I had to donate some books I never get to play of games that are totally playable. For some reason the American Military produces the largest group of gamer jocks than any other profession. Unfortunately I'm just finding out about this on May 24th, and to get stuff in the mail by May 26th we have to quick-step into action (though you can send stuff after, I do want my stuff to be at the convention). Fortunately I'm a DM so I have two things in my favor to enable short-notice sending; 1) I buy loads of campaign guides and rpg books that I never get to play and 2) All my books are in immaculate condition (ever notice how player's books are always worn down and soda-stained yet DM's books are always mint condition?).

So Mary and I are sending the following to Ziggurat Con (plus snacks and pencils not pictured):


That's right, that's the Star Wars rpg campaign guide in the upper left. Fantastic book and great game, and it'll be better served with the soldier-gamers (warrior-poets?) in Iraq than it will be sitting next to the Autolycus mint-in-box action figure on my bookshelf. Along with that they're getting all my Star Wars minis with stat cards, the Star Wars Revenge of the Sith miniatures starter set (with two d20s), the two Lord of the Rings Dwarves of Khazad-Dum supplements, the super-excellent Goodman's Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics (I highly recommend all of Goodman's Games 3rd party stuff), and the Horizon Virtual rpg campaign book (kind of a matrix-y d20 rpg).

I got rid of a lot of my rpg books on ebay before I moved to Oregon, so only have my favorite books left to choose between to send. Also that's all that will fit in the biggest fed-ex box with some side room for snacks. Oh yeah, the post office back in late 2003-2004 whereabouts decided that flat-rate Fed-Ex boxes can be sent to APOs at the normal "within USA" rate, so it only costs $9.00 to send the biggest one of the flat rate boxes to Iraq! You may not know about this if you haven't sent anything to Iraq since Brando got back, as they started doing that after he was deployed, but its ultra-cheap to do it now. So to all you readers of Scantabulous, it will only cost you between $4-$9 to send food, games, or whatever for this very worthy gamer convention.


They're doing their part! Let's do ours and tell 'em thanks!


UPDATE: Mary just brought home two bags of turkey jerky, honey roasted peanuts, honey roasted cashews, a bag of 10 mechanical pencils, and a big bag of red nibs to throw in there. Score for gamer snacks!