Acronyms are fun!
It’s that time again. We’ve officially burned through all I had posted last time, and even my most vigorous of padding efforts have left us without any further plot to mull through. Our Band of Heroes has succeeded in surviving thus far with only the smallest of frantic bullshit maneuvers on my part to help. They’ve visited the chapel and graveyard, seen the bizarre effects on the bodies, valiantly fought mages and scampered around packs of werewolves. No one is dead yet and we’ve had a couple interesting nights; a pretty good run thus far.
Ramklin managed to get away with a bit of muddling about on my part. I threw a description of him out when they were fighting him, but given I felt the need to do so for the other characters too I don’t think anyone bothered to remember it. Regardless, since it makes no sense that the characters would’ve forgotten I’ll just toss it at them again come next run. I think I may even need to start it off with that – there aren’t tons of other ins. They still haven’t checked out the basement in the tower, despite the fact one of the players is now certain it’s there. They also know whatever’s going on involves some kind of huge magical input into the people. This means the objectives of the next segment should be:
- Start the abduction routine of the locals. Have Ramklin bring a few mooks along and steal a few watchmen. Why bother sneaking past the sentries when you can just use them instead?
- Identify Ramklin as the mage in a purple robe with gold trim. He was at the last fight; all I need to do is have Vhanis ask about the one who got away.
- Identify, if possible, the direction the abductees are being brought, and where Ramklin might be hiding out.
- Suggestion for this, why not head back to said tower basement and put a tunnel in it that leads away a good distance and has a small room to hide in inside. At the end put a channeling station where one could open a portal to another location. Vhanis could do it; it’s up to the party to decide if they want to. For a wrap up at the end I could say Vhanis needs time to prepare, simple and effective.
I’d also like to foster some sort of brainstorming about what’s actually going on, but I’m not entirely certain how to go about it. The group can be talkative, but boy do they have mood swings when it comes to that. I’ve thrown out enough information that they could conceivably guess what Ramklin is doing, but since I haven’t really given any visible motivation yet I don’t think they’ll get it quite right. That’s something I’ll have to handle after they go through the portal. Through the portal will be Kharazhan. For those not in the know; it’s the old home of an incredibly powerful mage that’s now rife with ghosts, goblins, ghouls, ghasts and other assorted denizens of the ether. Fun place. The group has fond memories of it. Anyways; it’s going to be the blatantly obvious ‘OH GEE, MAYBE THIS IS WHERE THE MAGIC IS COMING FROM’ icon to solve that little non-mystery.
They won’t actually be inside the tower when they pop out of the portal, in fact they won’t even see it. They’ll be in the crypts down below, but honestly all the description they’re going to get is a series of stone rooms with an ominously large quantity of bones strewn about. It’s a very messy crypt, and adding to the fact will be the odd shredded corpse with the blue vein thing going on. This is where the mage will be invoking his imbuement ritual. If I can gage things right they won’t be trailing immediately after Ramklin as he goes through the portal, so he’ll be unaware the Band Of Heroes even knows it’s there, and thus wont have logically moved on.
The ritual will be going on at the bottom of the crypt but I actually want them to find the top first so they have some idea where they are. I’ll use a simple locked door to see if I can get them to bum upwards first.
I think I may have to plan the actual crypts out separately later on. I’ll whip up a map for them and plan it out. All I have concrete right now is that Ramklin can’t just shoot fireballs at them once they start, I want him to be able to talk for a bit. Let him become unreasonable through conversation, not insanely aggressive right off the bat.
Ah well, that’s all for now; time to see how it goes.
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