Gaming Book Front

So I haven't written much of late but the occasional game report. Not a lot to write about. My book buying has been forcibly slowed down by me so I can consume the vast amount of current material and maybe game with some of it. I am running Ptolus as just about anyone reading this should be well aware (look on post down for further proof). I have all of Exalted 1E and have never quite read through all of it. Even the setting. I am getting into Exalted 2E at least the thinsplats that detail out parts never covered in 1E. They are going to be my primary purchases in 2007 along with Scion: Demigod, Scion: Hero and the 3rd Scion book if it comes out this year. It's hard to judge what comes out when with White Wolf as their livejournal (see my other blog for the link) talks about stuff months and month out. They love to spoil.

As for D&D I probably will not get much this year. I have a ton and at the moment it seems unlikely that I will be in any game demanding new books. Carl's City of Stone is on indefinite hiatus. I will be in Brady's Eberron game but I have no interest in purchasing the Eberron setting books and as a Healer my flexibility is limited. I'm a medic and will probably stay a medic. Otherwise I'm still debating attempting a New World of Darkness one shot. Other games quietly lingering in the mental wings are a Red Star game and a Blue Planet game (heh colors, whee). Also maybe a Dragon-Blooded game. But these are far away things!

At some point hopefully Rapan Athuk Reloaded will arrive. It's in theory due to ship soon from Amazon but we'll see...

Ptolus 2

So we pick up the party taking a short break from their previous adventures. However they are itching to go back and follow up. So they return to the building where they found the rat hole and discover it has been cleaned up and semi-repaired. Greg (Carl) attempts to break down the door until he notices it's unlocked. Ness's (Dani) wolf notices that the trapdoor to the basement has been sealed up so the party (using a sewer map that El (Joe) had picked up) take to the sewers to backtrack to the "back" entrance. The search finds an empty area but they do notice a half ruined map of the sewers. Doing some backtracing the party finds another "staging" area.

El sneaks past the sentry by slipping through the sewage. A careful sneak attack kills the sentry and the party attempts to bait out the ratmen inside. The ratmen don't take the bait so the party advances in only to be confronted by a ratbrute who dumps Greg and El into the sewage. The party manages to overwhelm the brute and several ratlings and enter a room with many crates. Greg sweeps the room and finds a tunnel similiar to the one that connected the two rooms before. El investigates and sure enough there are a ton of ratmen in the other room.

The party baits them out and slaughters a ton of ratlings until several ratlords jump them from behind. The battle becomes more pitched, Ness gets shot. However the party perseveres and route all but the ratlord with the gun who escapes.

Half alive the party goes through the crates destroying huge amounts of drugs. However in the process they recover guns, magic items, other "items", and cash. A nice take. The "items" turn out to be chaositech. Greg goes to one of the bigger churches to attempt to get the items destroyed but is thwarted by a stiff bueacracy that sends him back to his direct superior. Greg is not totally happy about this.

And that's where things left off. One stinky but wealthier party.

One Shot: Bastion of Broken Souls

Well we got started off rather late for the one shot here so I myself didn't get a chance to finish it as I needed to return to make sure things were in order for first day of work on the 2nd. Here's the short run-down.

Brandon picked up Bastion of Broken Souls and decided to run it for Carl and Adam although they were allowed only to be 17th lvl characters cause they are just that darn good at what they do. I got allowed in and Ray showed up and played one of the pre-genned characters out of the back of the adventure. Bastion of Broken Souls is a 3.0 adventure so Brandon would get some fun adapting things.

Run down on characters: Carl is a Elan Psion 15/Monk 1/Thrallheard 1 with a (Elan? Human?) Psion 15 cohort. I'm a pixie Lurk 13. Adam is a human(?) Cleric ??/Radiant Servant of Pelor ?? and Ray was a Rogue 18 (benefit of playing a pre-gen was he got to be max level).

The initial start (after a somewhat dull 4 hour wait for people to create characters, etc, etc) had our party meeting in a bar after a successful mission. We are attacked by some sort of demon that we never quite identified but would prove to be important. She bee-lines straight for Carl and really hammers him but he manages to remain concious and thus keep her from teleporting away. Adam throws down Dimension Anchor as she kills Carl by tossing him across the room. I stay invisible and plug away with my cross-bow for minimal damage. Ray also engages with similiar success at melee before retreating to ranged. Eventually another person appears and engages the demon. With several people now attacking from multiple directions (several who are invisible and sneak attacking because of it) and Carl back on his feet after his cohort used our trusty Rod of True Res the demon retreats.

The party discovers that Carl's character is the blood of Dydd who killed some evil dragon and for some reason that is important. The locals point them to a circle of druids and a dream cult a hundred miles away. The female demon is tracked to the capitol that is 700 miles to the north. Opting to gather more info the party travels (via Adam's windwalk) to the dream cult. There they encounter the Dreamer Prime who refuses to awake unless they overcome here defenses. She proves hard to sneak attack and here dream creatures give the ground troops severe wisdom damage that Carl and Adam manage to allay somewhat with restorations. I float above her apparition and plug away with the Lurk's abilities to be able to augment their attacks to a)have ghost touch and b)do ability damage. Eventually her wisdom purged she is defeated and the party talks to her and the party learns alot about what's going on.

Enroute to meet the druids the female demon ambushes the party again. She almost immediately kills Carl, who is slipping from her massive grapple attempts, and teleports away with a bit of his remains and immediately ressurects him so his loyal cohort cannot. The rest of party the fumbles about in the smoke that came from Carl's Endless Bottle of Smoke while a pit fiend attacks. However before either side can really engage the druids arrive and the pit fiend flees. The party is sent to the circle where they determine that Carl is indeed not dead and that he is needed for something related to a dragon his ancestor defeated and lots of other plot elements. Adam learns all this and then uses commune to pinpoint roughly where Carl is. The druids sends the party to the capitol city where he is being held in secret below the capitol building itself (unawares to anyone there).

Carl's cohort finally manages to find the dungeon but is forced to retreat to the surface. The party in random fashion returns using an earth monolith and manages to kill Carl again but this time we manage to True Res him. The city is in minor panic but this is the point alas where I had to leave.

Towards the end things slowed down a lot for me which was frustrating. Carl started acting essentially independent to get his my character back to the point that noone else got to do much except for Adam a little bit. Oh well, it's how things roll. Probably woulda got to do nearly the whole thing had we started sooner but what can ya do? It was interesting overall, makes me want to do a standard dungeon crawl sometime cause I never really have. Off to bed now so I can work!