Thirteenth Age: The Larder
Dec. 14th, 2015 02:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicollPCs Present:
Virgil the Tiefling Sorcerer. “Amnesiac”. Didn't used to be a tiefling.
Ren the Dwarven Bard: tall for a dwarf, with red skin
Percival the (ancient) Forgeborn Commander, the perfect Dwarven companion robot.
Ewoud Thon, Human Fight. Just mustered out. Broke.
Virgil opens his eyes after what feels like the worse bender ever, up there with the … incident with the summoning. What he sees is a dark, rank lair. Not in fact his flat. And he is sticky. Then details start come back to him: the inn. His companions. The explosion. The dragon. Days of being flown across an unfamiliar landscape, through a vast storm, to who knows where.
Fragmentary memories say that he and the others (Ren, Percival and Ewoud) have spent days paralyzed in the dragon's lair, drenched in a foul smelling goo, in a pile of bodies similarly paralysed. Occasionally the dragon feeds, in a process more similar to how flies eat than classic dragons. Happily, none of the Virgil's companions have been digested yet. Less happily, nobody can move.
This would have ended unpleasantly, in a dragon's stomach, if not for the dragon's gnomish care-taker Nabit, who decided to tinker with the robotic Percival. Oddly, even though Percival is entirely mechanical in nature, Nabit managed to jump-start the Forgeborn in a shower of sparks. Percival appreciates the reboot, although not Nabit's thoughtful assessment of Percival as a possible source of spare parts.
Virgil watches this with half his face in a puddle of unspeakable goo.
The den is filled with paralyzed beings of all sorts. For whatever reason, Virgil, Ren, and Ewoud are not quite as badly affected as the rest of the larder, and Percival does his best to ensure Ren, at least, regains his powers of mobility before the dragon comes back. Whether it is because of or in spite of Percival's efforts, Ren and Ewoud regain the ability to move.
Virgil does not. Ah, well, this mortal shell is still new to him.
An unhappy bird-like creature draws attention to its master. What the flying beast might be, who can say? But its paralysed master is definitely a goblin, one of many in the pile. On the logic that the enemy of the enemy is an ally, Percival calms the … bird thing … by singing to it, then drags its master to a wall away from the paralytic goo. Slowly, the goblin begins to recover.
Ewoud salvages an assortment of weapons and other items from the midden. A healing potion turns up in the detritus, just what Virgil needs to more firmly seat their soul in his body.
While the others arm themselves from the midden, Virgil draws power into himself, then illuminates the lair to get a better idea of the situation. It looks like old hall, long abandoned. There are the remains of tapestries. A gapping hole in the wall shows where the dragon smashed his way in.
The more the survivors understand where they are, the more bizarre it is. The hall is on the back of a giant slug moving too slowly for mortal eyes to perceive. The snail is in the middle of an epic battle with a giant with a head made of tentacles: it too is also moving too slowly to perceive. Nabit explains that the great beasts are two of the “Blasphemies”, relics of an old Mage War. They are monsters from another realm where time moves far more slowly than it does in this world.
That's nice to know but sadly, every route out looks likely to end in death thanks to the hall's precarious position. To fill time as the group ponders the situation, they haul more survivors out of the goo. Most are goblins, all from the same tribe but there is one more human. Nobody thinks reviving the baby behemoth or the giant spider out will end well, and in fact it is not that clear the goblins will feel anything like gratitude.
Nabit is willing to help but there is a price: he wants his sister rescued from the town where the dragon stashed her, a town built on the giant's leg (the slug and giant are surprisingly built up for two giant monsters but slow time lets people do that to them).
The human turns out to be a mercenary named Blunder, one of the Grey Dogs of Zobek. While his name is not a confidence builder, he does have a useful suggestion: milk spider silk from the giant spider, then weave a rope from it. The roap is enough to let agile Ren, Blunder and Ewoud make their way down to a groove sliced in the slug's side by the giant's weapon and with a little help, Virgil and Percival manage to join them.
Ren notices that the terrain around the two Blasphemies is sandy desert, not a complete wasteland; a skilled person could stay alive down there. At base of slug, there are pockets of odd shaped lumps in earth, like someone dug holes and then refilled them.
A long tentacle connects the slug to the giant's leg. Some enterprising person has used the tentacle as the base for a cover bridge. They don't seem to have maintained it for some reason; the middle section looks like something crushed it.
There are creatures flying around, pecking at something in the crushed section. At first they look a bit like mosquitoes. Then the survivors get a sense of scale. Whatever those things are, they're big. Very big.
As the survivors take that information in, drums begin to sound.
Virgil the Tiefling Sorcerer. “Amnesiac”. Didn't used to be a tiefling.
Ren the Dwarven Bard: tall for a dwarf, with red skin
Percival the (ancient) Forgeborn Commander, the perfect Dwarven companion robot.
Ewoud Thon, Human Fight. Just mustered out. Broke.
Virgil opens his eyes after what feels like the worse bender ever, up there with the … incident with the summoning. What he sees is a dark, rank lair. Not in fact his flat. And he is sticky. Then details start come back to him: the inn. His companions. The explosion. The dragon. Days of being flown across an unfamiliar landscape, through a vast storm, to who knows where.
Fragmentary memories say that he and the others (Ren, Percival and Ewoud) have spent days paralyzed in the dragon's lair, drenched in a foul smelling goo, in a pile of bodies similarly paralysed. Occasionally the dragon feeds, in a process more similar to how flies eat than classic dragons. Happily, none of the Virgil's companions have been digested yet. Less happily, nobody can move.
This would have ended unpleasantly, in a dragon's stomach, if not for the dragon's gnomish care-taker Nabit, who decided to tinker with the robotic Percival. Oddly, even though Percival is entirely mechanical in nature, Nabit managed to jump-start the Forgeborn in a shower of sparks. Percival appreciates the reboot, although not Nabit's thoughtful assessment of Percival as a possible source of spare parts.
Virgil watches this with half his face in a puddle of unspeakable goo.
The den is filled with paralyzed beings of all sorts. For whatever reason, Virgil, Ren, and Ewoud are not quite as badly affected as the rest of the larder, and Percival does his best to ensure Ren, at least, regains his powers of mobility before the dragon comes back. Whether it is because of or in spite of Percival's efforts, Ren and Ewoud regain the ability to move.
Virgil does not. Ah, well, this mortal shell is still new to him.
An unhappy bird-like creature draws attention to its master. What the flying beast might be, who can say? But its paralysed master is definitely a goblin, one of many in the pile. On the logic that the enemy of the enemy is an ally, Percival calms the … bird thing … by singing to it, then drags its master to a wall away from the paralytic goo. Slowly, the goblin begins to recover.
Ewoud salvages an assortment of weapons and other items from the midden. A healing potion turns up in the detritus, just what Virgil needs to more firmly seat their soul in his body.
While the others arm themselves from the midden, Virgil draws power into himself, then illuminates the lair to get a better idea of the situation. It looks like old hall, long abandoned. There are the remains of tapestries. A gapping hole in the wall shows where the dragon smashed his way in.
The more the survivors understand where they are, the more bizarre it is. The hall is on the back of a giant slug moving too slowly for mortal eyes to perceive. The snail is in the middle of an epic battle with a giant with a head made of tentacles: it too is also moving too slowly to perceive. Nabit explains that the great beasts are two of the “Blasphemies”, relics of an old Mage War. They are monsters from another realm where time moves far more slowly than it does in this world.
That's nice to know but sadly, every route out looks likely to end in death thanks to the hall's precarious position. To fill time as the group ponders the situation, they haul more survivors out of the goo. Most are goblins, all from the same tribe but there is one more human. Nobody thinks reviving the baby behemoth or the giant spider out will end well, and in fact it is not that clear the goblins will feel anything like gratitude.
Nabit is willing to help but there is a price: he wants his sister rescued from the town where the dragon stashed her, a town built on the giant's leg (the slug and giant are surprisingly built up for two giant monsters but slow time lets people do that to them).
The human turns out to be a mercenary named Blunder, one of the Grey Dogs of Zobek. While his name is not a confidence builder, he does have a useful suggestion: milk spider silk from the giant spider, then weave a rope from it. The roap is enough to let agile Ren, Blunder and Ewoud make their way down to a groove sliced in the slug's side by the giant's weapon and with a little help, Virgil and Percival manage to join them.
Ren notices that the terrain around the two Blasphemies is sandy desert, not a complete wasteland; a skilled person could stay alive down there. At base of slug, there are pockets of odd shaped lumps in earth, like someone dug holes and then refilled them.
A long tentacle connects the slug to the giant's leg. Some enterprising person has used the tentacle as the base for a cover bridge. They don't seem to have maintained it for some reason; the middle section looks like something crushed it.
There are creatures flying around, pecking at something in the crushed section. At first they look a bit like mosquitoes. Then the survivors get a sense of scale. Whatever those things are, they're big. Very big.
As the survivors take that information in, drums begin to sound.
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no subject
Date: 2015-12-15 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-15 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-15 09:48 am (UTC)You're stealing some cool stuff. Will be interested to follow how this develops.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-15 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-16 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-16 03:00 pm (UTC)(Oh, I see; it's a computer game -- that highly lessens the chance I'll look it up. 8))
no subject
Date: 2015-12-16 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-16 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-15 05:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-15 05:24 pm (UTC)(Shamelessly, I really enjoy reading them, too; plus (cough cough) they often give me ideas about where to take things that I haven't already thought of... )
no subject
Date: 2015-12-15 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-15 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-15 11:51 pm (UTC)Whose soul is Virgil going to seat in his body, and why do they have only one?
no subject
Date: 2015-12-16 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-16 07:59 am (UTC)Anyone have thoughts or comments on the system so far? I'm eyeing that sale thoughtfully.
Doug M.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-16 03:17 pm (UTC)If you're of a mind to play any D20-ish version of DnD, my feeling is to recommend this over DnD 3.x, 4.x, and Pathfinder. It does the good bits of those well, and perhaps better, than those games, and avoids, for the most part, the bad bits.
It uses the homogenous resolution system and skills from 3.x (D20) but smoothes them out tremendously (swapping out dynamic backgrounds for skills is tremendously useful).
It uses the Magic-inspired interacting, tightly specified, powers type thing from 4.x, but streamlines them by paring down the number of options, and tying their recycling more to the rhythms of the game's progress, rather than the progress of game-time.
It moves back to abstract combat that admits for playing without minis and a map, and still retains some of the tactical options available with the more boardgamey combat found in the other games. Personally, I find this a huge relief.
If you're more of a mind to play DnD that feels more like "traditional old-style DnD" (i.e. 1e, or 2e, or older than that), then 13th Age is not a good choice: it's a firm cousin of the D20 family.
If you're looking at 5e and thinking "I want to play a game like the D20 DnDs but better", then I'd suggest 13th Age instead. If you're looking at 5e and thinking "I want to play a game that has more of the feel of pre-3.x DnD, but has more modern mechanics", then I think 5e (or an OSR variant) is a better choice.
I'm really yearning to use 5e's Advantage/Disadvantage system everywhere, and I think it could be put into 13th Age as well, but I think integration of it would be extensive, so I'm leery of trying to house-rule it in. But it's so useful that it's almost a reason all on its own to use 5e.