Gralan D&D #1 – Small to Medium Chance of Death

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Andreas the Wise
Posts: 2189
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 11:40 pm

Gralan D&D #1 – Small to Medium Chance of Death

Post by Andreas the Wise »

Where we first meet our heroes they have arrived at Grace St, Sinclair, Korangle, on the 1st of September, following a newspaper ad:
Adventurers Wanted!
Reasonable Pay
Small to medium chance of death (depending on ability)
Apply at 46 Grace St, Sinclair, Korangle on the 1st of September at 10:26 am precisely
It’s around 10:20 am, and a beautiful sunny morning. Grace St is a completely normal, suburban street – houses along both sides, typical fences and gates. Most people seem to be out at work, though there’s an elderly couple up the road doing some gardening. There’s only one odd thing. There’s no house number 46. There’s a 44 and a 48 right next to it, and on the other side of the street, a 45 and 47 – but no 46. Each of them arrive at the conclusion that house 46 is missing at the same time. While our heroes themselves completely fail to have any sort of meaningful dialogue in their first encounter of each other, allow me to introduce them for you.

Gideon is a down-and-out human psychopath, always dressed in solid body armour. He used to serve in the Novatainian SAS but has been out of it for a number of years for reasons he has yet to reveal. Expect gruffness and fondness for grenades.
Eleonir is an Axilroth, one of those ancient race of mages who followed the Etruri to their flying cities in the Second Age and have then done precisely nothing of note since. Having recently entered Gralan society, Eleonir still misses some social cues – like that setting curtains on fire is just not the done thing. He’s fond of charm effects, stepping through walls (magically, not physically), and setting curtains on fire.
Veskang is perhaps the strangest of the group – a Krynii, a diminuitive aquatic race – but one who has been forced to live on the streets for some time and so has become a dab hand at thievery, as well as cursing his enemies before blasting them into oblivion. A self-taught mage, he lacks some of the grace of Eleonir but has considerably more street-smarts.
Klorch, finally, is a mighty Chelkran warrior – that race of genetically modified bear men who stand head and shoulders above the rest. In some ways a big softy, he’s not afraid to take a hit for the team and is always happy for a drink.

Suddenly they hear a bang. Everyone but Klorch looks around and notice that the powerline at the end of the street has just sparked – looks like power has been cut to the whole street. Just after, a maxitaxi drives round the corner. It stops right in front of them, and the door opens. “Adventurers?” the driver asks. “Get in.” They look at your watches – it arrived at 10:26 am precisely. Slightly hestitant, they get in, and the taxi drives away.

As soon as the taxi is out of sight of Grace St, the driver puts his foot down and starts tearing around corners. He won’t answer any of their questions, just saying to keep their seatbelts on. Gideon decides he’s had enough of this and tries to saw his way out of the back (locked shot), as the driver keeps dashing into side streets and around corners. Finally, just before the back is cut open, the driver ends up near the centre of the city and stops outside a set of shops. On their left is a pizza place, and on their right, a book shop. Right in front of them is a set of stairs, obviously leading to a shop above. “Out, and up the stairs,” the driver says. Having had quite enough of that driving, the adventurers get straight out and as soon as the do, the taxi driver takes off, his back door starting to shake under the speed. They look around and try to see into the windows of the shop upstairs, but it has the curtains drawn. Eleonir, without consultation, sets fire to the windows. The only effect this has is to cause a bucket of water to be thrown at the burning curtains from inside after a few seconds, putting the fire out. Suspicious but curious, the adventurers make their way up the stairs to find themselves in what looks like an old shop. They can see a back room behind a dusty counter; but in the main shop area, everything has been cleared away apart from a table, at which sits a man in a suit, and four chairs in front of it, clearly intended for them. The man behind the table looks very formal and has several papers in front of him, which he had been studying before they arrived. “Please, sit down,” he says, motioning to the seats in front of him. “Apologies for the roundabout method of arrival, but, should you accept, the arrangement which I am about to offer you is a private matter, best kept discreet, so we sought to minimise the chance of your arrival being noticed or followed.”

“You may call me Mr Johnson. I represent a client of considerable financial backing, who wishes the services of what would best be referred to as ‘adventurers’ – i.e. your good selves. There are various tasks which cannot be easily completed by conventional employees – perhaps because of the danger involved, or the potential illegality of the actions required to ensure success – though of course my client would never officially encourage or condone illegal behaviour. At present, my client has a small task of retrieving an item of value to my client’s interests, and would like your assistance. There is a small to medium chance of death, depending on your abilities, and upon your successful return of this item, I am authorised to pay you 100 GELT each. Are you interested in hearing more?”
The adventurers decide they are, so Mr Johnson continues.

“The item in question is a magical staff, belonging to the late Mr A J Pringle, an accomplished but retired archmage living alone outside Korangle. His death has not been officially confirmed by the coroner yet, but that is more a matter of nobody bothering to do so rather than any real question of him having not died. If you give me a moment without questions, I will explain.

Mr A J Pringle, aged 76, had been retired from active casting for some time now, though he had originally trained at MANA as a mature age student. In the last decade he has kept to himself in his private residence, magically constructed, and only been known to emerge on three occasions within that decade – the day Al’Magroth was defeated, the day the Empress was crowned, and the day All-Mart began their home delivery service. It is from this third piece of information that we can ascertain his time of death. He had regularly ordered the same set of groceries for the past three years – the same list every week – and had it delivered on Tuesday each week. However, his orders ceased about six months ago, and nobody has been up to his house since. Mr Pringle’s cause of death is unknown but suspected to be old age. Local rumour has it that the house is full of stray enchantments and magical traps, which is why nobody has gone to check on him, but I am reliably informed that this is unlikely to be the case. He has not been a powerful mage for some time now – his staff, a personal item he constructed in his early years – is his only magical enchantment or possession of note.”

After asking a few more cursory questions, the adventurers agree to take up the charge and are led downstairs to find a different taxi from the same company waiting for them. It takes them out of the city and out of town to the house of the apparently dead Archmage. The driver drops them off at the bottom of the long driveway leading up to the house, and says he will return in two hours for them. They walk up the driveway to find a relatively normal looking one storey house – albeit a fairly big one, and one with all the windows bricked up from the inside. It’s around this point that Eleonir decides to lighten the mood by casting a spell on Gideon – the group psychopath, remember – which causes him to instantly become best friends with Eleonir. While Eleonir convinces his new friend to give him all his money, Veskang turns his attention to the door, which is, understandably, locked, and picks the lock to open it. The room inside is entirely dark, but Klorch decides to stride boldly in ... straight into the arms of the waiting guard golem.

The others follow in behind and the lights turn on, and a fight with the golem commences. The golem is hardy and tough, but also a bit slow to react and is rarely able to land a hit on them. After a long battle it’s defeated and they open the door revealed behind it. It has a white doorknob.

They find themselves in a hallway which has three almost identical doors, one on each wall. Directly ahead of them is another door with a white doorknob, to their left, a yellow doorknob, and to their right, a maroon doorknob. On the floor in front of them they find several pages which look like they have been ripped out of a diary. Thus begins a puzzling time, as they explore a house in which the rooms appear to ignore ordinary spatial dimensions, finding new pages of the diary (all out of order) as they go. Eventually, they realise that each colour of the doorknob corresponds to a particular room in the house (with the exception of white doorknobs, which are ordinary two-way doors) – so the same doorway might, one way, lead you from the Hallway into the Lounge Room, and if you walk back into the same door from the Lounge Room, take you into the Office. Brief experiments with removing a door via a carefully placed grenade confirm that this is some sort of magical teleportation effect, not just a house designed by MC Escher.

As they continue to explore, they find a room with an elaborate painting of a sun on one wall. Eleonir can sense a great magical power somewhere beyond it, but nothing they can do can get it to open. As they keep exploring, they find a room with a lever in it, next to a small carving of a star. They pull it, see nothing change, and pull it back. Later on, they find a room with a star painted on a wall; go back, pull the lever, come back, and voila – the painted walls have shifted apart and they can go through into a room with a lever and a sun carved nearby! Pulling that lever, they return to the sun room to find that the wall has opened only a crack, too small for even Veskang to slip through. Further exploration of the door-handle colours they haven’t tried leads them to a moon lever and a moon room which contains the second sun lever, and then the sun wall is finally open and ready for them to walk through.
(See the house layout here)

All the while our adventurers have been piecing together the story of the mage’s diary. It was the story of a lonely old man who one day had a visit from a young girl with a curious taste in gloves (a different pair every time), and a Problem. While the diary never quite explained what the Problem was, it was something to do with dealing with opposition to magic. She proceeded to visit weekly and encourage the old mage to begin research into a form of magic which had not been practiced since the second age. Initially, the mage was excited, then despondent when his research failed to find anything of use. Finally, together, they found the necessary spells and he began experimenting. He could achieve the spell for some time but it would never persist beyond his casting it – a binding was necessary. At the same time, he became increasingly paranoid that something was watching him, leading to him remodelling his house to avoid people stumbling upon the experiment, and sealing up all the windows and replacing everything with artificial light at his control. He also discovered that the girl wore gloves because her spell hand had been cut off by some anti-magic activists years ago (explaining her vehement opposition to those opposed to magic) – a spell cast by a friend filled out the space of a hand under a glove, but she had no real hand to fill it and didn’t want people to see. There was also an intriguing occasion when the girl left late and the mage sent a simple scrying spell to check she got back safely. She walked to the bustop, and then the spell must have malfunctioned, because for a moment, her face appeared silver and then she disappeared. Eventually, his paranoia won out – he and the girl argued over whether this was safe and appropriate, and she left in a huff, calling him weak and incompetent. But as the days went by he decided to try the experiment anyway and prove her wrong. The dating of the last entry was just before he was expected to have died.
(See the full set of entries here)

Putting two and two together, the adventurers realised that what the old mage had been doing was animating shadows, and the binding he talked of would allow the shadows to persist under their own control, without him needing to cast the spell. Cautiously they made their way past the sun wall, realising now why there had been so many precautions, and walked down a long, dark corridor. At the end, they could see the faint shadow of a mage holding a staff showing on the floor outside the open door at the end, as if there was a light low beside him. Eleonir convinced Gideon, his ‘best friend’, to go ahead, and inside, they found a shadow of a mage sitting at a chair holding the staff they were seeking. A fight ensued, of course, and two shadowy beasts and two shadowy skeletons rose up to defend the shadow of the mage, but it was not enough. The two beasts were defeated quickly thanks to some focussed fire and lucky spells from the adventurers, and though the shadow of the mage tried to hide within Klorch’s shadow, it collapsed soon enough (and appeared to slither out from under Klorch’s feet and into the corridor, but they never saw it again). Veskang moved around to finish one shadow-skeleton off as it sought to escape, and Gideon took out the other by standing next to it, dropping a grenade and then shooting its feet, blowing himself back by the strength and the blast and landing outside the range of the grenade explosion. In the end, the shadows were defeated and the staff was theirs. The adventurers searched the room and found the body of the mage stuffed in a corner, but nothing else of value. They returned to the taxi and then to Mr Johnson, who congratulated them and gave them their pay. They were offered another mission, but decided to wait two weeks and enjoy their newfound wealth before they would go again. Mr Johnson gave them a mobile phone and said he would call them in two weeks time – the shop he had met them in that day wouldn’t be used anymore, to keep their adventurers secret. They then left him and went to a local hotel, just as Eleonir’s instant-friend spell on Gideon wore off ...
The character Andreas the Wise is on indefinite leave. But he does deserve a cool war ribbon.
Image
However, this account still manages:
Vincent Waldgrave - Lord General of Gralus
Manuel - CEO of VBNC. For all you'll ever need.
Q - Director of SAMIN
Duke Mel'Kat - Air Pirate, Melangian, and Duke of the Flying Duchy of Glanurchy
Cla'Udi - Count of Melangia
Vur'Alm Xei'Bôn - Speaker of Nelaga, Minister of Interior Affairs, and a Micron

Andreas the Wise
Posts: 2189
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 11:40 pm

Re: Gralan D&D #1 – Small to Medium Chance of Death

Post by Andreas the Wise »

It's been over a month since this happened so I couldn't remember all the exciting details of combat etc. Still need to write up the second one from a few weeks back, but from the third (tomorrow) I'll make more notes so I can write it up with full excitement!
The character Andreas the Wise is on indefinite leave. But he does deserve a cool war ribbon.
Image
However, this account still manages:
Vincent Waldgrave - Lord General of Gralus
Manuel - CEO of VBNC. For all you'll ever need.
Q - Director of SAMIN
Duke Mel'Kat - Air Pirate, Melangian, and Duke of the Flying Duchy of Glanurchy
Cla'Udi - Count of Melangia
Vur'Alm Xei'Bôn - Speaker of Nelaga, Minister of Interior Affairs, and a Micron

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