Hey, the intro to my campaign are up in the Journal section.
I'm doing the first Adventure Journal now.
Charles' Campaign Journals
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Jennifer
- Arch-villain
- Posts: 170
- Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:47 pm
- Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Hi willowhugger,
I just read your introductions and i must say i look forward to reading your campaign journals. The several characters seem very complex and interesting and the interactions with the world around them will be something to watch.
I always like reading the journals of others, especially the dm notes. It is always something i can learn from for my own campaigns.
Cheers,
Jennifer
I just read your introductions and i must say i look forward to reading your campaign journals. The several characters seem very complex and interesting and the interactions with the world around them will be something to watch.
I always like reading the journals of others, especially the dm notes. It is always something i can learn from for my own campaigns.
Cheers,
Jennifer
-
Willowhugger
- Evil Genius
- Posts: 218
- Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:14 am
-
Willowhugger
- Evil Genius
- Posts: 218
- Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:14 am
Here's my first journal submission's rough draft
Campaign Adventure 1#: Circle of Darkness
Day of the Scorpion December 18th, 740
Sir Thomas walked through the burning sands of G'henna as he saw that, once more, there was no rain from the sky. It was a curse upon the land that neither water nor snow fell from the sky. It was supposedly the punishment of the god Zhakata, a strange and foreign deity that had taken hold of the Barovian people of this land and made them declare themselves to be a theocracy.1.
Sir Thomas remembered that day well, the days when the sun and the moon had hung in the sky together. He remembered when plants had begun wailing with human voices. He remembered the ground opening up and sundering the lands of Markovia and G'henna from each other. He remembered the creation of the new mountain ranges that barred all but the greatest travellers. He remembered the dead refusing to leave the mortal existence. He remembered all of this during the wholly inadequate to describe the horror "Great Upheaval" as they called it in other lands and here in G'henna, they called it "The Final Judgement."2.
"What do you think their reaction will be to us?" Brother Benedict the Leper said as he walked along with his staff by the huge plate mail wearing warrior. His left deformed, claw like hand, was wrapped around a phial of glimmering white water3 that had been given to them by the Pontiff of Ezra.
"Fear, anger, hatred," The Knight of Shadows said. "The usual."
"I only pray that Ezra will guide us through our hour of need," Benedict said as the 'Leper' moved his hood back to reveal sight of his shark like mouth set to a fishlike head. They saw the darkened city gates of the only remaining city in the "Wastelands", the great city of Zhukar.
-Introduction to "Circle of Darkness"
DM's notes
1. Though it still hasn't reached it's climax yet. Part of a running theme in Ravenloft is that where time doesn't stand still, it operates in cycles. As far as the people of G'henna know, Yagno Petronova is a recent leader of their nation. He came to power after the Grand Conjunction and promptly instituted the cults of starvation and terrifying pogroms of infidels. The players, had they bothered to research, would have found that there was a series of religious leaders of Zhukar that routinely lead revolts from Barovia and their names were all variants of the same man.
Yagno is unaware of this cycle, the same as Dominic Dominic d’Honaire and other human darklords. I don't know exactly where I was going with this but I'd probably use the idea that there's only a limited number of souls in Ravenloft and they keep reincarnating.
2. The Final Judgement is the G'hennans much more evocative title of the Grand Conjunction that, PC wise, actually was done by a prior group of heroes. The players are operating in the same world as their prior PCs, even if they will likely never meet them. The much more nasty and apocalyptical strangeness of the GC is my own invention that's meant to show the magic of Ravenloft going completely wonky as the dimensional threads unravel.
3. Benedict and Thomas have just returned from braving a mission into Borca in order to meet the Pontiff and try to acquire some aid. The "aid" is actually just a holy relic of some kind that the belaguered Pontiff hopes will be symbolic enough to look like he's doing something important about the matter while he shuffles away the G'hennans.
Adventure Background
G'henna is currently undergoing the final phase of it's latest "Yagno" Cycle. As far as everyone whose not immortal is concerned, and even many who are, time moves from Point A to Point Z in a never ending series of repetitions of their sins. Perhaps it's a type of universal kharma where the damned are given a chance in the shadow of the Dark Powers to recant, or more likely the Dark Powers derive some sort of subsistence from the feeding on the painful sins of souls that never learn from their mistakes.
In Yagno's case, the Dark Lord arrives in G'henna after fleeing from his family and spends his time in the desert as a mystic and evangelist of his new god. Slowly, but surely, develops a fanatical core of believers around him and then takes over the city of Zhukar where he declares an independent theocracy of the land. The story then comes on to some form of crisis demanding him to summon his god physically, he instead summons the Demon Malistroni, and eventually that demon turns on Yagno before killing him.
The Grand Conjunction has changed things a bit as Yagno is no longer doomed entirely to repeat the mistakes of the past. The PCs, by their actions, can stop the cycle of devastation and perhaps free the lands from dissolution.
DM's Summary of Circle of Darkness
Circle of Darkness basically, according ot the module, follows the PCs as they come from another land into G'henna and get involved in a rebellion against Yagno., The exposed to it's nightmarish realities of the starvation cult, recruited into the Circle of Darkness resistance movement, and set to stealing an artifact that's meant to break free their god Zhakata from his chains that they think Yagno has placed upon him. In truth, 'Zhakata' is a Nalfanshee named Malistroni that was bound by Yagno when he tried to summon his god, and upon his freedom starts transforming people into monsters while heading to Zhukar to kill Yagno.
The PCs, basically, end up killing Malistroni or Yagno and leaving the domain.
It's an effective little module with a lot of flavor text but it wasn't something I wanted to run straight out of the pages.
DM Modifications
The biggest modification I did to the module was making the PCs from Zhukar. The idea of the PC's as G'hennans was an interesting change of pace as I had to come up with a great deal more detail for their local culture than before. Furthermore, because Zhakata was a "new" god, I had to seriously de-emphasize his role in most of the suggestions that the various handbooks gave for them. It worked out well and I was able to ditch the Petcheko character (an annoying tagalong from the module) while making Rega the Betrayer (the PC's recruiter into the resistance whose actually an inquisitor) into a childhood friend.
The PC's motivation was simple for joining the Rebellion against Yagno Petronova in this case, they hated him and considered him and his theocracy to be a nightmarish tyranny.
Because the Pcs were also starting this adventure at 1st level, I also had to come up with a reason why they were joining together and gave the idea that they all knew each other and they were waiting for two of their members to come back from visiting the neighboring lands across the desert to see if some kind of aid could be gotten. This will play an important role in later parts of the adventure. Aside from the initial meeting as the start of the adventure though, the PC's more or less played the module straight with a minimal amount of random encounters and a lot of forced 'intelligent' fighting of enemies. The Vistani, quite simply, don't show up in this module and it's good for the feeling of it.
What remaining changes I did to the module were in relationship to the Re-animators that dog the PC's escape from the Temple with the artifact they steal and the character of Malistroni.
The Re-animators just were a silly distraction and detracted from the feel of the novel, sort of like Kender. I decided to just remove them wholesale from the module and the story benefitted from it.
Malistroni the Demon I had take on the countenance of a god to drive home that fiends in Ravenloft were more or less invincible and could alter reality around themselves, grant wishes, and everything else imaginable. It made it well that they went back to the Altar with their amulet and decided, spontaneously really, that restoring it would do something grand. It was, after all, a Temple of Ezra once.
Adventure Play Summary
The players gather together in an inn that's been abandoned for obvious reasons since they're in a post-Apcoalyptic setting largely. They talk a good deal about their secret mission's 'success' and are largely frustrated that all they got was a lousy bottle. The thing takes on a almost Dragons of Autumn Twilight intro as Yagno's men, lead by a disguised Rega, arrest them.
The PCs complain even louder in their cell after a brief (they are 1st level) fight with the guard before they're approached by the Circle of Darkness that they agree to help in acquiring their artifact.
They proceed to do so, getting into a running chase scene after an amusing conversation with Yagno where they pretend to be priests of his sect. The chase is motivated sadly by Benedict's reveal as it's very difficult to disguise a Mongrelman. Escaping through the City, I ran a miniadventure where the PCs ended up in Ezra catacombs that had been sealed off away from the city and were yet inhabited by a pack of ghouls. It was something like "Aliens" and I used the Circle of Darkness cultists as cannon fodder to pick off one by one. The PCs nevertheless survived and despite some close calls, managed to rack up some valuable experience. Purely for reference sake, I had them lead by the Ghast Jugo Hesketh from Monstrous Manual II. Sir Thomas lopped off his head with his 'family' sword that I had ruled to be enchanted +1 earlier.
Arriving at the Mongrelman Camp, I did my best to wratch up the PC's paranoia by making it clear that the Circle of Darkness members were a bunch of religious zealots no better than Yagno. Nevertheless, I had them travel yet still into the "Palace of Bones" and made it out of the belly of what the PC's recognized as a dragon. The increasing creepiness and the effective clarity to everyone BUT the Mongrelmen/Circle of Darkness members that it was not Zhakata in the circle was a nice bit of tension up until when Malistroni escaped.
It was very apocalyptic and a "Second Grand Conjunction" in feel for the release of Malistroni as the PC's fled to Zhukar and found out that Rega betrayed them to the Inquisition. The PCs abandoned Yagno's army to Malistroni and watched at a distance as it was butchered and turned into nightmarish abberations by the Nalfanshee.
The climax was run a bit differently as the PC's discovered that simply restoring the altar did nothing (I'm evil that way) but then one of the Pc's (Benedict's player) had the brilliant idea of using the phial (which contained simple holy water) to reconsecrate the church. I had a permanent 'Holy Word' spell in the previous church field made as the church bells assaulted Maliostroni and Yagno killed him before the PCs cut the priest down.
The Cycle broken.
Gameworld Affects
The chaos of having Yagno murdered just as a giant demon attack caused riots in Zhukar as the Inquisition was murdered by nonbelievers and the food stores raided while the religious fanatics did pretty much anything that they were told by the surviving priesthood. At the end of the day though, the PCs decided to flee from Zhukar and hope that none of Yagno's surviving minions went after them.
Afterwards, the PC's heard that a passageway had been found to Borca and the city along with the rest of the land was taken by Ivan Dilisyna as part of the nation. Because Yagno was dead, it started raining again and the weater patterns slowly began to restore themselves even if the people are now cultists of Ezra and zealots rather than Zhakata as the only meaningful change.
[/i]
Campaign Adventure 1#: Circle of Darkness
Day of the Scorpion December 18th, 740
Sir Thomas walked through the burning sands of G'henna as he saw that, once more, there was no rain from the sky. It was a curse upon the land that neither water nor snow fell from the sky. It was supposedly the punishment of the god Zhakata, a strange and foreign deity that had taken hold of the Barovian people of this land and made them declare themselves to be a theocracy.1.
Sir Thomas remembered that day well, the days when the sun and the moon had hung in the sky together. He remembered when plants had begun wailing with human voices. He remembered the ground opening up and sundering the lands of Markovia and G'henna from each other. He remembered the creation of the new mountain ranges that barred all but the greatest travellers. He remembered the dead refusing to leave the mortal existence. He remembered all of this during the wholly inadequate to describe the horror "Great Upheaval" as they called it in other lands and here in G'henna, they called it "The Final Judgement."2.
"What do you think their reaction will be to us?" Brother Benedict the Leper said as he walked along with his staff by the huge plate mail wearing warrior. His left deformed, claw like hand, was wrapped around a phial of glimmering white water3 that had been given to them by the Pontiff of Ezra.
"Fear, anger, hatred," The Knight of Shadows said. "The usual."
"I only pray that Ezra will guide us through our hour of need," Benedict said as the 'Leper' moved his hood back to reveal sight of his shark like mouth set to a fishlike head. They saw the darkened city gates of the only remaining city in the "Wastelands", the great city of Zhukar.
-Introduction to "Circle of Darkness"
DM's notes
1. Though it still hasn't reached it's climax yet. Part of a running theme in Ravenloft is that where time doesn't stand still, it operates in cycles. As far as the people of G'henna know, Yagno Petronova is a recent leader of their nation. He came to power after the Grand Conjunction and promptly instituted the cults of starvation and terrifying pogroms of infidels. The players, had they bothered to research, would have found that there was a series of religious leaders of Zhukar that routinely lead revolts from Barovia and their names were all variants of the same man.
Yagno is unaware of this cycle, the same as Dominic Dominic d’Honaire and other human darklords. I don't know exactly where I was going with this but I'd probably use the idea that there's only a limited number of souls in Ravenloft and they keep reincarnating.
2. The Final Judgement is the G'hennans much more evocative title of the Grand Conjunction that, PC wise, actually was done by a prior group of heroes. The players are operating in the same world as their prior PCs, even if they will likely never meet them. The much more nasty and apocalyptical strangeness of the GC is my own invention that's meant to show the magic of Ravenloft going completely wonky as the dimensional threads unravel.
3. Benedict and Thomas have just returned from braving a mission into Borca in order to meet the Pontiff and try to acquire some aid. The "aid" is actually just a holy relic of some kind that the belaguered Pontiff hopes will be symbolic enough to look like he's doing something important about the matter while he shuffles away the G'hennans.
Adventure Background
G'henna is currently undergoing the final phase of it's latest "Yagno" Cycle. As far as everyone whose not immortal is concerned, and even many who are, time moves from Point A to Point Z in a never ending series of repetitions of their sins. Perhaps it's a type of universal kharma where the damned are given a chance in the shadow of the Dark Powers to recant, or more likely the Dark Powers derive some sort of subsistence from the feeding on the painful sins of souls that never learn from their mistakes.
In Yagno's case, the Dark Lord arrives in G'henna after fleeing from his family and spends his time in the desert as a mystic and evangelist of his new god. Slowly, but surely, develops a fanatical core of believers around him and then takes over the city of Zhukar where he declares an independent theocracy of the land. The story then comes on to some form of crisis demanding him to summon his god physically, he instead summons the Demon Malistroni, and eventually that demon turns on Yagno before killing him.
The Grand Conjunction has changed things a bit as Yagno is no longer doomed entirely to repeat the mistakes of the past. The PCs, by their actions, can stop the cycle of devastation and perhaps free the lands from dissolution.
DM's Summary of Circle of Darkness
Circle of Darkness basically, according ot the module, follows the PCs as they come from another land into G'henna and get involved in a rebellion against Yagno., The exposed to it's nightmarish realities of the starvation cult, recruited into the Circle of Darkness resistance movement, and set to stealing an artifact that's meant to break free their god Zhakata from his chains that they think Yagno has placed upon him. In truth, 'Zhakata' is a Nalfanshee named Malistroni that was bound by Yagno when he tried to summon his god, and upon his freedom starts transforming people into monsters while heading to Zhukar to kill Yagno.
The PCs, basically, end up killing Malistroni or Yagno and leaving the domain.
It's an effective little module with a lot of flavor text but it wasn't something I wanted to run straight out of the pages.
DM Modifications
The biggest modification I did to the module was making the PCs from Zhukar. The idea of the PC's as G'hennans was an interesting change of pace as I had to come up with a great deal more detail for their local culture than before. Furthermore, because Zhakata was a "new" god, I had to seriously de-emphasize his role in most of the suggestions that the various handbooks gave for them. It worked out well and I was able to ditch the Petcheko character (an annoying tagalong from the module) while making Rega the Betrayer (the PC's recruiter into the resistance whose actually an inquisitor) into a childhood friend.
The PC's motivation was simple for joining the Rebellion against Yagno Petronova in this case, they hated him and considered him and his theocracy to be a nightmarish tyranny.
Because the Pcs were also starting this adventure at 1st level, I also had to come up with a reason why they were joining together and gave the idea that they all knew each other and they were waiting for two of their members to come back from visiting the neighboring lands across the desert to see if some kind of aid could be gotten. This will play an important role in later parts of the adventure. Aside from the initial meeting as the start of the adventure though, the PC's more or less played the module straight with a minimal amount of random encounters and a lot of forced 'intelligent' fighting of enemies. The Vistani, quite simply, don't show up in this module and it's good for the feeling of it.
What remaining changes I did to the module were in relationship to the Re-animators that dog the PC's escape from the Temple with the artifact they steal and the character of Malistroni.
The Re-animators just were a silly distraction and detracted from the feel of the novel, sort of like Kender. I decided to just remove them wholesale from the module and the story benefitted from it.
Malistroni the Demon I had take on the countenance of a god to drive home that fiends in Ravenloft were more or less invincible and could alter reality around themselves, grant wishes, and everything else imaginable. It made it well that they went back to the Altar with their amulet and decided, spontaneously really, that restoring it would do something grand. It was, after all, a Temple of Ezra once.
Adventure Play Summary
The players gather together in an inn that's been abandoned for obvious reasons since they're in a post-Apcoalyptic setting largely. They talk a good deal about their secret mission's 'success' and are largely frustrated that all they got was a lousy bottle. The thing takes on a almost Dragons of Autumn Twilight intro as Yagno's men, lead by a disguised Rega, arrest them.
The PCs complain even louder in their cell after a brief (they are 1st level) fight with the guard before they're approached by the Circle of Darkness that they agree to help in acquiring their artifact.
They proceed to do so, getting into a running chase scene after an amusing conversation with Yagno where they pretend to be priests of his sect. The chase is motivated sadly by Benedict's reveal as it's very difficult to disguise a Mongrelman. Escaping through the City, I ran a miniadventure where the PCs ended up in Ezra catacombs that had been sealed off away from the city and were yet inhabited by a pack of ghouls. It was something like "Aliens" and I used the Circle of Darkness cultists as cannon fodder to pick off one by one. The PCs nevertheless survived and despite some close calls, managed to rack up some valuable experience. Purely for reference sake, I had them lead by the Ghast Jugo Hesketh from Monstrous Manual II. Sir Thomas lopped off his head with his 'family' sword that I had ruled to be enchanted +1 earlier.
Arriving at the Mongrelman Camp, I did my best to wratch up the PC's paranoia by making it clear that the Circle of Darkness members were a bunch of religious zealots no better than Yagno. Nevertheless, I had them travel yet still into the "Palace of Bones" and made it out of the belly of what the PC's recognized as a dragon. The increasing creepiness and the effective clarity to everyone BUT the Mongrelmen/Circle of Darkness members that it was not Zhakata in the circle was a nice bit of tension up until when Malistroni escaped.
It was very apocalyptic and a "Second Grand Conjunction" in feel for the release of Malistroni as the PC's fled to Zhukar and found out that Rega betrayed them to the Inquisition. The PCs abandoned Yagno's army to Malistroni and watched at a distance as it was butchered and turned into nightmarish abberations by the Nalfanshee.
The climax was run a bit differently as the PC's discovered that simply restoring the altar did nothing (I'm evil that way) but then one of the Pc's (Benedict's player) had the brilliant idea of using the phial (which contained simple holy water) to reconsecrate the church. I had a permanent 'Holy Word' spell in the previous church field made as the church bells assaulted Maliostroni and Yagno killed him before the PCs cut the priest down.
The Cycle broken.
Gameworld Affects
The chaos of having Yagno murdered just as a giant demon attack caused riots in Zhukar as the Inquisition was murdered by nonbelievers and the food stores raided while the religious fanatics did pretty much anything that they were told by the surviving priesthood. At the end of the day though, the PCs decided to flee from Zhukar and hope that none of Yagno's surviving minions went after them.
Afterwards, the PC's heard that a passageway had been found to Borca and the city along with the rest of the land was taken by Ivan Dilisyna as part of the nation. Because Yagno was dead, it started raining again and the weater patterns slowly began to restore themselves even if the people are now cultists of Ezra and zealots rather than Zhakata as the only meaningful change.
[/i]
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Gonzoron of the FoS
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- Joined: Tue Dec 02, 2003 8:02 pm
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- Contact:
Wow, I'm really looking forward to these. I really like your attempt to tie everything together and focus in the darkened corners of things rather than the usual suspects. Emil is one of my favorite characters, and I love what you've done with Radaga. She always seemed to be missing a certain something.
"We're realistic heroes. We're not here to save the world, just nudge the world into a better place."
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Willowhugger
- Evil Genius
- Posts: 218
- Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:14 am