Café de Nuit

It strikes me as a good idea to write up a brief campaign journal on here. On the one hand, I get to remember what has already happened in the campaign, and remind me what I was planning on doing, and on the other, can let other people see what I'm doing, and possibly give advise or suggestions or something.

So, the basic campaign idea - that to give the players a feeling of camaraderie and friendship, that I would run them through their childhoods, drawing on my own childhood for inspiration. To this end, I put them in the domain of Invidia, in the village of Tancos, geographically identical to my home village of North Cove. I populated the village with people from my village, added in some of the people I've heard/read about from Invidia, and then added players. I did this because the best game I have run so far is one that was based wholly in the city of Palanthas in the Dragonlance setting, and one of the comments was that one of the best things about the game was that I seemed to know the city so well - due to having read far too many Dragonlance books and meticulously researching the place and adding in a billion NPCs, both from the books and for the plot.

Into this step the players. I gave each player the character design plan that they had to have some kind of dark secret or power - that in a given situation, if they really need to, they can call on this secret to overcome an obstacle.

First off, I have Susanna, who is the first member of the group to be a member of the Church of Ezra, wanting to be a paladin. She is, unknown to her, some form of changeling - the exact details I will work out once I've got hold of the book on the shadow fey. Because of this, she has phenomenal luck and animals like her. The drawback is that the phenomenal luck, again, unknown to her, comes back and bites someone she cares about in the arse.

Secondly, I have (Edd's character - need a name for him!), the other acolyte in the Church of Ezra, who as part of his story, had to murder his brother to become a full member of the Church. Unknown to him (OOC), his spells can only be successfully cast if he kills someone first.

Thirdly, I have Robert, a devourer of knowledge, who spends his time between learning anything he can, and telling everyone what it is that he knows. He has gotten hold of a couple of spellbooks which he will start to devour. I playing arcane spellcasting very much more like Call of Cthulhu style magic, in that you get powerful results, anyone can use it, and it drives you mad.

Fourthly, I have Adam. Adam is a quiet, friendly and affable chap, who through no fault of his own, was disowned by his parents as soon as they could get rid of him. His parents were cursed that their child would become a beast, and as such, they were always somewhat wary of him - even if they would never admit that this curse would come into effect. If nothing else, should it happen, he would be well equipped to handle it - they fobbed him off on the blacksmith that moved into the village when Malocchio took over.

Finally, I have (Martin's character - who does have a name, which I don't have handy), who is an idle, lazy git. What will happen to him is that he will become haunted by his grandmother, who will blame him for her (and his grandfather's) death, and will want him to avenge them. She will be able to provide him with death vision (seeing spirits) and control over undead. He will have to sacrifice bits of his soul to her for this.

I am using the Unisystem mechanic. Susanna will eventually draw on Divine Miracles, as does (Edd). Robert will be using some bastardised combination between taint and D&D spellcasting, a system of my own devising. Adam will be using Lycanthropy from the Abomination Codex. (Martin) is using his grandma as a Spirit Patron, who is giving him Necromancy.

So far, I have explained Invidia - that it was a fairly loose collection of independant villages, and that their village was one of the most independant. Gabrielle as a political force was fairly lax, so most of their childhood was spent running around and having fun; most people were happy. As time went by, a small school opened in the village, with classes teaching reading, writing, math, history, geography (such as it is in Ravenloft), and anything else the teacher could think up to 6-8 year olds. After a year or so, another teacher moved in, teaching more advanced things to 9-12 year olds.

First part of the adventure was to be (Edd's) family returning from some holy pilgrimage, as his entire family are wandering Anchorites. They ascribe to the Tepestani style of the Ezran faith, in that fey are bad. They were to hold some type of ceremonial 'fey hunt' for the local kids, which would end in the disastrous sacrifice of (Edd's) younger brother. However, as Edd himself didn't show up, this was skimmed as instead being 'Edd's family show up; they take him into the woods during the night, and when he comes back, he's officially a cleric'. This would happen to them at the age of 9.

Between this and the next part of the adventure, guards move into the village, sent by Malocchio to 'protect the village from any harm'. The vilalge must pay for their upkeep; furthermore, one of the village pubs was seized for their barracks. A smithy was also to be created next to it by the villagers, that they would have a supply of arms and armour (that they would also have to pay for) so as to act as a standby militia.

The second adventure then deals with the weird things that can and do happen in Ravenloft. First a boy was reported missing (sending the new teacher into a rage, since he was clearly skipping her lessons. This teacher had a notoriously bad temper, and beat kids a lot), and then later, the cleric in charge of the local church went missing. There was also some sightings of giant spiders. This triggered the two acolytes (Susanna and (Edd)) to go look for her... or, go for a grownup to look for her. They are 10 at this point. After failing to get the Duce, the guards and their families to do anything, they eventually manage to get the nice teacher who set up the school (Robert's father as well) to have a look around the church. He discovered a crack under the church that seemed to lead quite deep, but was too big for him to get in - so he sent the kids in. After all, it was only a spider...

The kids discovered some kind of heretical tomb under the church, filled with bodies and cobwebs. They burnt most of these. Going through a series of progressively more primitive chambers (stone to packed earth to dirt that had been dug probably by hand/tentacle), they found a large underground chamber filled with various coccoons hanging from the ceiling. They eventually discovered the cleric and the missing boy, and freed them - breaking the cleric's leg in the process. The missing boy, upon opening his coccoon, was found to be mutating into a kind of part spider, part person thing - triggering the group's first horror save.

Amazingly, they all passed, except for (Edd), who wasn't here to play his reaction, so I just rolled on the chart - rage. Well, (Edd) beat the poor boy to death with a flaming torch, and was eventually punched out by (Martin), breaking his nose in the process. (Edd) has now participated in the death of two young boys, although neither were really his fault...

The cleric was saved, though, and (Martin) told a convincing enough story to explain what happened to the missing boy that no one questioned where he had gone - this is still the world of Ravenloft, it is an expected hazard that young children and sometimes whole families will occasionally be eaten by giant spiders living in a blasphemous underground temple.

More time passes, until one day where Susanna is assaulted by a figure of indeterminate gender/race/age and forced to drink a potion which tastes somewhat like chicken soup. Struggling out of their grasp and calling for help, the figure flees, and disappears into the wood. The next day at school, Susanna alone sees the teacher turn into some kind of evil creature, and attacka child with some kind of sword, where there had been a cane before. She gets up to help, the teacher whirls round and slices open her face, making Susanna flee with the boy. They head to the church, the teacher/demon following. Upon entering holy ground, the teacher crumples. Susanna gets her cleric to help her, and tehy take the teacher into the main altar room - her hand sizzles upon touching the altar.

The cleric decides then that Susanna should keep an eye on the teacher, in case she should move, so that she has a few minutes to prepare - she comes back encased in full plate armour, with sword and shield. She then exorcises the demon, and battles it to death - the teacher later expresses no memories at all of anything, and she wanders back off in the direction of Dementlieu, where she comes from.

Finally, a few months later, the children are confronted by a tattooed man in red robes, who looks somewhat lost, confused and angry. He demands to know where he is, and upon discovering he's in Invidia, stalks off. A few hours later, he comes back from another direction, sees the children, turns round and storms off. The next day, the children discover his body, and as children of course would do, loot the body. Robert discovers a couple of books on his body, and some foreign coins - the coins are taken to pay for a messenger to far-off Hazlan (where they decide he comes from) to say that this person was killed, since it would seem that he was a Mulan, one of the ruling class. He had been ripped to pieces by wolves, and his remains, should anyone want them, were put into a grave near the church.

Session 2 - Age 12

Had a quick brief to the players, encouraging them to recollect what happened last time, while I ran Edd (character's name - Devis Colburn) through the part of his childhood where his parents introduced him to a 'changeling' - his younger brother. They then killed him and got him to admit that it was good and right to do so. I then quickly recapped for him all the things I had opened the campaign with.

I then explained to the boy who had studied the magic books what it was to cast spells, as explained by the books. One volume turned out to be a book on draconic, the other a simple spellbook. I also had the local cleric explain the different orders of the clergy - that there are four different basic levels of devotion in the church - acolyte, cleric, anchorite and paladin. The acolytes clean churches and help the clerics maintain the souls and devotion of people, while the anchorites travel individually or in small groups and help solve anyone's problems. Paladins are the devout warriors who lead and serve in holy armies.

Getting into the core of the story, it starts with a wandering pilgrim dropping off a copy of the recently penned Fourth Book of Ezra, which I described as containing some amount of prophecies (if anyone could actually tell me more about the differences between the books, I'd be much obliged) about the Time of Unparalleled Darkness, and that anyone who did not follow Ezra would be swept away at the end of the world. Any who did not follow Ezra would only serve to speed up this end of the world, meaning that the Ezran clerics would have to take an even stronger stance against other faiths and evil creatures.

The cleric then gives the villagers some time to hear about the news of a new book of Ezra, and the next holy day, gives a sermon from the Fourth Book. A witch of Hala then stands up from the flock, and loudly decries this book as senseless stirring up of trouble, nothing more than a repeat of the bloodshed that is being caused by the followers of Belenus in Tepest and the Shadowlands. She is thrown out of the congregation, and after the end of the service, the acolytes are sent to get her to apologise to the cleric for disturbing the sermon.

She's busy.

The cleric, in full plate, with longsword and shield, acolytes in tow, and with some interested villagers (some of which wield torches and pitchforks) marches to the witch's house, to destroy the infidel. Smashing through the front door and walking over the witch's husband, she searches the house for the witch, who is in a room upstairs, a room daubed with blood in unholy symbols. The witch sits in the middle of the room, with a goat in front of her and a sacrificial dagger - which she plunges into her own chest, spraying the room with blood.

Horror checks - Susanna fails, and is struck dumb. Devis passes - but his player makes a joke about snapping Susanna out of the horror by painting himself with blood and doing a little dance. I take this to be IC, that Devis failed his horror check sufficiently that he failed a madness check instead, at which point, upon the completion of the dance, he immediately blanks the memory from his mind, and carries on as normal. Susanna, having mostly recovered from the shock, has to take another horror check for seeing her fellow acolyte dance in the blood of the witch - causing her to be utterly fearstruck some more.

They then start to leave the house, but hear a noise from the main living room - a kind of creaky, cracking noise. Upon investigation, the tree that had previously been seen crashed into the house was trying to right itself. Devis and Susanna shout for the cleric again, and start chopping at the main branches with their longswords. They fail to do anything very much, but the cleric is roused, villagers with torches are brought forward, and when the house starts smashing down the house, they come up with an idea - to push the tree down. The tree is only balancing on a small handful of roots, it is unbalancing itself when it bashes the house, the cleric is chopping the roots on the far side, and using her special luck and some good rolling, the two acolytes manage to force the tree down backwards, and the villagers burn it, then the house.

Devis gets into trouble over daubing his face with blood, and then lying about it. He serves penance.

For spending the day watching a fight with a tree, Wick (the lazy one, who also has a name) is told off lots by his father, who presents him with an ultimatum: work, or get kicked out. He manages one day before failing, and is unceremoniously kicked out of his house, still dressed in his bright red and blue striped pajamas. He sneaks round the back of the house to see if he can try and get some porridge from his mother - his father spots him, and chases him down the road with a stick. Long story short - Wick is without home, shelter, only the food he can catch and eat, and nobody loves him, and it's dark and cold and there are wolves after him. Eventually, he apologises to his dad, and his dad doesn't kill him, but tells him to get a different job, where his lying silver tongue might serve him better - that of a merchant.

A bit of a late post, due to other stuff happening. Right.

Wick attempted to get hired by Duce Ciudaru, and failed miserably, by being turned away by the manservant, Nelvo. He then spent the day bumming around. As he does so, wandering around the woods, he comes across his good friend Robert, sitting in a remote clearing, reading a book, which turns out to be in Draconic. How strange. Telling Bob about how the encounter at the manor house went so wrong, Bob gives some suggestions about how to improve his chances - for example, giving any indication that he has any skills whatsoever.

Attempting again, after smartening up a bit, Wick went again, to try and get hired as a salesman. Nelvo decides to let him try... by telling him to sell this loaf of bread to the Duce. Wick carefully cuts the bread into even slices, and ties it up with string - inventing sliced bread, the greatest idea since unsliced bread! He then goes on to sell the bread to the Duce.

There's another week before the village will have everyone ready for a caravan to go to Zeidenburg, through a short Mistway that cuts about 20 miles from the journey. Given a week, the party wander about aimlessly. The village cleric, however, goes to the blacksmiths, and orders a suit of armour for Susanna, since she's headed towards paladin. Adam helps design it, and helps make it, then carefully oils and polishes it, before stowing it in a bag, to give to Susanna a suitable distance from the village.

After the week ends, Wick is dressed up by Nelvo to somewhat resemble him, gives him a straight haircut, a few instructions, and gets him to join the caravan. There is a little bit of disturbance, in that one of the farmers can't go, because an ox has died. Wandering around the village, no one can find a spare ox, and so they leave without him or any of his spring vegetables. Susanna makes friends with the Duce's horses.

They travel for a couple of days, go through a Mistway, and come out into pouring rain, when it had been reasonably clear the end they had gone in. They start to wade through mud, when one wagon gets stuck in it. Everyone stops to try and help, but all they do is end up sinking into the mud themselves. People start to go into the woods to either side of the woods in search of stout timbers to lever the wagon out, set in front of the wheels to stop it sinking and so on, when the farmer owning the wagon (Farmer Wilcox), cries out that something has hold of his leg, and is starting to pull him down. As he sinks further and further, it becomes clear that there are skeletons in the mud, trying to kill the farmer.

Bizarrely, it is only the 12 year olds who are able to react at all helpfully, and drawing Devis's sword, susanna goes into the fray, destroying one skeleton, and getting knocked over by another. Meanwhile, the farmers and two of the boys have roped up some of the oxen to the farmer, and are starting to pull him free from the mud... but the rope snaps and the farmer is lost, presumed drowned in the deep mud. The wagon is quickly abandoned, and everyone flees, going as fast as they can for a couple of hours, eventually arriving in Zeidenburg.