State of the Campaign

My GURPS fantasy game has just finished an adventure, so here's a State of the Campaign summary.

The campaign is set on the world of Mond, in the Kingdom of Lodea.* The player characters are performers in the Circus Sophia, a group of traveling entertainers. The roster:

Sophie O'Griffin, a human, the leader and ringmaster. Played by EM.

Esmond Gellert, a human, trick-shot archer and dog trainer. Played by MK.

Ganz, an elf, stage magician and wizard. Played by JC.

Quexechetl, a lizard man, strongman and wrestler. Played by KF.

Talman, a half-elf, acrobat. Played by JM.

Fiorio, a human, a peasant with a knack for playing to the crowd that the circus picked up along the way. Played as an NPC.

There are two former members of the circus who decided to quit the traveling life and settle down: Galina, Talman's sister, also an acrobat, and Cullen McElroy, a knife thrower.

In addition to roaming around performing, the circus sometimes does does work for Lord Fels, spymaster of the kingdom. These jobs usually concerns Lodea's war against the Empire of Gond, which invaded the country about a year ago.

Most recently, Lord Fels sent the circus to the northern city of Salnon, which the Gondans had captured the previous year. They rescued two of Fels's other spies and discovered that the Gondans were building a bronze golem. They subverted the golem to Lodean control and escaped after a horribly bloody fight with a squad of Gondan soldiers. The golem, when it was broken out of the mold, marched on Nalfavor, the Lodean capital, with the Gondan army all around it, thinking that they still controlled it. When it reached the walls of Nalfavor, it took up a station outside the western gate and smashed any Gondan who tried to approach it, much to the delight of the Lodeans watching from the walls.

Afterward, the circus performers heard the rumor around town that King Miklo, who is a boy of only eleven years, had snuck off to Salnon and stolen the golem from the Gondans. That's the problem with spy work -- you never get proper credit.

So, how stands the campaign right now? I've learned that the party has grown in power to the point where I can throw well-armored soldiers at them and they'll win without taking much damage. Even when the bad guys outnumber them. Even when it's dark, Quexechetl is suffering penalties because he's stiff form the cold, and Ganz is completely tapped out on magic. Even when they burn through half their fatigue and a second wave comes at them.

This means that for combat, I'm going to have to step up the competition by quite a bit. More numbers, higher skill, better protection, different tactics, more magical attacks, more situational penalties. We'll see.

Outside of combat, the circus isn't much changed on paper. They've increased their non-combat skills, such as Riding, a little, and they've acquired a few minor magic items. They're still all Status 0, without Patrons or Allies or even Contacts. They have, however, met some interesting people -- the two spies Porrecho and Mala, for instance -- and while these aren't things that show up on character sheets, they'll pay off as plot hooks sooner or later.

So while the party rests up in the city of Nalfavor and tries to find ways to spend their money, I'll be looking for new challenges for them. Next game is this Sunday.

* Lodea is pronounced Low-DAY-uh. My players's habit, in the early days of the campaign, of calling it LOW-dee-uh was only the first in a very long string of mangled names for NPCs and places.