Game Session 2013/04/07

The Circus Sophia:

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

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

Ganz, elf, stage magician and wizard. Played by Jessica.

Quexechetl, lizard man, strongman and wrestler. Played by Karl.

Talman, half-elf, acrobat. Played by Joe.

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

July 1, 850, very early in the morning, in the Bekel

When we last saw our heroes, they had just found and killed the orc that they believed was controlling the army of undead orcs, and the dead orcs had then attacked the living ones. Three living orcs survived and ran away into the darkness. Talman recovered the staff from the body of the orc priest or wizard or whatever he was.

After backing off to a safe distance from the eight or so remaining dead orcs, the circus decided to follow the living survivors. Esmond, with his amulet of night-seeing, tracked them easily, with the rest stumbling along by the light of Sophie's lantern. They followed the orcs around the edge of a rise on the right side of the valley, down into the ravine that cut off the route to the north, where they found a ford. Climbing up the other side of the ravine, Esmond was just in time to see the fleeing orcs enter the forest on the far side.

He pursued, while the rest of the circus followed at a distance behind him. Not far into the forest, he saw first one light, then more. Small groups of orcs were gathered together, some carrying torches. The three survivors of the recent battle approached one group and spoke with them, pointing frequently back the way they had come, and also off toward King Miklo's army. The orcs dispatched a goblin messenger, who returned in about ten minutes. All the orcs then withdrew.

Esmond watched until he was certain all the groups of orcs were leaving, then withdrew. He reported what he had seen, and then the whole circus crossed the ravine again and returned to the king's army. They passed a handful of dead orcs who were stumbling around blindly at the bottom of the ravine. When they reached the army's encampment, they found that it had nearly finished off the undead horde, with only a little mopping up left to do.

At the center of the encampment, they found King Miklo with his principal advisors, including Count Anelmo and the Archmagus Tor. They began an explanation of what they had seen and done, but the Archmage interrupted, and asked Ganz if he would be so kind as to lay the staff they had found on the ground and step away from it. Ganz did so, and everyone gave it more room.

When the performers finished their tale, Archmagus Tor sent a squire to inform High Priest Eddicollo, the King's personal priest and another member of the regency council about these events. The square returned in the company of the High Priest, and the whole story had to be repeated again. Then, with many exchanges of "Your Grace" between them, the Archmage and the High Priest debated about who should take custody of the mysterious staff. In the end, the High Priest decided that if it were unholy, it might desecrate the holy objects in his care, and so that Archmage took it.

Than done, and with no enemies to be fought, everyone headed for bed.

In the morning, the army scouted about to make sure there were no more dead orcs around. Lord Fels took a group of knights with him to investigate the outcrop where the circus had fought the orcs and killed what might have been their leader. The men-at-arms and laborers were put to work dragging the bodies of the orcs into a pile and burning them. The dwarven engineers finally began constructing the bridge that would let the army pass over the ravine.

Meanwhile, the Circus Sophia had some free time, and so they decided to return to the ruined wizard's tower and investigate that cabinet they had found there. The cabinet was decorated with square panels crossed by X-shapes, each arm of each X being a separate piece of joinery. There were three panels on each side and six in the front. On their earlier visit, they had discovered that by depressing each arm of the top X-shapes on the sides and then rotating them, they could release the catches that held it to the wall. By fiddling around with some of the other panels, they found that the cabinet had a number of other interesting properties:

When the middle panels on the sides were rotated, the top third of the cabinet drew inward and then collapsed into the middle section, leaving a much shorter cabinet. Opening the doors, they found it had two shelves. A slim, leather-bound book lay on the top shelf. It was filled with sketches of the surrounding countryside and the tower itself, from long ago when it was intact. Each drawing was labeled dwarven writing. There was no sign of the bottles and crumbling cloth that the cabinet had contained when it was full-size.

Rotating the bottom side panels, the performers found that the cabinet collapsed again, down to the size of a large chest or trunk for clothing. It now opened from the top instead of the front, and was empty.

Returning it to full size by rotating the panels the other way, they then discovered even stranger properties. By rotating the top panels on the front, the doors opened to show not a wardrobe, but a multitude of small, deep drawers, like an apothecary's cabinet. Most were empty, but some contained musty bits of herbs or lumps of wax.

After rotating the middle panels on the front, the cabinet drawers opened to reveal dozens of wide, low shelves, only a few inches high. Most were empty, but a few held yellowed pieces of paper with dwarven writing on them.

Rotating the bottom front panels revealed the strangest transformation of all: the interior of the cabinet was more or less like a wardrobe again, but with a wide door at the back. Opening this door led into a short, wood-lined space, about six feet deep, with cubbyholes for storage on each side. The cubbyholes held a collection of mostly mundane-looking rocks, but there were some examples of quartz and lapis lazuli. Altogether, the rocks probably weighted a couple hundred pounds.

Talman volunteered to step inside the cabinet while Sophie transformed it into another configuration, to see what happened. She collapsed it to its two-thirds height, opened in, and Talman was gone! And yet he could hear his companions talking, and they could hear him, muffled as if he had been stuffed into any mundane closet.

At its smallest size, when collapsed to a chest, it weighed about thirty pounds, which Quexechetl could easily carry. He, more than anyone, was bothered by the question of where the extra space that the cabinet seemed to hold really was, but the others vetoed his suggestion that they go inside and start knocking out walls to see where they led to.

They all decided that they would tell no one about their amazing find. The took it back to camp, kept it chest-sized, and threw a few circus costumes into it. Sophie kept the key.

July 2, 850

The next day, the army finally broke camp. They ventured carefully into the forest on the far side of the ravine, but saw no sign of orcs. The marched until they found a large clearing, then stopped for the night.

July 3, 850

The army reached the ruined dwarven city of Norogon. A couple hundred orcs were observed fleeing, but nothing like the large numbers the army had been hoping to catch.

The foreign knights in the army were rather disappointed at this, since they more than anyone hoped to prove their gallantry in a fight. The king's counsellors decided that they had achieved what they wanted from a short campaign, and it would be a good time to return to Lodea and face the Gondans. That night, the circus decided to put on a show, and the dogs were particularly good.

July 4 to July 14, 850

The king's army marched back to civilization, without meeting any more groups of orcs large enough to care about. Drums were sometimes heard at night, but never very many, or very near. The army reached the northern Lodean town of Gorno on July 14, 850.

With King Miklo now safely back in his own country, Sophie called upon Lord Fels and raised the delicate issue of their payment. He said he figured they had performed valuable service by keeping the king away from trouble and killing the orc who seemed to control the horde of dead orcs. He paid 21 gold crowns altogether, to be split amongst the circus performers as Sophie saw fit. He also warned them off of trying to get paid twice by going to the Archmage. The less they talked to him, the better, he said, but he didn't elaborate on his reasons.

But when he heard that she intended to lead the circus back into the Bekel, on some quest by Quexechetl to find some ancient dwarven stronghold, he tried to convince her not to go. When she would not be dissuaded, he urged great caution, but also made another offer: if they could find out how the orcs managed to raise that horde from the dead, he would pay them another 21 crowns -- but only for tangible evidence. Sophie said she could make no promises, but would keep her eyes open.

June 14 to June 17, 850

The majority of the king's army marched south the next day, while King Miklo and his advisors took a boat downstream.

The circus performers hit the local shops to load up on supplies. They decided not to take horses, because they might not be capable of handling all the terrain. Instead, they decided to rely upon the magic cabinet for most of their storage. Talman and Quexechetl together fixed up a leather harness that would let Quexechetl carry the cabinet on his back after it was collapsed down to its smallest state.

They also found an old dwarf who could read the papers they had found in the cabinet. These turned out to be letters written to a dwarven wizard named Zabar, concerning everyday matters such as orders for supplies, inquiries about an apprenticeship, and payment for services. This told them nothing about the cabinet, but at least they could put a name to the owner.

With the shopping done, asked around for a local dwarf who might know some of the geography of the Bekel. They found a young farmer's son named Matto who said he knew the Bekel as well as any dwarf might claim to -- that is, only from stories. But he could at least translate a little. That was good enough for Sophie, and they planned to leave the next morning.

Game Session 2013/03/24

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

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

Ganz, elf, stage magician and wizard. Played by Jessica.

Quexechetl, lizard man, strongman and wrestler. Played by Karl.

Talman, half-elf, acrobat. Played by Joe.

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

June 30, 850, in the cellar of a ruined wizard's tower in the Bekel

When we last saw our heroes, they had just scrambled to safety in an underground chamber below a ruined wizard's tower, while undead orcs prowled around outside, held back only by a magical ward. It was an hour or so after midnight, and they had no idea how long the ward would last.

The chamber was circular with a corbel dome, and somewhat smaller in diameter than the ruined tower above. Inside, a table and chair stood against the wall on one side, a cabinet against on the other side, and on the floor was a circle of dwarven symbols. Ganz immediately recognized that the cabinet had a magical aura.

The cabinet stood a bit taller than a dwarf, and had two full-length doors in front. It was covered with square panels divided by broad X-shapes, six on the front and three on each side. Quexechetl immediately tried to open it. It was locked, but a key lay on top, easily spotted by someone of Quexechetl's height. Inside, the cabinet was divided by a partition down the middle, with shelves on the right and pegs on the left, presumably for hanging clothes. There were some crumbled bits of cloth on the floor on the left, and the shelves held a handful of bottles with dried-up stains at the bottoms. There were also a couple of pen quills. One of the bottle appeared to have held ink, but the rest of the contents were unidentifiable.

The table also held a few dried-up bottles, but was otherwise unremarkable. Ganz inspected the circle of symbols on the floor. He recognized some of them as being the same as the glyphs carved around the outside of the tower, and tentatively identified the design as a summoning circle, but he wasn't familiar enough with dwarven magic to say more.

Quexechetl tried to move the cabinet, but it was firmly fixed to the wall. The performers then began experimenting with the cabinet in order to discover its magic, getting inside, pushing and pulling on the pegs, rapping on it, and so on. They discovered that the shelves could be folded up toward the center partition, and that then the partition could be folded back to the right side, leaving the whole interior of the cabinet undivided. When this was done, the pegs could be pushed in so that they were flush with the inside back wall.

"I feel like I'm in one of those video games where you just click on everything to figure out how the puzzle works."

Echo (Sophie)

Sophie discovered that the X-shapes on the panels on the outside could be pressed inward with a click, and she and Talman tried clicking them in various combinations to see if something would happen, but they didn't get anywhere. Ganz took a more methodical approach and discovered that if he clicked in the top Xes, he could then turn them, and this released the cabinet from the wall. Quexechetl moved it aside, and behind it there was a passage leading away from the underground chamber.

The circus members filed into the passage and dragged the cabinet to cover the entryway behind them. As soon as they left, Ganz felt that the magical barrier holding the dead orcs back had collapsed. Their way lit by Sophie's lantern, they went down and, as far as they could tell, parallel to the mountainside. After a few gentle turns, they emerged into the night air from a crack between two boulders.

It was very dark, the moon having set a couple of hours ago. They could see the fires of King Miklo's army, and the vague shadows of the host of dead orcs who were fighting them, in the valley below them, about a mile or so north. Esmond, who wore the night-seeing pendant below his clothes, could see as clearly as day, and noticed a group of figures standing on a rocky promontory across the valley, something like a quarter mile away.

Quexechtl immediately wanted to go join the fighting, and after a brief debate, the rest of the performers decided that getting a better view of the group on the promontory was a better idea than simply hiding and waiting until dawn. Sophie didn't like the idea of taking on twenty orcs, but she went along with the majority opinion. She tried to keep her lantern as well-covered as she could, and they all stumbled down the dark mountainside.

As they grew closer, Esmond could see, first, that they were indeed orcs, and later that one of them carried a staff of some kind. He counted about twenty of them, although the uneven, rocky ground could have hidden some more. A couple hundred yards away, they stopped and made a plan. Esmond would creep around to the right, which would put him to the orcs's rear, assuming they were watching the battle below them. He would get close enough to take an aimed shot at staff-bearer's heart, hoping to kill him with one arrow. The rest would move forward directly, and when close enough, Ganz would cast a spell to throw an exploding fireball at them. This would be the signal for Esmond's shot.

Ganz was a little dubious of this plan, since his power over magical forces was a little low, but he relented and agreed. Esmond left to make his flanking maneuver, and the rest crept forward in the darkness. At about twenty-five yards, they stopped, and Ganz cast his spell. It flared up, and he held a fireball in his hand. A very good one, he felt, and aimed it as well as he could in the darkness.

Esmond, as he got closer, saw that the orcs were a mixed group of the living and the re-animated dead, with the dead orcs forming a perimeter around the living. He also noticed that one of the orcs carried a shield, and appeared to be in command, given his body language. Hoping that Ganz's spell would kill the staff-bearer, he switched targets and took aim at the orc leader.

Ganz threw his fireball, but his aim was bad. Missing the staff-bearer, he instead hit another orc a few yards away. With a great boom, it exploded, throwing all the orcs into confusion. On this signal, Esmond loosed his arrow and caught the commander solidly in the back.

But the commander did not fall, and quickly shouted orders to his troops. He started getting them into a line of battle facing toward Esmond, where the arrow had come from. Talman and Quexechetl ran forward while Esmond drew another arrow. Sophie drew her own bow, and Ganz moved forward slowly, wondering if he could come up with any way to control the undead orcs.

Esmond's second shot stuck the staff-bearer, who fell on his face and laid there unmoving. Talman and Quexechetl reached the ring of dead orcs that surrounded the live ones and attacked two of them, Talman with a spear and Quexechetl with a grapple and a bite. Sophie aimed and took a shot at the prone staff-bearer with her bow, but in the darkness she badly missed and ended up dropping her bow.

"Darn, I was hoping that taking out that guy would kill all the zombie orcs."

Mike (Esmond)

Esmond shot a couple more times, but the commander blocked the arrows easily with his shield. Talman and Quexechetl's attacks hit home on the dead orcs, but didn't drop them. Their targets fought back with spear and axe, but didn't land any blows.

Esmond, seeing things much more clearly than anyone else, realized that the dead orcs weren't advancing on him -- instead they had turned on the live orcs, and the living and the dead were now locked in battle! He began to run toward the other group, shouting for everyone to fall back.

Talman ran back toward Sophie and Ganz, and so did Quexechetl, after Sophie shouted at him. One of the dead orcs followed, but the rest attacked their live counterparts. Quexechetl turned to take on the lone dead orc, sinking his teeth into its neck and then wrenching until the head came off. The body fell, no longer animated, and Quexechetl was a little disappointed that the head stopped moving as well.

A few yards away, the battle between the living and the dead tilted in favor of the latter, and the commander fell. Four surviving living orcs fled into the night, and the dead ones simply milled around senselessly. Esmond lured the group of them away from the fallen staff-bearer, while Talman ran in and grabbed the staff. He carried it back to the others. It was an unremarkable wooden staff, decorated only by a dead bird attached to the head.

The circus then turned back to the larger battle below them in the dark, wondering how King Miklo's army was faring against the horde of dead orcs.

So, how did that go?

For the second time in the two-year history of this game, the players did pretty much the right thing the whole way through. They didn't figure out what was magical about the cabinet, but they stopped fiddling with it when they discovered an escape route. I put a secret one-hour time limit on the magical protection that kept the dead orcs outside the tower, and the party left right before it expired.

Then when they left, Esmond made his perception roll to spot the orc shaman and his guards, the party went straight there, and they correctly guessed that the guy with the staff was commanding the dead orcs. You could criticize Mike for switching targets from the shaman to the orc leader at the last minute, but that turned out fine. The leader made a very good Tactics roll just after getting shot, and managed to rally his troops, but when Esmond shot the shaman (killing him instantly), the dead orcs all went uncontrolled and started attacking the nearest visible living targets. The orc leader was already in negative hit points from Esmond's first shot, so it was only a matter of time before he dropped. The living orcs never really had a chance.

Game Session 2013/03/03

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

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

Ganz, elf, stage magician and wizard. Played by Jessica.

Quexechetl, lizard man, strongman and wrestler. Played by Karl.

Talman, half-elf, acrobat. Played by Joe.

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

June 26, 850

When we last saw our adventurers, they had just chased an ogre into the ruined dwarven city and killed it, mainly with Esmond's bow and Talman's spear. Quexechetl had taken two good, strong blows form the ogre. He declined a healing potion, but he sat down and let Sophie bandage his wounds.

Just seconds later, some of the knights and men-at-arms from the castle caught up with the circus. Looking at the huge, bloody mess of the ogre's corpse and the mostly untouched circus performers, they clamored for an account of the fight. Sophie spoke up first, saying that the ogre was already badly wounded when they found it, no doubt from the fighting in the castle and the fall from the tower after it bashed through the wall. The others agreed, the ogre was nearly dead when they found it, and it had expired while they were trying to get their over-eager lizardman away from it.

"It kind of just fell on my spear."

Joe (Talman)

Soon after this, King Miklo himself, in the company of Count Anelmo and some of the other nobility arrived, saying they had heard that an ogre had been killed. Count Anelmo was most impressed, remarking that yesterday they didn't even know what to do with a wounded goblin, and today they had defeated an ogre. No doubt the next day, they would slay dragons.

One of the king's men, someone the performers didn't recognize, complained that the circus was acting out of place to take glory from the fighting men, but the king stifled this complaint, since he didn't like any criticism of "his circus."[1] The king and his attendants then left for the castle.

That evening, most of the army camped outside the castle, since the courtyard wasn't that large, and the Circus Sophia put on a show. Esmond didn't do very well with the dog act, but the rest of the performers did well enough, although Quexechetl was still a bit slow.

June 27, 850

Alarm! Alarm! The circus folk woke up at dawn to the news that a horde of orcs was approaching. Camp became a chaos as everyone rushed to pack up and shelter inside the ancient dwarven castle. Quexechetl and Fiorio tried to get the tent down as quickly as they could, but Quexechetl must have been suffering from the previous day's fight, because he made a mess of the job. Esmond and Sophie tried to help, but just got in the way and made matters worse. By the time they got things straightened out, they were nearly the last people to make it into the castle's very crowded courtyard, and they had to park the wagon quite close to the gatehouse, which didn't even have a gate.

Once inside, they climbed up the stairs to the top of the wall, trying to get close to the king, because Sophie was worried about an assassination attempt in the chaos of battle. From this height, they could see the entirety of the castle. It was mostly intact, but there were a few breaches in the walls. Esmond noticed that the circus wagon, along with a few others, had been overturned and used to block the gatehouse entry to the courtyard.

Soon the orcs marched into view, shouting, chanting, banging on drums, and waving weapons. They brought no siege equipment with them, not even ladders to try to scale the walls. Seeing this, most of the defenders left and went to reinforce the breaches, leaving only the archers and the king's party atop the walls. A group of mounted knights dragged the wagons out of the way and sallied out to harass the orcs.

When the orcs decided they had enough numbers, they charged and tried to overrun the breaches. Quexechetl went down to take part in the hand-to-hand fighting, while shot orc after orc with this bow. Talman and Fiorio stayed with Sophie, who kept an eye on the king. Ganz improvised an explosive fireball spell, which dispatched a knot of orcs. After that, he joined in keeping an eye on the king. He noticed Archmagus Tor of the Lodean court casting protective spells on King Miklo, while Count Anelmo commanded the battle. Lord Fels led his men in hand-to-hand fighting in the courtyard.

The first wave of orcs failed in their attack, there was a lull, and then another wave charged. This pattern continued for most of the day, and the defenders were never in serious danger. In the mid-afternoon, the remaining orcs retreated to the north, leaving a couple thousand dead behind them.

Casualties among the king's army were much lighter. After the fighting, Sophie tended to the wounded as best she could, and tried to get a sense of the army's opinion of the orcs' attack. Everyone agreed that it wasn't typical of orcs to attack a well-defended position like that. The majority opinion was that orcs are just stupid, and there's no explaining what they do. But some of the wiser and more experienced among the army supposed that maybe the castle was important to the orcs' prestige, or that the attack was a result of political competition among the orcish tribe, or that the orcs were simply overpopulated that year. In the end, no one had a good explanation for what seemed like a suicidal attack.

The performers did their best to gather their belongings, which had been spilled out of the wagon and mostly left in a pile, and bedded down for the night.

June 28, 850

After sleeping in their armor and keeping an alert watch, the next morning, the army broke camp and marched north, pursing the orcs. Around noon, they came to a convergence of three valleys and faced the choice of a path to the northeast or one to the west-northwest. As the members of the circus were wondering which way they would go, a hush fell over the army. Everyone's attention was drawn to the west, where the faraway but distinct silhouette of a dragon could be seen lazily circling in the air. It lingered in view for no more than half a minute, and when it passed behind a mountain, everyone remembered to breathe again.

The Circus Sophia was too far from the front of the army to tell who made the decision about which way to go, or what motivated them, but soon the army began marching again, and not in the direction of the dragon.

June 29, 850

The next day's travel brought the army to a narrow but steep ravine. On the far side, after a few hundred yards of grass and scrub, the trees came together into a proper forest. The king's engineers prepared to lay a bridge over the ravine so the wagons could cross, and a vanguard of knights rode forward to guard the opposite side.

When the vanguard came within arrow's flight of the trees, hundreds of orcs emerged from the cover and shot at them. Not knowing how many more were concealed in the forest, the knights withdrew back to the ravine. The engineers, worried about the security of the bridgehead, settled in for a long argument about how best to handle the task of getting the army to the other side.

In the afternoon, after most people had decided to begin setting up camp, a servant approached Ganz, and relayed a request for his presence by his grace the Archmagus Tor [2]. Ganz, of course, said he would be happy to oblige the Archmage, and followed the servant to a large and finely decorated tent.

Inside the Archmage welcomed his colleage, as he called Ganz, and pointed out a certain ruined tower on a ridge a couple miles away, on the near side of the ravine. The Archmage explained that this was an ancient wizard's tower, and he had heard from veterans of previous campaigns against the orcs that there were magical glyphs engraved in the stones there. The Archmage had wanted to investigate this for himself, but since the orcs might attack at any moment, he was required to stay and protect the king. Would Ganz be willing, with his circus friends as protection, to to climb up to the tower and make a sketch of the glyphs? It would be a long climb and there wouldn't be much light left when he got there, but an overnight stay should be safe, since the orcs were very superstitious about magic and avoided the tower.

Ganz said he would be happy to. He took his leave of the Archmage and returned to the circus wagon. Everyone wanted to go, but Sophie thought Fiorio should stay with the wagon and mind their belongings. The performers packed for an overnight stay and set out.

The climb was steep, and the sun was much lower in the sky when they neared the tower. In its ruined state, it was little more than a low circular wall with a pile of rubble surrounding it. Esmond kept a sharp eye out for trouble, and Ganz cast a Sense Foes spell, but no one saw any signs of danger.

There was, indeed, a belt of glyphs carved into the stone in a belt around the outside of the tower, a little above waist height. There were a few gaps where stones had fallen away, but it was mostly intact. Ganz set about copying them down on paper, while the others looked around for fallen stones with glyphs on them. Esmond discovered a stairway leading downward just inside the ruined walls, blocked by rubble. They decided to leave it unexcavated for now.

Ganz finished his transcription a little before sundown, and though he wasn't very familiar with dwarven schools of magic, he came to the conclusion that they were some sort of protection signs. He finished off by casting an illusion of the scene of the whole ruin, with all the glyphs in place, in order to fix it in his memory.

The circus then settled down for the night, with Sophie assigned the first watch, Esmond the second, and Talman the third. Quexechetl was already asleep. Esmond passed the magical pendant he usually wears to Sophie, to let her see in the dark.

Toward the end of Sophie's watch, after the moon had set, she saw, down in the valley, another army of orcs marching toward the camp! They marched silently and slowly, with none of the drumming and chanting that usually announced their presence. She woke up the others, and though they couldn't see, she explained that the orcs had doubled back behind the king's army, and were making a nighttime attack on their rear!

With the camp a couple hours away by foot and all the orcs about, Ganz felt that only way to warn the army was with magic. He considered teleporting Sophie back, but decided that was too risky. Better would be if he flew there himself. He cast a spell, transformed himself into a foxhawk [3], and took off.

Almost immediately, he saw that a group of orcs had departed from the main horde and were climbing the ridge toward the tower. There were a couple dozen, at least. He circled back to the tower, landed, and yipping and pointing with a paw, got Sophie to take another look down the slope. This time, she saw the orcs that were climbing toward them, and warned the others to prepare to defend the tower.

Ganz took off again and flew to the army's camp. He landed just outside the lines, then dismissed his spell and returned to the form of an elf. He found a sentry and warned him about the approaching orcs, then ran off to the Archmage's tent and repeated his warning. The message delivered, he snuck out into the darkness at the edge of camp, cast his transformation spell once more, and flew back to the tower.

As he approached, he saw that he had undercounted the orcs. There must have been at least sixty of them, and though their climb was slow, they would reach the tower before long. He landed, transformed back into an elf, and updated the others on the enemy numbers.

Talman thought they might do best to flee, since the orcs probably didn't even know they were there, weren't coming for a fight, and wouldn't miss them if they left. The others thought it would be too dangerous to leave a defensible position with that many orcs roaming around. They decided to stay, and thought this might be a good time to clear away the rubble and see where those stairs led.

While Quexechetl stood guard, Esmond and Talman started clearing. It was tough going, and they hadn't made much progress when the orcs came within arrow range. The climbed slowly, looking tired. Quexechetl and Esmond traded places, and Esmond took the amulet of night seeing back from Sophie. He drew his bow and carefully watched the orcs. Ganz cast a Light spell, and began concentrating to send it down the slope to light up the orcs.

When they got to withing fifty yards, Esmond shot. His arrow thudded home into the chest of one of the advancing orcs. The orcs kept coming, silently. Esmond drew again, aimed, and loosed another arrow. He hit the same orc again. The orc didn't so much as cry out, and kept coming.

Esmond drew another arrow, and this time as he aimed, he saw that the orc he had just shot twice wasn't the only one with arrows in him. As they got nearer, he could see, plain as day in the darkenss by the virtue of his magical amulet, that the orcs were all dead. And yet still they marched forward.

Me: Yes, it turns out that they are zombie orcs. Or, "zorcs," if you will....

Karl: I will not.

He shot a third arrow, trying to hit the orc squarely in the forehead, but his shot missed. He dropped the bow, drew out his shortsword and buckler, and prepared to hold the gap in the wall that faced the orcs. Talman backed him up with his spear. Sophie said a quick prayer to Wen, god of the underworld, climbed up on the wall, and readied her bow. Ganz did his best to help Quexechetl with the digging.

The first of the dead orcs reached the tower. Esmond stood at the gap in the wall. Two of them closed with him and attacked with axes. One missed, and he deflected the other with his buckler.

Esmond struck back, slashing the orc across the throat with his sword. Behind him, Talman stabbed with his spear, but failed to connect. More dead orcs stumbled toward Sophie, where she perched atop the wall, and the two that faced Esmond attacked again. One of them connected, severely wounding him and nearly knocking him down.

"This would be a good time to find out that this is all a nightmare."

Mike (Esmond)

Quexechetl dug frantically at the rubble blocking the stairs, and cleared barely enough room to let an elf  squirm through, but not enough for himself. It seemed unlikely they would clear enough to get everyone underground before the orcs overwhelmed them. Ganz decided to take a long shot, and concentrated on the magical glyphs that he had studied so carefully, hoping to somehow activate them.

Sophie shot an arrow at one of the dead orcs, hitting it but not slowing it down. It stabbed twice at her with a spear, missing both times. Esmond, struggling to remain conscious, slashed again with his sword, then stepped back from the wall. Talman attacked with his spear again and missed.

Ganz, concentrating on the glyphs, thought that he had somehow connected with them. Sophie felt that her prayer had been answered, and hopped down from the wall. The dead orcs stumbled around outside, but made no attempt to enter through the gap in the wall. The circus performers were safe, but for how long?

Esmond quickly gulped a healing potion, while Quexechetl finished clearing the rubble from the stairs. As soon as there was enough room to crawl through, everyone hurried downstairs. They examined the small, round, vaulted room by the light of Sophie's lantern. There was a summoning circle of some sort on the floor, a table and chair against one wall, and a cabinet against another.

So, how did that go?

Things moved along more slowly that I would have liked. Everyone's attention kept wandering, including mine. It had been more than a month since our last game, because of one thing an another, and I think that may have been a part of the reason.

And, of course, things did not go as I had expected. When do they ever? I didn't expect JC to have Ganz fly off by himself to warn the army about the approaching orcs, but that was fine. I thought the group made a mistake by not clearing the stairs and investigating under the tower when they first got there. On the other hand, JC caught me totally off guard by having Ganz attempt to activate the glyphs. I just threw in "they're protection wards" off the cuff.

Ganz has a Thaumatology of 14, so I added up some penalties and bonuses in my head and came up with 7 for him to activate the glyphs. Then I remembered Sophie's brief prayer to Wen, so I bumped it up to 8. JC used Luck to make three rolls, and the third and best was an 8. So they were just barely saved, by virtue of that prayer. I think the current situation made for a very good stopping point.

One thing I think I need to manage better is my way of describing what's going on in the world. In order to make it seem like this story unfolds in a real place, I try to describe what's going on all around the party -- what the army is doing, how the orcs act, what a dragon flying in the distance looks like, and so on. But while I'm doing that, I'm not asking the players what their characters are doing. In the current situation, where they're following an army and have to go where it goes, it feels like I'm spending too much time on things they have no control over. I need to work on compressing that description and getting on the good parts where they get to decide to do something.

[1] The Circus Sophia performed at the king's coronation feast, along with various other entertainers. In a strange mixup, a second circus, also named the Circus Sophia, was likewise scheduled to perform. The assembled nobles thought this was improper, and formed the general opinion that the two circuses should compete for the right to use the name. Our heros won, narrowly but convincingly, and afterward the court awarded the Circus Sophia a royal charter entitling them to call themselves "Entertainers to HIs Majesty King Miklo." Queen Luccola even gave them a banner embroidered with this slogan.

[2] The circus has met the Archmage once before, in the aftermath of the strange plot by an alchemist to  kidnap the king's cousins and use them in a ritual to do...something. The Archmage led the investigation to find out who else was involved, and eventually the Dean of the Royal College of Alchemists was arrested. The Archmage is also a member of the Lodean regency council, along with four other people. I'm not sure any of the players remembers this.

[3] A foxhawk is just what it sound like --  a hybrid with the body of a fox, but with a hawk's wings and forefeet. They have normal coloration for a red fox, but with a line of feathers along the spine and banded coloration on the belly, white and red or red-brown. The circus encountered these creatures when they met the reclusive alchemist Fiuzo Panzal. He had made several, and they had escaped from their pens. After the circus recaptured them for him, Ganz decided he liked them enough to want to be one, at least temporarily, and improvised a transformation spell.

Circus Sophia Portrait

Here's the Circus Sophia, the adventuring party in my GURPS fantasy game.

L-R: Esmond, Quexechetl, Sophie, Talman, Ganz, and Fiorio

Please note that Quexechetl should actually be tan in color, and Ganz's cape should be green. We have to work with the Legos we've got.

Those plastic bases are exactly 1 inch across, which works out great for me because we normally play on a hex mat. You can get them from Cat's Paw Productions here. They come in two-stud and four-stud versions, and cost US$1 each.

Map of Lodea

Here's where my GURPS fantasy campaign takes place. My cartography is not the best, but having a map is better than not having a map.

Lodea is situated just west of an isthmus that connects two continents. To the east is Hevria, the multinational civilization of which Lodea is a part. To the west is the Gondan Empire, an aggressive, expansionist empire that has invaded Lodea and is trying to incorporate it as a province. To the south, across the sea, is Turria, an arid land divided amongst many feuding tribes.

To the north is the Bekel, a mountainous area that was once home to dwarven kingdoms, until orcs and dragons invaded and drove the dwarves out. That's where the Circus Sophia is right now.

Yeah, my mountains kind of look like Hershey's Kisses, don't they? My next map will be better.

Game Session 2013/01/27

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 25, 850

When we last saw our adventurers, they had followed the boy-king Miklo, who had strayed away from his army, to an old dwarven lookout post in the Bekel. Ganz's spell revealed that there were enemies somewhere behind the door that led into the mountainside, and the circus performers heard footsteps approaching from the other side....

Sophie pushed King Miklo behind her, Talman and Quexechetl faced off against the door, and Esmond drew and nocked an arrow. All eyes were on the door, as it opened and revealed not orcs, but goblins.

Quexechetl was caught a little off because he was expecting orcs, but Talman's spear and Esmonds arrows quickly dropped the three goblins. Sophie turned to grab King Miklo and carry him to safely, and saw a stranger standing in the doorway, also trying to grab the king. Sophie was quicker. She swept up the King and pushed past the man to get the him outside.

"And they shall call me...Goblin-dropper!"

JM (Talman)

"Come, boys, get out of there," the stranger called to the King's companions. The two other boys weren't sure which way to go, but then Fiorio ushered them outside. By that time, the action with the goblins was all over. A quick check past the door showed a narrow corridor that ran into the mountain for a half-dozen yards and then turned to the left. It carried on as far as the dim light that Ganz conjured would show.

Outside, Sophie saw that the man had a companion, an elf. From their clothes, Sophie figured they must be scouts in the employ of one of the lords marching with the army -- or, perhaps, that was only what they wished to look like. They carried bows and wore cloaks, the human's gray, and the elf's a patchwork of greens.

King Miklo wanted to go back and see the goblins, and with the danger past, everyone figured there was no harm in it. It turned out that two of the goblins were alive, though unconscious. Sophie roused one of them and questioned him. After a few false starts, she learned that he spoke no Lodean, but some broken Gondan. Terrified and in great pain from the arrow in his chest, he told them they were scouts, and a ways down the passage -- "tunnel and tunnel and tunnel" -- there was a fortress with a great many orcs. Sophie thought this might be useful intelligence, so she bandaged up the goblin and had Quexechetl carry him back down the mountainside.

King Miklo and his two friends came along willingly, since they had seen about all that there was to see at the lookout post. The two strangers, scouts or whatever they were, said they were traveling with Lord Haimel. Once the King was back with the army and his regular bodyguards caught sight of him, Sophie asked what he thought should be done with the goblin. "We ought to find Count Anelmo," he decided. So they marched toward the Count's banner.

Count Anelmo proved to be someone of consequence in the army. He was gathered with a number of other noblemen, including Lord Fels. Sophie noticed Lord Fels quietly shake his head at her, but she wasn't sure what that meant. She showed the noblemen the wounded goblin and explained what they had learned, but her audience was unimpressed. They knew all about the castle, having visited this part of the Bekel in years past, and expected it to be defended. In fact they were waiting for an advance party of knights to return with intelligence.

Since no one seemed to have any use for it or care what happened to it, Talman put the goblin out of its misery. The circus left the king with his knights, and went back to their wagon as the army got moving again.

It was not long before they came into sight of a ruined city, or at least a large town, with a somewhat less ruined castle overlooking it. Sure enough, the walls were defended by orcs. While the baggage train set up a camp, the knights and men at arms began to make sallies against the castle, testing the resolve of the orcs and looking for weak spots in their defenses. It was late in the day, so they made no more than a few charges.

Sophie thought she ought to call on Lord Fels and let him know about the man and the elf who had been at the dwarven lookout. He was not at his tent, so she waited. Meanwhile, the other members of the circus put in a little practice at their various arts. While Esmond was practicing archery, he noticed that he had gained an audience: the man in the gray cloak.

He introduced himself as Borov, and complimented Esmond on his skill. He said  that he and his elven friend, Lutzog, planned to go hunting in the morning, and asked Esmond if he would like to go along. Esmond agreed, and Borov said he would find the circus's tent around dawn.

Sophie, meanwhile, waited until after sundown for Lord Fels to return. One of his servants invited her into his tent, and she told him about the day's events. Fels agreed that the two supposed scouts were a little suspicious, and asked her to keep an eye on them. She left, found out where they were camping, and chatted them up over the campfire. She learned that they been with the army since Nalfavor, where they entered the service of Lord Haimel, a Willanese. They seemed to be on the up-and-up, not trying to hide anything, so after a few rounds of dice (in which Sophie won a few pennies) she returned to the circus tent.

The performers conferred and decided that Borov and Lutzog merited a close watch and some precautions, so Quexechetl was volunteered to go with Esmond on the hunt the next morning.

June 26, 850

Just at dawn, Borov and Lutzog showed up at the circus tent. Esmond explained Quexechetl's presence by explaining that he could flush game for the three archers, and the two scouts made no objection. Quexechetl was worried that the army would attack the castle while he was away and he would miss his chance to fight orcs, but word around the camp was that the army wouldn't make their big push that day.

The hunting party set out for the hills. Esmond bagged a rabbit, but as for bigger game, between the Lodean army and the orcs it seemed to have already been hunted out. Around noon they all sat down to eat and watch the probing attacks the king's army was making against the old castle. This caught Quexechetl's attention very well, and Lutzog, the elf, sat beside the lizardman and kept up a running commentary on the battle.

A little ways away, Borov sat beside Esmond and worked the conversation around to Esmond's choice of occupation. Wasn't it a bit odd, he asked, for a man of Esmond's obvious talents to make his living as an entertainer? Didn't he think that there was more he could be doing for the good of the world?

Esmond replied that he felt attached to the circus, because they had been good friends of his. Borov spoke plainly, then. He said that he and Lutzog were memebers of a brotherhood of travelers, wanderers of the roads and the wilderness who were dedicated to protecting the helpless from the evils of the world. They had no lord or commander, but answered the call for help whenever they heard it. And if Esmond was interested, he could join them for a forest gathering when they returned to Lodea.

Esmond said he would be glad to, and silently felt relief at learning that the two scouts weren't secretly plotting to kill the king or the Circus Sophia or anything. Borov asked after Panzal, explaining that it was Esmond's hat that made him think he might be a fellow wanderer in the first place.[1] Panzal was just fine, Esmond said, and now that Borov pointed it out, he could see the Panzal's meticulous workmanship in the cloaks that Borov and Lutzog wore.

They made it easier to blend into the rocks and grass, Borov explained, and Esmond agreed that they worked well, since he hadn't seen them at all when he followed the King up to the dwarven lookout.

"I noticed how good you were at not being noticed."

MK (Esmond)

After eating, the hunters returned to their work. Esmond shot another two rabbits and Borov and Lutzog bagged one each. Quexechetl tried his luck with the bolas he had made, but he never managed to find a good target.

Quexechetl's disappointment was magnified when, as the hunters descended from the hills, they saw King Miklo's army make a general attack on the orcs, which went splendidly. The attackers found a weak spot in the wall, breached it, streamed in, and soon had the orcs dead or fleeing in a rout. Quexechetl could only watch from the distance as his chances of getting into the fighting slipped away.

Back at the camp, Borov and Lutzog went their own way, and Esmond explained to Sophie that all the two scouts wanted was to make his acquaintance and perhaps recruit him into a group of informal guardians of the road. All the other entertainers thought this was a bit odd, but agreed that it explained why they might seem to be keeping too close an eye on the King -- it was after all the same thing the Circus Sophia was doing.

All the fighting seemed to be over up at the castle, so the whole circus hiked up to take a look at the aftermath of the battle. They were stopped by a little knot of men-at-arms at the gatehouse, who explained that it wasn't safe inside. Quexechetl immediately asked what the most not-safe part of the castle was.

One of the men began to explain that an ogre was still alive and barricaded in yonder tower, and that the knights were discussing who would get the honor of going in and -- when suddenly, with a great crash, the ogre bashed through the crumbling stonework of the old castle and leapt out.

The ogre, already with a couple of arrows in his back, sprang up and ran for the ruins of the city. Quexechetl was after him like a rabbit. Esmond and Talman, seeing that Quexechetl was determined to fight something that day, chased after, and the rest of the circus trailed after them.

Esmond alternated running and shooting, and though he put three arrows into the ogre's leg, he didn't seen to slow him down at all. Quexechetl threw his bolas, but they just wrapped around the ogre's waist, apparently doing him no harm. The ogre was huge, probably eight or nine feet tall, and ran with gigantic strides. He had opened up a lead of about fifty yards when he reached the walls of the ruined city and disappeared inside.

Quexechetl was behind by only a few seconds, but saw nothing but streets overgrown with grass and tumbled-down walls when he entered the city. He looked around in vain, but when Esmond and Talman caught up, Esmond was able to spot the tracks and trial of blood easily.

The ogre hadn't gone far. A little ways down the street, he had found another ruin to hole up in. Quexechetl immediately charged in. The ogre threw a massive stone block at him, but it missed, and fortunately also missed Esmond, right behind him. Quexechetl ran forward and grappled the ogre with both arms and his jaws.

The ogre screamed and pounded at Quexechetl, who hung on and found the ogre's throat with his teeth. Though the hide was awfully tough, the lizardman tasted blood, so he knew he must be doing some harm. Esmond, meanwhile, poured arrow after arrow into the huge creature, while Talman stabbed at it with his spear.

The ogre managed to connect with Quexechetl twice, and the lizardman took a couple of blows that would have flattened most men, but the fight was soon over. Talman had stabbed the ogre in both eyes, blinding him, and in winding up to swing at Quexechetl, the ogre managed to pound his elbow into the wall behind him, breaking it and making his arm useless.

The other members of the circus, arriving just after the fight started, weren't of much use. Sophie tried to help out by snagging one of the ogre's legs with her cloak in order to trip him, but all she managed to do was get the cloak torn off her back after entangling a leg. At the end, Fiorio even tried to make an attack with a knife, but he missed, and the final blow went to Talman.

"And they shall call me...Ogre-dropper!"

JM (Talman)

Seeing that the fight was over, Ganz dropped the spell he had been preparing, and instead cast a magical cleaning spell over the others' clothing, since they were covered in ogre blood. Right behind them, the circus heard the sound of knights and men-at-arms approaching.

Wrapping it up

Yay, a fight! And a potential plot hook for further use! I glossed over it above, but Quexechetl, besides working his bite on the ogres throat, also tried Wrench Neck a couple of times, which was utterly ineffective, the ogre being so monstrously strong. I think Quexechetl was a little disappointed that the others were responsible for most of the damage.

[1] Fiuzo Panzal is the eccentric, reclusive alchemist that the Circus got most of their magic items from. Panzal offered them in exchange for capturing and returning some of his foxhawk hybrids that had escaped.

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.