Ruby Crown XXI

“WHERE IS IT!? MY PRICELESS CROWN OF SZANSSAROBAR, STOLEN FROM MY HIGHEST BRANCHES! AND CLINGING TO THEM, YOUR STENCH.”

The great green dragon Zaeiram, golden chains and jewels clinging to her wings, tail and claws, leans in towards Talari as she hisses her words. Her eyes dart to the red staff clinging to his back. The Staff of The Mage of The Red Realm is a fleshy red staff that stains the things it touches orange-red, like a fine rust dust. Her temper boils and she lets out a screeching roar to the skies.

“YOU ARE THE ONE WHO HAS TWISTED AND CORRUPTED MY SON!”

The friends of Orthos recall seeing a smaller green dragon with a wild look in its eye a few weeks ago. Talari stammers.

“Oooh great dragon..! I don’t know what happened to your son or your crown and I don’t know how my stench got up there I would never do anything to harm you or your wondrous fores-”

“YOU WILL RETRIEVE MY CROWN. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE IT BY NEXT I SEE YOU, I WILL DESSICATE YOUR FLESH WITH POISON AND REND IT FROM YOUR BONES!”

With a frustrated huff, Zaeirams mighty wings beat thrice, and she is away in the air. After a few moments to recover, The Friends of Orthos continue down the road.

Half a day down the road, The Friends come to Boruntun, a mining town in the orbit of Solemnity, just north of the river Oria. They notice as they enter an area ful of carts laden with stone, ore and sulfur. They talk with the watcher of the yard, and she informs them that a town, Red Rock, has appeared a short ways east. It’s being plundered, but some bandits have capitalised on the wealth and moved in. There are also rumors of shapeshifters and monsters.

The Friends decide to stay the night. While they rest, they hear some important news.

“Hear ye, hear ye! The Marquess Discognia revealed to be a fiendish devil and slain by a giant attacking Reids Tower! His former attackers are now believed to be innocent!”

Some background: Ludo Discognia is a member of The Lawful Council which aids the queen. They’re big tough priest guys, except one of them was a Rakshasa from Balthazars past. He laid a curse on him ages ago and it’s been looming over the players head. His character recently split off from the rest (and had some rad downtime adventures over Discord) and some unlucky encounter rolls ended up with him facing off against Discognia and killing him. It’s very funny this happened off screen, a little bit deflating, but the players are greatful they can go back to the city. The downtime adventure stuff deserves its own post, it was epic.

The next morning Icoriol confides he used to be a citizen of Red Rock Quarry, a town nestled in the western mountains, but it dried up some decades ago and dwindled away slowly, being mostly abandoned a few years prior. However, the town is in the wrong spot. This is perplexing. Lured by puzzles and plunder, The Friends decide to visit Red Rock.

They follow fellow plunderes across the grassy hills, eventually coming to the derelict town. In the trough of a valley sits a town on a broken plate of earth. Two great raised sections have collapsed houses along seams and created two large flat cliffs on the southern edge of town.

Red Rock

The Friends enter on the northern (rightmost in the image) road. Red Rock is like a ghost town, not crumbling, but not lived in. The plunderers they followed stop to pick through old houses, and The Friends quickly team up. Neither team wants to be caught off guard. Exploring the empty roads, The Friends spy a mound of gold and ingots. Upon the mound stand five squart stone creatures with three arms and three legs apiece. They snack on the treasure as if it were a pile of walnuts.

Icoriol knows what these things are - there were always rumors about them from the miners back in the day. They are Xorn, treasure eaters from the plane of earth. What on earth are they doing here? He also knows that, though usually docile, they will attack if they demand your treasure and get denied. The Friends ready their weapons as the Xorn draw near.

I roll a reaction—friendly! Now I have to do some quick thinking about earth elementals. How would a Xorn show joy? Certainly not in a way recognizable to citizens of the earth plane.

The beings shamble their way quickly toward the cart, their teeth chattering and their arms waving. They slow to a stop a few feet away from the horses and carriage, swaying rhythmically. They point westwards, up towards the top of the cliff on which the keep sits. Their mouths churn, producing a sound like crushing gravel. Their meaning is lost on The Friends.

The Friends talk among themselves, debating whether to attack and secure the treasure, or move along.

This conversation was a direct consequence of using gold for XP, and I loved it. We have a conversation on Discord after the game about gold for XP and it’s consequences. Will go into that more at the end.

Shockingly, The Friends decide to move along, following the pointing Xorn rather than stealing their treasure.

The head west, then north (to avoid climbing the cliff), then west again. They come to an intersection with a collapsed building. A body is trapped under the rubble, a letter clutched in its hand. As The Friends move to approach, there is a tremor in the ground, like a small earthquake. After a tentative moment, they progress again. Talari tries a mage hand, but it’s not strong enough. He creeps towards the letter. Just as he grabs it, there is another tremor, and this time the sound of breaking rock. Bursting forth from the ground, a giagantic worm, scaled plates a metallic purple hue. It thrashes and crashes into buildings.

The townsmen that have been following The Friends break morale and run. The worm slithers along the ground toward the friends. Vespertine thinks quick, and pools her ki to create a minor illusion. This distracts the worm long enough for The Friends to sneak past and away. They walk without rhythm, and the worm is disoriented in the open air. It slithers away through the ground.

Though this encounter didn’t amount to much, I think it’s cool the PCs now know there is a purple worm about.

Down a road south, The Friends come across a pile of rocks. Discolorations and shadows give the impression of a face. When The Friends approach, pebbles in the rock clatter in the eye holes, looking toward them. Icoriol waves.

“Hello.”

The rock pile shifts, and to the surprise of no one, a deep, slow, gurgling voice emerges.

“hhhelloo….”

“Who are you?”

“I… am rocks.” the stony eyes survey the party. “If you tell me something interesting, I’ll tell you a secret.”

The Friends think for a minute. Icoriol speaks.

“This town used to be many miles to the west.”

A rocky brow furrows.

“I already know that! That was Mother.”

The Friends stand around perplexed again.

“Your mother moved the town?”

“Of course… she came up from the earth. She is old… very old… always asleep. But they woke her up. Now they ride on her back. But… she has fallen asleep again. We’re going to wake up, if we can.”

The Friends stay quiet for a bit and think. A growing feeling trepidation comes to Talari. He has heard of a megalithic beast of ancient times. A collosal beast of destruction that sleeps in the earth. Great jagged spikes on its back could fit perfectly into the cliffs the town now rests upon.

As the players discussed this they kept looking at me to see if they were right. Players do this a lot. It’s very fun to play with.

Icoriol gives the rocks an in depth explanation of metalcraft from ore to smithing. The rock finds this interesting, and definitely has never heard a better explanation than Icoriol can give. It returns the favour by telling its secret.

“Nora is afraid of water.”

The Friends do not know who Nora is.

The last thing the rocks tell them is that bandits have taken over the central keep. This means different things to different friends. To Icoriol, this is an affront to his old home. Pride prevents him from leaving it unchecked. To the rest, bandits = loot.

The Friends head toward the keep, but quickly run into some problems. The entire street leading to the keeps main gate is covered in camp ground, swarming with bandits. At least 80 of them. The keeps main gate is wide open, bandits coming to and fro.

The Friends plan to sneak around the outside of the keep and try to get over the back wall. They sneak through the streets, but on the way there, 8 bandits find them. Luckily, Talaris bird is an excellent scout, and there are stone walls to hide behind. Using Rykus’ carriage, The Friends easily surprise and overwhelm their foes.

There’s an old piece of video game advice I saw on youtube or something that says place a low level enemy towards the end of the game so the player can crush it to see how far they’ve come. I didn’t place these enemies, but the effect was the same I feel. Easy encounters are fun too (though I wish they didn’t take so long in 5e)

Getting to the back of the keep, Talari plays games his familiar, hounding the wall guards. The bandits are confused and clueless, but one is a good shot with a crossbow. Talaris familiar dissapears into a cloud of magic dust.

Perhaps in a fit of rage, a lust for treasure or an sense of power above his lessers, Talari takes the chance to teleport up onto the wall, start chanting his mythic blade song, and stabs the bandit in the chest.

A great fight breaks out, The Friends scaling the walls of the keep, washing the back courtyard of Fort Red Rock in bandit blood. They take some fire from reinforcements on the wall, but continue to beat back the tide. To stem the flow of combatants, Rykus and Rolf rush up to the back door and hold it shut, but they quickly hear something large approaching from the other side. As something begins bashing the door, Talari spies a women with wild hair poking her head out of the second story window. He uses his sorcery to teleport into the window and grabs her by the throat.

“We mean only to talk! Call of the attackers and let us parley!”

A low growl, like the twisting of great logs of damp wood, alerts Talari to the other presence in the room. Standing hunched for its head hits the ceiling, a giant man made of wood, clutching a great oak shield and a tree trunk as a weapon. It charges.

We were out of time so the session ended mid-fight, but in a pretty decent spot. The bandits are mostly dead but rallying the ones outside, giving The Friends some time to think of a plan. This matches up with the week they’ll have to think about it between sessions. But of a side-episode feeling session, but I’m trying to break the feeling that there are main plot sessions and side plot sessions. They’re just sessions! Either way I enjoyed it.

We had an interesting discussion on Discord after this session about Gold for XP. One player expressed concerns they were chasing side content rather than the main story I had prepared. I played D&D with this player years ago, back when I tried to run D&D games like this. I have since learned better, and it was interesting trying to convey that my games are more open. I really love that the players have been chasing what interests them (usually where the treasure is). This is a major feature of the game, and its very freeing to let the players drive the action. At the same time, there totally is a main villain (I try to think of NPCs in terms of major characters, not main characters, but it’s undeniable that The Sorcerer Baron is at the center of a lot of things. It’s a kind of neat crossroads between a written module and a sandbox. I think it’s going alright, it’s certainly way more fun to run. There was also some discussion about if levelling has been a bit slow, but I’m hesitant that this is an issue. I know it can be frustrating to progress slowly, but my hope is that frustrations like that get channelled into action. If people are annoyed the story is progressing slowly, there’s nothing stopping them from chasing it. They’re more free to chase it as fast as they want since there’s no set plot! But this is a very idealistic way to talk about the game structure. In reality it’s not as simple as “if you want to do it then do,” there are barriers in the way. (This is rapidly becoming the main reason I dislike 5e, the power scaling just locks you out of doing things as your levels change - this might get a main gloopy article).