Category: RPG

"I take off my sock" and they all ran in fear

A few months back, my fellow adventurers in 15th century France punched the planet by destroying a caravan of gunpowder pulled by the French and daemon allied army with a divinely gifted Sunspear spell. Since then, we came across the French army (slightly diminished) where they scored a major victory over the English army. In our defence, they had daemons on their side. During the battle, we were trying to infiltrate the French camp to find and kill their commanders. We found what was allegedly the Duke of Arras’ tent, surrounded by a wall of lethal darkness. Then turned around to find the Duke de Compsey, one of Arras’ lieutenants and a few of his vampire minions. They obviously tried to kill us.

The fight lasted over a session, so we lost a number of our group to other commitments. Our priest (one of the best fighters in the party) was levitated by de Compsey and was being thrown into us as a living missile. As he was being thrown however, he lashed out with his hammer at the vampires and managed to knock a vampire’s head off. Levitating priest polo, anyone?

I attempted to stab a vampire in the back (I am not an honourable chap), he incapacitated his opponents then turned to face me. As he swung, he critically fumbled and threw his sword; it critically hit the Duke de Compsey in the head, killing him. Until this point we weren’t sure how we would survive the battle – we were totally outmatched by the vampires. After the battle, I renamed my character to ‘Lucky’ Hob Davies.

In between the 15th century games, we’ve been playing a feudal Japanese roleplay based on the Runescape rules. We’d avoided a battle with a giant sea octopus, because that sounds dangerous, but circumstances conspired to bring us back to it. Circumstances in the form of a cursed Viking and his ship of zombies, summoned by a scroll to ferry us around. He took us to a patch of sea, told us we had to defeat the monster and it would be here soon, then locked us on deck. The build-up was immense, we knew this would be tough. We’d been led to this moment for ages. We’d been warned by several people about the monster. As the tentacles rose from the sea, our Mongolian guide attacked with his sling. It had strike rank 1, so went before anyone else (including the monster). He scored a critical. And laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and told us he had a special ability on his ammunition called ‘death blow on critical’. So the monster died. And we continued on our quest.

If a battle cry is something you say before battle, then his battle cry that day was “I take off my sock…”

There Is No Kill Like Overkill

I’ve been playing a roleplay game based in a 15th Century Europe, based on the Runescape rules. We’ve been playing for about a year but the campaign itself started many, many years ago. It has Runescape gods, but in the guise of saints since there’s only one God and we’re all Catholics (although at this point in history, the number of Popes was debatable).

We’re all members of the King’s Own Heretic Hunters, a select regiment (mostly pious ex-convicts) who are tasked with hunting out heretics (obviously) and performing certain tasks for the King of England. So far, this has involved us going to France, unwittingly becoming pawns in the schemes of the Duke of Arras (an old nemesis in this campaign, also a vampire and the brother of William the Conqueror) and poisoning our king with foul mutating crap. We ended up having to steal the Sword of Charlemagne (note: French not too happy about this) in order to kill the king.

Of course, it is well known that the king died of dysentery. We weren’t anywhere near him. No-one suspects a thing. WINK WINK.

Since then, we’ve been attacked and captured by demons, gained a few insanity points and crippling phobias (or in one case, amnesia, which can only be overcome by beating 97 on percentile dice), gone to Germany, come back, and just last week met God.

We were travelling back to our king with evidence that France is working with demons, and the Duke of Arras has an army marching around the country. As heretic hunters, we have a duty to destroy demons (which are heretical) and vampires (also heretical), as well as the French (mildly heretical – wrong Pope). While travelling through a forest, we saw a cart transporting troops coming through, so we hid while we debated whether we could take them on – we were outnumbered heavily. Then another cart came past, and another… and another… it was clear that ‘attack’ was not a sensible strategy. Then cannon and mortars, and other large black powder weapons came past. Dozens of them. Finally, three large, guarded and well protected covered box-carts came past. Our party gunner recognised these as the gunpowder carts.

“I cast Ignite on them!” he cried triumphantly. Before working it out, our GM told us that as soldiers we’d be well aware that gunpowder is magically shielded to prevent some prat casting ‘Ignite’ on them.

“Would a Sunspear get through?”

Sunspear is a spell granted by Armalia, which creates a blast of energy doom from the Sun into a target, with the usual effect of the loss of the target. It definitely resulted in the loss of a gunpowder cart, and the explosion set off the other gunpowder carts, flattening most of the forest (see: Tunguska, although geographically this is closer to Tuscany) and wiping out half of the enemy forces.

We were hiding in the bushes 150ft away from the source of the explosion.

Thanks to a lucky ‘Divine Intervention’ roll, St Armalia returned us to life (naked, but all our equipment in a neat pile and clothes neatly folded). The only things missing were our horses and the gunner’s gunpowder.

As a result, one of our archers is now the biggest murderer in the known world, having killed over 21,000 people. I think the Duke of Arras might be a little peeved about this.

We go again tonight, and I have no idea what we’re going to do next. Quite possibly, neither does the GM.

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(picture: Wittman80 on deviantart)