RolePlay onLine RPoL Logo

, welcome to [RQ] Adventures in Prax

12:44, 28th March 2024 (GMT+0)

Game Summary - 05/20/2006.

Posted by AdminFor group archive 1
Admin
GM, 2 posts
The one who
puts stuff on here
Wed 9 May 2007
at 12:06
  • msg #1

Game Summary - 05/20/2006

Our party for the weekend of May 19-21, 2006 consisted of:

* Arre, Thad's Melnibonean alchemist archer
* Aurelius, Rich O's graeco-egyptian sorceror charioteer
* Grumfar, Rich F's minotaur
* Theleos, Bob F's knight of Gondor who wears the Scales of Bairanax
* Tony's Argan Argar troll Arkati sorceror
* Leon's Maat/Humakti Arkati sorceror
* Scott - Byzantine catacphract (disciplined, well armored horse archer)
* Kelvin - Varangian skald mercenary (a Rus or viking who can use song to invoke the power of Bragi, one of the Norse deities)
* Mark's character, Baclane, was present to take care of the horses

Scouting for the Prince

When we left our intrepid band, they were with Prince Michael's army at the ruins of Akpat, in eastern Anatolia (modern Turkey).  Lucky and Keith's troll are rotated back to Constantinople with dispatches and the troll sorceror, the Byzantine cavalryman and the Varangian mercenary join the group before it is sent out by the Prince to gather information.  The Muslim forces in Palestine and Iraq have been in disarray since the death of Harun el Rashid a few years ago, and the Byzantines want to know what the story is, where the border is, and most importantly, any Muslim plans for raiding imperial territory.  The group is sent out on a long-range reconaissance, north towards the SE corner of the Black sea, through the lands once controlled by the kingdom of Pontus, 1000 years ago.  If they find out anything of immediate interest to the Prince, they are to return to the army as quickly as possible.  If not, they are to continue on to the coast (the empire controls the southern and eastern coasts of the Black sea), and return to Constantinople by ship with any information they have been able to gather.

The group bids Prince Michael farewell and head north.  They leave the valley of Akpat and cross a range of rugged hills into what had been the eastern portion of the old roman province of Anatolia.  It is almost completely deserted.  While there may be people still living up in the high hills, the string of towns and villages that lined the road built by Rome 800 years before are empty, the irrigation system neglected and the land gone back to the wild.  Almost 300 years of raiding, first from the Sassanid Persians, then from the armies of Islam has taken its toll.

The only sign of life is found when the party stumbles upon an old amphitheatre, just at sunset.  They are drawn by the sight of several colored, flickering lights; they find the body of a traveler a week dead, surrounded by small  flying creatures who look like scaled monkeys with wings.  The dead man was a sorcerer, and these were his servants; they were bound to stay by his body until someone who knew sorcery found the body and they were growing weaker by the day.  The weakest of the creatures scatter, but the strongest senses that Tony is the most powerful sorceror in the group and offers to serve him as a familiar. It doesn't have a physical form, so it asks "Give me flesh!".  Tony doesn't understand what the creature wants (it is following a familiar ritual from a world that Tony has never been to) and tells it to go get flesh from someone else.  Since Tony didn't blast him with a spell, the creature takes this to mean Tony agrees, and it takes a point of size from him, and binds itself to him.  It is the carrier of a message from the creature's old master to whoever found his body.  The message is not activated until a magical ceremony triggers it; the only thing the creature will tell Tony about his old master is that he practiced "White Mountain" magic.

The party continues north about a week or so, when they're travel is interrupted when the people riding point blunder into a patrol of Persian lancers, troops in the service of the Caliph.

Persian patrol

When we left the group, they were moving north from the advance base at Akpat, on the orders of Prince Michael, to find out how things stand in the no man's land between the Byzantine empire and the Caliphate.  They are roughly a week or so in travel time away from the base at Akpat, when the party's point man finds the enemy ... so to speak.  Baclane is riding point along with the rest of the party's small herd of horses.  This does unusual things to the party's tracks, especially since Baclane has them do odd things from time to time, like make right angle turns.  Baclane has taken his 4 legged friends down into a wide ravine to check out the lay of the land: nothing to the north, so he turns south and finds himself staring at a patrol (10 riders) of Persian lancers, less than a 100 yards away (both groups failed perception checks).  Baclane turns and leads the horses back upslope and out of the ravine; the Persians, thinking that they have found a horse thief, give chase at a gallop and blunder into the rest of the party, who have had enough warning from Baclane to ready themselves for combat.   It's broad daylight, there is no cover to speak of and the over-confident Persians still manage to ride right smack into a fight (but not an ambush, says the Humakti).  An opening volley of arrows, sling stones and javelins empties saddles and drops at least one horse onto its rider, and then the melee is joined and the Persians are wiped out in short order.  After gathering loot and horses, a decision is made to back track the Persians and find out where they came from.

These lancers are light cavalry (no armor) armed with lances and the occasional bow; they are used by the Caliph's forces for scouting, screening and pursuing, all of which they do quite well.  So what are they doing out here?  Is there an army nearby?  The trail leads east and the party follows it for a couple of days, when it joins a old caravan road that comes from the east and turns north at that spot.  The terrain is steep, rugged hill land, and the party can see dust on the road to the north.  Someone is coming south, but not a big group.  The party sets up a road block where the road bends, and waits to see what appears.  Due to the winding road, the rugged nature of the terrain and the scrub trees along the roadside, the caliphate troops don't see the roadblock until they are within bow range of the party.  It is 10 more Persian lancers and they have company:  a half dozen or so ragged, beaten men, shackles on wrists and ankles, tied together neck to neck in single file, like a Guinea slave coffle, so if one man falls, the others must not only hold up his weight, but will also be slowly strangled by the ropes around their necks.

The leader of the lancers sees Scott's Byzantine cataphract and assumes that he is the scout for an imperial force; he makes a quick decision: this news is more important than the prisoners' lives.  He orders the prisoners shot or lanced to create a tangle of bodies in the road and he and his men turn and spur their horses north.  The Greeks have come east in force and the Emir of the North must know!   The party opens fire, but doesn't drop all of the Persians; some get away and Baclane and the cataphract give chase.  They drag down more of the lancers, but two get away, and will spread the alarm.  The party must move fast.

In the mean time, the rest of the group have managed to heal some of the prisoners, who are more than happy to talk to the group.  They are Turkish tribesmen, from the rugged lands to the east of the Black sea and to the north of Persia, and they are the last remnant of a group of prisoners who escaped from forced labor on a caliphate project.  Their people have never gotten along with the Persians and they were captured by a punitive expedition on the Persian frontier.  Instead of being hanged or sold as slaves to the eastern mines, they were brought west to work on a great fort or temple, somewhere around 100 miles NW of Damascus.  They tell the party that there were many slaves and prisoners working on this project, but they were always guarded by at least 4 or 5 times that number of troops.  Only the Turks managed to escape in any numbers and they were the only ones who ever made it this far before being recaptured or killed.  After being given food, water, weapons and a horse each, the Turks are on their way home, swearing eternal gratitude and friendship with the party by the name of the Great White Wolf, the spirit guardian of the Turkish peoples.

The party knows that the alarm is being sounded, so they decide to head back to Prince Michael with the news they have gathered, going in as straight a line as possible.

Their return to Akpat is uneventful.  Prince Michael is intrigued by this news and decides to act (the Emperor doesn't send an army into the field just for his health); he gathers all of his troops except for a hundred or so, who are left behind to forward messengers and guard the camp; everyone else (2000 cavalry, 1500 infantry) are pushed east just as fast as he can move them.  What is the Caliphate up to now?  What are they building so close to the border, yet so far from any city?  Prince Michael decides not to travel along the coast, but inland, within striking distance of the old road that leads to Hatra, at the NE corner of the Mediterranean.  The party are once again out ahead as scouts.

As the army moves east, the party begins to notice that there are a large number of birds moving from north to south; after investigating, the party finds that there is an immense amount of carrier pigeon traffic.  After intercepting some of the birds, Prince Michael realizes that he has moved between two groups of caliphate troops: a large force of mixed cavalry and infantry to his north, who appear to have been misled into thinking the Byzantine army is off to the north and west, and a number of smaller groupings of troops along the coast.  The tone of some of the intercepted dispatches are almost hysterical; the odd behavior of the horses in the party and the incredible archery skills displayed by the party (along with wild rumors of magic) have the commander of the northern caliphate force thinking that he is dealing with a raiding party of centaurs.

The prince decides to strike at the forces along the coast; he will then be able to withdraw to the west along the coast, which will allow him to maintain contact with the Greek naval forces in the area.  He devises a plan of attack that needs a small group of fearless heroes to risk impossible odds.  None being available, he tags the party to do the job. The key to the caliphate defenses on the coast is the chain of watchtowers that line the coastal road and which can alert troops in the area with their signal fires. It is inevitable that an alarm will be sounded and the superior numbers of the Muslim forces in the region will eventually be brought to bear on any invading force, but if he can delay the alarm long enough, his men can do significant damage to enemy holdings in the area and the Byzantines might even be able to defeat some of the Muslim troops in the area piecemeal before they can gather together.  His plan's target is the small fort on the coast just where the road swings se/s towards Antioch.  The party is to attack and take the fort before the enemy can light their signal fire, and then hold it until the main army can come up and relieve them.

The plan is to attack at dawn.

Dawn of Blood

The party attacks at dawn, to storm the fort on the coastal road before they can light the signal fire that will alert the entire coast of the raid by the Byzantine Empire.  At least, that was the plan.  The party gets as close as they can to the fort and still be out of sight.  They cast magic on themselves and the priest of Argan Argar immediately ups the stakes by casting Shield 4 with extension; he's expecting a long fight.  They ready their weapons and move in on the fort, and they get surprisingly close before they are spotted.  The garrison of the fort is alerted and they sally forth from the fort to deal with what they think are bandits or pirates.  They are completely unprepared for the onslaught of the party and are smashed in short order by the weight, force of arms and magic of the party.  Of the 20 Muslim troops who ventured out of the fort, only 3 manage to stagger off to the east and west to try to raise the alarm.

The party rushes to the fort gate and finds that the gates cannot be closed: one half is off its hinges and the other is jammed open by a heavily laden wagon which has lost a wheel.  They clear out the fort of its last remaining defenders, but not before the signal fire is lit.  No matter, the party has changed the battle plan: drag as many of the Muslim troops into attacking the fort and bleeding them until Prince Michael and the main force can come up.  They hastily barricade the gateway of the fort and await the response of the enemy.

That response comes faster and in greater force than the party had anticipated: it seems that the player characters have launched their attack at almost the exact moment that the Caliphate was closing a deal.  From the walls of the fort, the party can see not hundreds but THOUSANDS of caliphate troops, two heavily laden wagons (which are now being driven SE as fast as the 20 oxen pulling each wagon can go) and two siege towers, each of which bears a glowing red Lunar rune, the mark of the Red Goddess herself.  The siege towers are moving towards the eastern and southern walls of the fort, but before they are in position, the most powerful of the emirs commanding the troops in the area launches an attack.  Four hundred of his finest archers move in and sweep the battlements and gateway with a storm of arrows (luckily, only the cataphract is wounded) and then 500 Muslim infantry assault the gate.

These are good troops, and they outnumber the defenders 50 to one, but the gateway forces them to come at the party head on, and when they do engage with the player characters, their weapons cannot seem to wound the party.  Protected by good armor and shimmering with magic, the party fights in two ranks and soon the gateway is knee deep in bodies.  The minotaur kills a man with each of his first 4 blows and driven mad by the scent of death and blood, goes berserk.  Theleos has invoked the power of his magical armor and turned into were-bear form, and is savaging the enemy with tooth and claw.  Soon he too, goes berserk.

The caliphate troops drop the minotaur at the cost of 6 good men, but a divine intervention brings him back to his feet.  No matter what the Saracens do, it doesn’t seem to matter.  After 10 melee rounds, more than a tenth of the attacking regiment is down, and the caliphate troops have not been able to kill a single member of the party.  And then the minotaur and the werebear charge them.  One man is torn to pieces by Theleos in bear form and his head is thrown into the crowd.  Grumfar gores one man and then tosses his bleeding corpse a dozen feet into the air, and all of this is within plain sight of all the Muslim troops present; the sun is now well up.  It is all just too much for the troops dying before the gate and they begin to crack.  Everyone sees the regiment attempting to storm the gate break and then run screaming in fear.  None of the other regiments panic, but they are all shaken.

The emirs order their Lunar allies to do something to counteract this magic and the magicians of the Red Goddess launch two attacks on the party.  One attack is terrifying enough that the Saracen troops themselves pull away: a pillar of pulsing red light 10 meters tall takes shape and moves towards the party faster than a man can run.  It is a lune, an elemental summoned by the power of the Red Moon, and whose touch brings madness.  It sweeps over some of the player characters and drives 2 of them into catatonic shock, but is then destroyed by the other characters before it can attack again.  The second attack is directed at Arre; the Lunars and their allies have finally figured out who has the magical bow that can fire arrows more than twice the distance of the finest bow in Islam, and a Lunar magician who knows Form/Set Iron turns a soldier’s suit of armor into a magical bolt that strikes Arre in the head. The Lunar then attempts to use his knowledge of sorcery and Lunar magic to Arre’s suit of armor into a iron vise that would crush the life out of him.  (Thad, it would have done enc as damage right to your general hit points, with only your padding and protection to stop it.)   However, Arre’s helm was forged in Imrryr, the Dreaming capital of the Bright Empire and it resists the feeble efforts of a merely human sorcerer.

These two failed attempts are disheartening enough, but the real downer is when the 400 archers manage to get a clear shot at Theleos.  The first regiment of infantry has scattered in terror, and Theleos has moved farther from the gate than Grumfar in the grip of his berserk rage and into the open.  He is charging the next regiment of infantry in line when 400 of the best archers within 100 miles shoot him.  There are 15 criticals, and Theleos does the Ursine Dance of Death…until the priest of Argan Argar calls upon divine intervention to save him, and suddenly, the arrows fall out, and the the giant glowing blue berserk bear gets back up IN PLAIN VIEW OF EVERYONE IN THE CALIPHATE ARMY.

It is at this precise instant that Prince Michael launches his attack.

The prince’s army consists of 1500 Byzantine cataphracts, 600 horse archers and about 1500 infantry. The cataphracts and archers have had time to pick their targets and the first volley of arrows comes out of the sky and strikes down every one of the Saracen commanders.  The second and third volleys sweep across the packed ranks of the Caliphate formations and then the cataphracts and the infantry charge while the horse archers fire at will. The entire Muslim army comes apart at the seams. Of the approximately 5500 caliphate troops present, barely 600 manage to escape to the west and east.  The siege towers and the ox-drawn wagons are taken by the triumphant Greeks, and the plunder is staggering. In addition to personal effects, armor, weapons and horses, the wagons contain more than 2 million silver pieces worth of coins and gold bars, either tax receipts or a very large payment for services rendered.  Prince Michael awards the party members 10,000 silver pieces each for their valor.

While the army re-organizes itself and deals with the loot, the dead and the wounded, the party dusts itself off and investigates the siege towers. They are magical in some way, and have been made with typical Lunar attention to detail: they are exactly alike in every dimension.

Backtracking the towers leads the party to a new road that had been cut into the hills to the NE; it is less than a mile long, and leads to a low ridge where two emplacements have been dug about 30 - 50 meters apart; but the emplacements are surrounded by open pasture; there is nothing to siege here. If the siege towers were to have been put into place here, they would have pointed in the general direction of Constantinople. The party takes what measurements they can, and return to the main army.

Prince Michael has decided to get while the getting is good, and plans to withdraw with all speed along the coast road to the west towards the frontier.  This will enable him to keep the pressure on any Saracen forces that might be trying to organize to his west and also to establish contact with the Byzantine navy, which has a strong presence in these waters. The army pulls out and heads west, and can see the banners of Saracen forces to the east, but there is no close pursuit. The army proceeds west, driving the remnants of the Caliphate’s troops in the area before them, and looting every stick and stone they find in Muslim hands.

Two days later, the army has reached the coast north of Cyprus and re-established contact with the Byzantine fleet; a courier comes ashore with tragic news: Prince Michael’s wife Prokopia, daughter of the emperor, has been assassinated and his manor in Constantinople burned to the ground.  Almost his entire household has been killed, and the few survivors (Dwayne and Keith) are badly wounded. The prince decides to return to the capital immediately, by ship.  His second in command will lead the army back to Akpat. The party decides to return with him as guards.

Return to Constantinople

The party returns to Constantinople with the prince; it is an uneventful journey.  Upon arriving in the capital, the party is finally able to relax a little bit and gets a chance to spend some of their new found wealth, while prince Michael meets with the emperor and has a chance to bury and mourn his wife.

When everyone gets a chance to talk to Lucky and Keith’s troll (who are still recovering from the effects of the poison that coated the weapons of the assassins), they learn that the killers appeared out of nowhere, almost as if they teleported into the private quarters of the princess, and then fought their way out.  Few of the family servants and personal guards survived, but no attempt was made to attack the stables, and the only counter-attack was organized and led by Lucky and the troll (who notices something familiar about the assassins, but can’t quite place it.)  Since the party left on this last military expedition, Keith’s troll has managed to make a profit of 24,000 silver pieces. Lucky has increased his fortune by 8,400 silver pieces; unfortunately for him, he has been banned for life from one of Constantinople’s premier gambling houses. Unfortunately for the owner of that gambling house, he was killed in the city’s main marketplace in broad daylight in a freak accident involving 50 gallons of olive oil, a ton of seaweed, a herd of semi-domesticated goats and a girl named Diana.

Arre begins an analysis of the poison used by the attackers and discovers that a primary component is a plant found only in Spain.  And while the party is involved in spending money to learn skills, spells and bind spirits, the imperial astronomers report that, based on the measurements the party took and the dimensions of the magical siege towers marked with the sigil of the Red Moon, the siege towers were pointed directly at the easternmost wall of the oldest part of the city, the old citadel of Byzantium, and based on the old maps of that area, would have been at the same level as the tops of the walls of the old city.

News has spread through out the city of prince Michael’s latest victory and his popularity surges, yet rumors spread that the prince and his father-in-law (the emperor) have had a disagreement. The emperor seems to be distancing himself from the prince. At this point, the city is distracted from politics by the great summer games, which are thrown around the time of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. The members of the party throw themselves into the myriad competitions with gusto.

While many compete in the music and song contests, no one in the party wins.  A respectable showing is made in the archery and other martial contests, but the real action comes with the races.  There are two horse races leading up to the chariot races that are the climax of any Byzantine games; an obstacle course much like a steeple-chase and a straight out horse race with more than 80 horses competing.  The betting on these two races cannot compare with the wagers placed on the chariot races, but they are still respectable.

The steeple chase is more than a little dangerous, but the party manages to live up to their reputation.  The race is won by a girl named Diana, who rides a pure white horse of almost unearthly beauty.  The great horse race is known even to peoples who never knew the rule of Rome; riders come as far away as the sands of North Africa, the river valleys of India and the plains east of the Caspian sea to compete for the silver wreath awarded to the winner of this race.  Eighty of the finest riders in the known world spur their mounts off the mark when the horns blow to begin this race, but it is one of Byzantium’s own who forges his way into the front rank.  It is Scott’s cataphract.  As a complete unknown, the odds on him to win were 40 to 1; unbeknownst to the party, Prince Michael places 50,000 silver pieces on Scott to win. In a dazzling display of luck and skill, Scott’s cataphract and his mount are first across the finish line, and the Greek crowd goes wild to see one of their own win the greatest horse race in the known world.

On the next to last day of the games, there are only two competitions left; the wrestling and the chariot races which will be the grand climax on the last day of the games. Grumfar (who appears to be human) has entered the wrestling competition and has been beating his competitors into the ground. The final round of wrestling is a bit of a surprise though; word spreads that it will be a private bout for the benefit of the emperor himself, in a small arena just off of the palace grounds. The party enters this arena on the opposite side from which Grumfar’s opponent enters, and immediately notice that many things seem wrong. The other wrestler is huge and almost impossibly broad, and he has 3 companions who wear hooded robes that hide their faces.  In addition, it appears that the emperor is just as surprised as the party is that the last wrestling bout is being given in private for his benefit.

The wrestlers enter the ring when the horn is blown, and lunge at each other.  It is at this point that the magic spells on each cancel the other out, and the party can see Grumfar’s opponent for what he is: a huge, bestial hybrid of man and gorilla, which Arre recognizes as a grahluk, a chaotic monster from the Young Kingdoms Plane.  And when members of the party sense chaos, the battle is joined.  Initially, Grumfar is getting the worst of it, but then his companions join in and stagger the grahluk.  Leon’s character drives his magic blade deep into the grahluk’s back and it roars in agony, but it is Arre who uses an heirloom to invoke Grome, king of the earth elementals in the Young Kingdoms, and a swirling vortex opens beneath the grahluk’s feet and pulls him out of this world, taking Leon’s sword with it.  One of the side effects of this is the abrupt cancellation of the spell holding the grahluk in thrall, and the back blast from this dispels the illusions on the 3 robed figures who entered the area with the departed grahluk: it is a pair of janni, batwinged demons armed with 2 flaming scimitars each, and their master, Malachi of the Iron Castle, greatest of the Moorish magicians.  The party attacks and are aided by a hail of arrows from the emperor’s body guards; the jann explode into balls of fire when slain, and when the smoke clears, only a few drops of blood mark where the Moorish sorcerer stood.  Arre gathers up all the blood he can, in hopes of using it in the future.

Needless to say, the emperor is a bit put out by all of this.  He locks down the capital and cancels the chariot race; the entire city is scoured for any sign of Malachi but he has made his escape.  The party cannot help but wonder what he was doing here; granted, he hates Grumfar.  The minotaur has slain more than a dozen of his Jann servants and made a cloak from their hides; he is a walking insult to the Master of the Iron Castle.  But Malachi dominates the lands between Cadiz and Carthage, Constantinople is hundreds of miles out of his backyard.  And, did he have anything to do with the murder of princess Prokopia?

The emperor continues to distance himself from Prince Michael.  News spreads that the emperor has called up the troops of the northern Greek themes and has mustered his Tagmata, the imperial household cavalry. It appears as if the emperor doesn’t want prince Michael to be the only successful military commander in the capital, and that he plans to move against the Bulgars before the summer is out.

It is at this point that a new emissary arrives from the court of Charlemagne; it is the paladin Oliver!  After presenting himself and the messages he carries to the imperial court, he looks the party up and greets his old friends.  He brings ominous news: more than a dozen assassination attempts have been made against the Frankish king and members of his court in the past 4 months.  All of the attempts involved magic and while most were foiled, Charlemagne has lost 4 of his most loyal followers.  While Roland has been sent to pursue one group of killers into the lands of the northern Slavs (east of Saxony), and Ogier hunted another group into the Pyrenees, Oliver does have some information for the party: paladin Reinald caught one group of assassins and wiped them out before any could escape. Three of them bore strange tattoos and Oliver has a copy of them with him. It is a spider like figure with many legs and a gaping mouth.  When Keith’s troll sees this image, he remembers that he saw a tattoo like that on one of the assassins he fought, and he remembers where he has seen it before:

It is an image of Krarsht, the Mother Mouth, chaos goddess of assassins and corruption.

When Oliver asks you “what is this foul thing, and who are the red magicians who aid these murderers?”, you have an answer.

It appears as if the Lunar empire has brought the cult of a chaos god to Earth, and it has taken hold.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:01, Tue 15 May 2007.
Sign In