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Old 04-08-2020, 11:27 PM   #511
johndallman
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Default Re: Campaign: Facets

Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
The mages of the college had then worked through the Ministry of the Admiralty to get the ship transferred to the ownership of the selkies.
A small thing: that would be spoken of as the Board of Admiralty, or just the Admiralty.

Good write-up!
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Old 04-09-2020, 07:20 PM   #512
tshiggins
 
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Default Re: Campaign: Facets

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
A small thing: that would be spoken of as the Board of Admiralty, or just the Admiralty.

Good write-up!
Fixed, and thanks!
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Old 04-10-2020, 02:25 PM   #513
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Default Re: Campaign: Facets

A very interesting session. More information for the characters to go through.

And yes, The Secret of Roan Inish, is a great movie, love it.

Quote:
Sir Isaac replied they had full 21st Century anti-terrorist kits, including body armor similar to that worn by the members of the Red Rocks Lodge, and what he understood were called “FN P90 machine-pistols with standard-issue armor-piercing rounds.”
That's a good start, though if they can get their hands on that kind of firepower, I'd personally add one or two Daewoo USAS-12s to the mix. ;-)

Excellent writeup.
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Old 05-27-2020, 07:46 PM   #514
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Default Re: Campaign: Facets

The last two sessions resolved the fight in the catacombs. It took us longer than usual, because we had to figure out the best way to play with an online application, since we all wanted to observe “shelter at home” protocols.

In addition, the environment proved complex (“You know, fightin’ in a basement offers a lot of difficulties, number one bein’, you’re fightin’ in a basement!”) and then the bad guys made some tactical decisions the group didn’t expect and weren’t sure how to handle.

So, it wound up taking two sessions to work through.

To help visualize the situation, I used this map of the Paris catacombs.
https://i.redd.it/c81bc5exd4o21.jpg

The area where the action took place is found was La Crypte de La Passion which is also known as the “shinbone rotunda.” On the map, it’s a bit more than halfway down, offset to the right, in the tunnels marked in red.

The tunnels lie below the Avenue René Cory, south of what would one day be the “Denfer Shelter” HQ of the Resistance in 1944. In 1712, this marked a sparsely populated area of Paris, south of the Seine.

They catacombs were not as extensive in 1712 as they would be by the late 19th Century, but they were quite sizable, even then. The main difference is they wouldn’t be used as an ossuary for several more decades, so it mostly remained a quarry for structural stone.

I tried to observe the dates where the map had them, but didn’t worry too terribly much about whether or not the Crypte de la Passion section actually existed in 1712. It was too cool to not use.

##

Characters Present

Dr. Henrietta "Indiana" Johnson -- A personable, age 29-and-holding Anthropologist who specializes in the pre-Columbian indigenous people of the American Desert Southwest. A Native of Apache Junction, AZ, "Indiana" is good with people and has been fascinated by American Indian religion and folklore since she was a child. Henrietta speaks Apache fluently, and not-so-secretly wishes archaeology could be more like Raiders of the Lost Ark and less like digging in a trench with a trowel and a toothbrush -- Played by Debbie S.

Dr. Arthur "A.J." Jamison -- a retired NASA scientist with a home in one of Moab's nicer canyon sub-developments, who volunteers for 4CSAR because he needs to do something to get out of the house. -- Played by Anten S.

Aurelia R. Lockrin -- A young woman with a shady past who teaches History at Grand County High School (Home of the Red Devils!), and volunteers for 4CSAR because she's a bit of an adrenalin junkie, and likes the companionship. -- played by Bennie Rae P.

Dr. Belody "Doc" Bascher -- a local veterinarian for both large and small animals, who frequently fixates on her job and uses 4CSAR as her primary social outlet. -- played by Samantha H.

Beatrice "B" Lawrence -- U.S. Army veteran who works for a local air charter service as a helicopter mechanic. A cynic about men, she is accompanied by "Grunt," the biggest, best-trained pit-bull anybody has ever seen (purchased as an ally, and a totally badass dog, even before it was possessed by what appears to be a benign “foo” spirit) -- played by Bernetta W.

Claudia Abigail Tavulari, member of the NASA Quantum Physics Research Team, and an old friend of Arthur Jamison’s. The team has been helping Arthur research the portal physics, on the sly. – Played by Tisa T.

Stephen Mack, another member of the NASA Quantum Physics Research Team, a former U.S. Marine Corps test pilot, and outdoors enthusiast. – Played by Ragan S.

Frank Moses -- A former Marine who quit his job as a trooper with the Utah Highway Patrol (UHP). Moses formerly volunteered with 4CSAR and has an interest in Doc Bascher. Frank has spent the past several months living in the Dark Canyon base camp on the 1918 side of the portal. -played by Mike H.

Millicent “Millie” Brown – A member of the Columbine Lodge of Denver, and descendant of the Unsinkable Margaret “Molly” Brown. Currently an apprentice of the Invisible College of Thoth-Hermes, seconded out to the members of the Red Rocks Lodge. Owner of a large, well-trained Savannah Cat, named Apophis. – Played by Kaitlynn S.

Roger Vaughn – Another member of the Columbine Lodge of Denver, son of a prominent family. Currently a member of the Invisible College of Thoth-Hermes, sent along on the raid because he has knowledge of modern weapons and tactics. -Played this session by Benjamin H.

NPCs Present

Grunt: Beatrice's ally, a large pit-bull possessed by a protective "foo" spirit.

##

Late May in Britain proved pleasant enough, and the former Lady Courtenay, now renamed as the Bhean Ní Mháille (aka, Lady O’Malley), set sail with her selkie crew from the wharf at Limehouse, where the new captain, Donal Vershoyle, had put her in for some re-fitting. A slender man with dark hair, dark eyes and pale skin, who stood about 5’6”, Capt. Vershoyle moved with economic grace, and his tenor voice could be heard clearly down the length of the three-masted schooner.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/C...about_1720.jpg

The voyage across the channel didn’t take long, and the Bhean Ní Mháille docked in Calais with a week to get to Paris (the leaders of the Invisible College decided to avoid Le Havre, for now…).

The group slipped into Paris the day of the new moon, and soon located the Hotel du Bohéme, on the Avenue René, and quickly identified the entrance to this section of the catacombs, not far to the north. This area of Paris, south of La Seine proved far less densely populated than it would be, in their world in another 300 years. In fact, farmland started a stone’s throw away, to both the south and the west.

The Hotel du Bohéme lay a bit inside the city, surrounded by fairly quiet and rather affluent residential neighborhoods, with the Palais du Luxembourg visible to the north.

The night of the new moon came and went, on June 4, and the group arrived at the locked structure that marked the main entrance of the catacombs, well after sunset. Aurelia quickly picked the large, primitive lock and, once they’d secured the door behind them and found the steep stairs down, the group donned night-vision goggles.

The goggles did them no good, at all, in the pitch-black tunnel beneath, so the group lit up flashlights they’d covered with cloth to make them dim, and proceeded cautiously south, in the general direction of the Hotel du Bohéme.

According to the map and the briefing, the quarry tunnels in this area remained in good shape and, during the day, actually saw a fair amount of intermittent traffic. As such, the entry to the catacombs that lay beneath the Hotel du Bohéme opened into some side tunnels the Invisible College had carefully re-excavated magically, after they’d grown unstable and suffered some cave-ins.

This secret set of short tunnels, long abandoned and thought thoroughly unusable, allowed the staff of the Hotel du Bohéme entry into the main set of quarry tunnels at a couple of points, through secret doors. The secret tunnels also had a number of carefully concealed viewing ports that the staff had monitored carefully when the portal opening grew nigh, and for a few days afterwards.

A.J. had strongly advised the group hit the hidden portal complex the day after it closed, since he figured the djinn and their ghűl minions would have relaxed after the frenetic activity that usually accompanied portal openings.

The Red Rocks Lodge team had given themselves enough time to work their way through several kilometers of winding tunnels, and reach what would one day be the Crypte de la Passion in time to coordinate their attack with the assault on the hotel.

That proved wise, as the group – strung out a bit so as to let everyone move more quietly – approached the section of the main tunnel, just beneath the Hotel du Bohéme. Up in the lead, Steven suddenly raised a clenched fist and everyone froze in place.

After a couple of minutes, Steven stepped back and sent for Aurelia, who had decided to stay behind and cover the rear with her relatively silent bow. Aurelia worked her way forward, and Steven whispered for everyone else to remain in place while the two of them advanced.

After a few seconds, a heavy, iron-bound wooden door not on their maps appeared in the distance, blocking the tunnel. Steven clicked off his flashlight and had Aurelia do the same, and then he motioned for her to watch.

After a few minutes, Aurelia saw a flicker through her night-vision goggles, and realized a light-source must lay behind a wall to the left of the door. She flipped her goggles up a couple of times to see if the light was bright enough to see with her naked eyes, but couldn’t really spot it.

Aurelia and Steven crept forward a bit, Steven stopped, and the former high school art history teacher and sometime art thief continued forward alone. She crawled along the tunnel until she reached a point next to the problematic door, directly beneath the light source, listened a long time, heard movement, and carefully raised up enough to take a peek.

The aperture appeared to be a wide, cross-shaped dark spot where four blocks of stone came together, a couple of inches wide in all directions, at about chest-height – well below where most people would look. However, Aurelia immediately saw that it opened out quickly, and became a wide-enough cavity that someone could stick their head into and get a decent view up the tunnel.

It also offered a clear view of the offending door.

(continued...)
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Last edited by tshiggins; 05-31-2020 at 10:29 AM.
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Old 05-27-2020, 07:49 PM   #515
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(...continued)

As she watched, a flicker of movement appeared on the other side, and Aurelia realized dim light must leak into the room from somewhere deeper in – and that illuminated a sentry posted inside. She slowly sank back down, out of sight, and eased her way back to Steven.

Once the two rejoined the group, they motioned that everyone move back up the tunnel, a bit, and a whispered debate commenced.

The party knew a secret door into the tunnels behind the sentry post lay just beyond the new door. Among the spells Millie had hung were Daze, Mass Daze and Sleep, and the group quickly agreed that the use of one of those would let Aurelia pick the lock of the new door and gain them access to the public tunnels south, as well as the secret entrance in the wall on the other side.

However, a disagreement quickly developed about what to do, once they’d made it through. Part of the group wanted to take out the unaware sentry, so as to secure their rear, but others wanted to leave him in place, lest the doppelganger staff of the Hotel du Bohéme discover his body and prepare themselves for trouble.

Were that to happen, the attack by Master Cooper and his men might suffer the sort of bloodbath they instead hoped to inflict, and (even worse) it might cause the djinn to send reinforcements down the secret tunnels behind the Red Rocks Lodge portal assault team.

Given that the time of the coordinated attack still lay more than an hour in the future, elimination of the sentry would force the Red Rocks Lodge team to try to take out the hotel, themselves, so as to secure their rear, and then proceed to the portal site.

That seemed entirely too risky, so the group decided to have Millie neutralize the sentry so Aurelia could get them through the door, and then move quickly along before he had time to recover. With that in mind, they decided to use the “Daze” spell, since that would last for several minutes and allow them plenty of time to bypass the post and lock the door, behind them.

With that, Steven, Aurelia and a very nervous Millie (who had trained for this sort of thing, as part of her cabal “summer camps,” but had never actually done it…) slipped forward. Aurelia positioned herself at the door lock, Steven got his 9 mill out in case things went pear-shaped, and Millie peered through the peep-hole until the sentry moved and she could identify the target.

Eventually, the bored sentry shifted, again (good Stealth rolls, by everybody) and Millie triggered the spell. It went off without a hitch, and the sentry suddenly stopped moving.

Crossing her fingers in the hope that everything had gone well, Aurelia flicked on a penlight and, hearing nothing untoward, bent to the lock. This one took only slightly more effort than the one at the catacomb entrance, and she had it open within seconds.

A quick flash of the penlight down the tunnel brought the rest of the team forward, and the group moved through the door quickly and quietly. Once everyone made it past the sentry point, Aurelia clicked the door shut, relocked it, and moved down the tunnel to join the rest of the party.

Within an hour, the group had made it to the complex of wide, high tunnels that lay north and west of the Crypte de la Passion.

The briefing they’d had from the Invisible College, plus the maps, indicated the Crypte chamber, itself, was U-shaped, with the bottom of the U to the east, and the limbs extending westward from there.

The main part of the center of the “U” consisted of a huge block of stone. Just behind the stone to the west, a secret door opened in the wall opposite the hallway from the north, and led to a short, hidden hallway that extended to the west. A relatively thin wall (only a foot thick, or so) separated the hidden hallway from the open passage that entered the southern limb of the“U”
from the west.

To the west of the Crypte, behind the stone massif, the hidden hallway opened into a guard room, part of which had been blocked off to form a darkened chamber with an spy-hole and gun port that covered the northern entryway. In addition to the secret door behind the stone block that opened into the Crypte, itself, a second short hallway further west led to a second secret door that gave access to the tunnel complex.

However, the main complex of secret room lay mostly to the north of the Crypte, closer to the base of the “U”.Another darkened spy chamber with a firing port in the north wall covered the entire Crypte chamber proper, and that firing port and the one to the west set up a deadly cross-fire that covered the entire northern limb of the “U”.

The portal room, itself, lay directly east of the base of the “U” – and, in fact, that entire east wall of the Crypt had been artificially constructed, 70 years previously, to conceal the portal opening, proper.

A third secret entrance in the southeast corner of the room led to the hallway that opened into the portal chamber, and the doorway to the north that gave access to the hidden chambers behind the north wall of the Crypte. It also led to a short hallway to the southeast that led to a larger room that served as the nerve-center of the hidden portal complex.

Usually, the group had learned, visitors from their world who came through the portal went to the room directly north, where representatives of the Invisible College debriefed them and checked their equipment and clothing to ensure no anachronisms had slipped in.

The Invisible College personnel also updated them on current events of the new world to which they’d traveled, and introduced them to a guide who took them through the tunnels north, to the hotel. Visitors were also reminded they’d arrived in a version of France much more paranoid, and resentful of the Angevin Empire, than the France of their world had been toward its England.

A.J.’s plan was to take the western guard area first, with a quick and (hopefully) silent attack from the western tunnels. Once that was secured, they could prevent the djinn and the ghűl from fleeing when they assaulted the main portal area.

As they entered the main part of the labyrinth from the north, Steven, Millie and Roger split off from the group and moved down the tunnel that eventually led to the northern entryway in the Crypte. The rest of the party moved quietly through the tunnels to approach from the west.

About the time the separate trio reached the bend in the northern tunnel that led to the Crypte, the rest of the group had reached the one that led to the west side of the hidden guard room. Aurelia and A.J., whose bow and crossbow allowed them to kill nearly silently, crept forward and, through their night-vision goggles, soon saw some dim light ahead.

At that point, the two of them flipped up their goggles and triggered the Dark Vision spells they’d asked the British mages to cast for them. Now able to see perfectly in the blackness, they immediately spotted a bored sentry loitering in the dark hall ahead, right next to the secret door that led to the hallway to the guard chamber.

The sentry had night vision goggles, which meant he couldn’t see as well as they, and had no peripheral vision. The ghűl had also shape-shifted to appear as a large human and wore clothes appropriate to the period, but had his hand in an open satchel slung from his shoulders, easily large enough to hold an FN P90 with a suppressor.

Also, because they knew what to look for, A.J. and Aurelia noticed the period clothing concealed a 21st Century ballistic vest, with inserted plates (good Perception rolls for both).

A.J. took a bead on the ghűl’s head with his crossbow as Aurelia crept forward. She managed to get very close, A.J. shot him in the head, Aurelia made sure of the kill and then motioned the rest of the group forward.

The party quickly took positions around the secret door as Aurelia found the latch. She opened it up, and Frank and Beatrice took the lead.

The group moved quickly down the short hallway, and A.J. used a communication spell to mindlink to Steven. The former NASA test pilot nodded to Roger, who triggered an illusion spell and sent a huge brown bear ambling down the blackened hallway from the north.

At that same moment, the rest of the party popped open the door to the main guard chamber. Two ghűl sitting at a table had been looking toward the sound of automatic weapons fire from the sentry room, and whipped their heads around in shock as the party burst in. They got cut down mercilessly.

A third near eastern hallway entrance ran to try to escape into the Crypte through the secret door, there, and A.J. and Beatrice gave chase.

As the Frank and Doc Bascher moved to the door to the sentry chamber, it suddenly popped open and a grenade skittered across the floor to stop at Frank’s feet. The former Marine recognized it as a flash-bang, threw his arm up over his eyes, and managed to shake off the blast.

Doc Bascher, standing a couple of yards away, also managed to avoid the worst of it, but several other members of the party weren’t so lucky and took a few seconds to clear their senses. The veterinarian and former Utah state trooper engaged in a fierce, short range exchange of gunfire through the doorway with the sentry ghűl, inside.

The ghűl clearly had at least some familiarity with his FN P90, but his “spray-and-pray” tactics indicated a clear lack of expertise. A couple of bullets thudded into the ballistic vests of Frank and Doc Bascher, and the veterinarian took a bullet in the foot as the rest of the group behind them scrambled to avoid ricochets.

(continued...)
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Old 05-27-2020, 07:50 PM   #516
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Default Re: Campaign: Facets

(...continued)

The nasty little firefight ended when Frank put a bullet in the cheek of the ghűl and managed to stun the creature and partially blind it, and then annoyed Doc Bascher (who had triggered a healing spell to take care of her foot) shot it in the face with her 12-guage.

The last ghűl reached the secret door to the Crypte chamber, popped it open, took a breath to shout the alarm, and a shot from Steven’s rifle blew its brains across the opposite wall.

The former Marine pilot had moved far enough forward to cover the secret door, once the automatic fire that shredded the illusionary bear had showed him the exact position of the firing port. He’d realized the person inside couldn’t see very far up the northern hallway.

Inside the secured guardroom, the group quickly moved to the now-open secret entrance, and Aurelia and Beatrice took up positions so they could cover the northern limb of the “U.” Millie realized that Roger, Steven and the two women had the northern part of the chamber covered, and dashed back through the labyrinth to come into the bloody sentry chamber from the west.

(This ended the first session. After this, things went kinda pear-shaped, for the party.)

As Millie arrived in the sentry chamber, she saw the Claudia continued to struggle with the effects of the flash-bang, and Frank and Doc Bascher were patching themselves up. Meanwhile, Steven and Roger had moved into the Crypte chamber, proper, and were hugging the north wall try to get an idea of the exact position of the firing port, there.

She also saw Doc Bascher decide that more bullet-sponges might be a good idea, and the veterinarian triggered a spell she’d learned during the month Beatrice and Claudia convalesced. The bodies of the dead ghűl began to stir, lurched to their feet, and moaned as zombies under Bascher’s control.

Steven and Roger spotted the firing port pretty quickly, when the ghűl inside began to fire blindly into the dark Crypte chamber, spraying bullets liberally from his FN P90.

Steven realized the hole was too small to fire back through, and positioned himself so he couldn’t get hit by any of the fire. He then over-watched the section of the wall to the southeast where the secret door to the rest of the complex lay.

Meanwhile, A.J. realized the blind-fire made movement down the northern limb quite dangerous, so he triggered one of the spells he requested. A doorway appeared in the southern part of the hidden hallway, and opened an entrance into the southern limb of the “U.” A.J. also put the secret door wall section on overwatch, and the rest of the group moved to join him.

Suddenly the secret door to the main portal area opened and a hand briefly appeared. A.J. and Steven both missed the small target at that range, and another grenade skittered across the floor. A second later, a plume of thick green smoke popped from the canister at the base of the western wall, and began to fill the already black room.

The blind fire from the northern wall continued to send bullet zipping through the smoke cloud as the party stopped, temporarily unsure of what to do as the smoke continued to spread. The hand appeared at the sentry door, again, and a well-thrown frag grenade landed near enough to A.J.’s group that several people took damage and had to trigger healing spells.

Frank shouted that the only way to stop the smoke-grenade was to drop it in a bucket of water – which none of them had. Still, Aurelia decided to see if she could get to it, and chuck it through the secret door, so they weren’t the only ones being blinded.

However, as Aurelia started to move into the rapidly-expanding smoke cloud, a burst of automatic fire sent a couple of bullets whizzing past her face, randomly, and she ducked back out of the line of fire. To the south, the rest of the group decided they didn’t want to risk another grenade and decided to trust their vests and healing spells, and began to feel their way along the southern wall, to try to reach the secret door.

A.J. began to work his way up the eastern wall to try to find the smoke grenade, when a burst of fire, larger than the frag grenade, engulfed the southern limb and cooked some of the group, there. Though injured, none of them went unconscious and they triggered healing spells.

Someone had started to sling magic at them.

Frank decided to hold back and wait for Doc Bascher’s zombies, as did Claudia and Beatrice, while the northern group tried to decide what to do. They didn’t want to try to cross the entire chamber to reach the southeast corner with someone firing into the room, and the thick smoke meant they couldn’t see more than six inches in front of their faces, anyway, even with Dark Vision.

At that point, A.J. realized he had to do something, and moved through the smoke-filled open chamber until he bumped into the east wall. Once there, he triggered another spell to breach the portal chamber.

He started to step through and a ghűl sent a stream of 5.7mm bullets past his face. A.J. triggered yet another hung spell and put a stone wall up that sealed off the northern doorway to the briefing room, blocking all access from the sentry rooms, and then yelled for support.

Steven dashed across the room toward the sound of A.J.’s voice, just as Henrietta and the others in the group to the south saw a sudden flash of fire in the smoke south of A.J.s position. A tracer came from it and another fire spell went off, and everyone realized that had to be the source.

Doc Bascher, thoroughly crisped and seriously annoyed, sent her zombies at the source as Frank fired at it. Meanwhile, Henrietta continued forward to reach try to reach the secret door.

Inside that door, the sentry noticed the smoke roiling into the hallway to the north, saw the wall go up, and realized someone had made a breach. The ghűl turned and began to fire up the hallway in A.J.’s direction while, behind him, a blue-skinned sorceress also noticed the breach.

About then, Roger realized he needed to do something, and cast another spell to summon animals. This time, he went for a swarm of ferrets, and sent them into the smoke at the flashes, only to have a fireball detonate near them, kill them all, and catch him in the periphery of the blast, too.

Undaunted, he decided to try to cast the swarm of ferrets into the sentry room behind the firing port (which he could sort of see into, as it wasn’t filled with smoke). Meanwhile, the zombies began to lurch toward the new location of the flash, and soon closed.

Inside the secret door, Henrietta arrived and took a swing at the sentry’s head, before she noticed the si’lat sorceress. She didn’t do much, but Frank, Beatrice and Millie, coming up quickly, put him down hard.

That cleared A.J. to move down the hallway as the sorceress hit the group with another fire spell, only to have Henrietta respond with magics cast from the end of the staff she’d taken from the first si’lat.

The archaeologist’s spell froze the sorceress in a block of ice.

Outside, in the smoke-filled chamber, the zombies converged on the last position of the flash, and Beatrice sent Grunt to attack. Steven also took a shot, but squeezed the trigger before he'd seated the stock firmly against his shoulder. Not only did he miss the target, he dislocated his own shoulder and accidentally hit Grunt. (Crit fail!)

As Grunt yelped in pain and crawled back toward Doc Bascher, Roger realized something even worse had just happened. Smoke began to roil into the sentry chamber from a sudden opening that appeared in the northern stone wall.

All the ghűl sentries, inside, now had a way to attack into the room.

Steven noticed it about the same time and Aurelia, over by the entrance to the northern hallway at the edge of the smoke cloud, heard their shouts of alarm. She drew her bow and went on overwatch lest any ghűl appear in front of her.

Over by the zombies, a bright metal scimitar began to cut into them. Doc Bascher soon realized something was up and moved to help her zombies.

Steven had to decide whether to go that way, or cover the sudden breach that had appeared behind him. After a moment, he turned to support Roger, leaving Doc Bascher and the zombies to deal with the mage hiding in the smoke -- and seemingly unaffected by it.

Inside the complex to the south, the action had reached a crescendo. Once Henrietta had frozen the sorceress in a block of ice, Millie cast a spell to destroy the air inside of it – including the air in the si’lat’s lungs. Increasingly desperate, the sorceress began to mentally trigger one fire spell after another, damaging the group, partially melting the ice, and making the southern hallway into an oven.

Beatrice and Frank, by now repeatedly injured and terribly fatigued, began to fire into the rapidly-melting ice-block, only to have their shots stopped by the si’lat’s ballistic vest. A.J. meanwhile, dashed past the sorceress to get out of the blast radius of her spells.

He turned around, drew a bead on her, and shot her through the back of the head with his crossbow as the ice began to crack.

Outside, Roger and Steven fired automatic weapons through the breach. Steven’s superior skill (and his battle-rifle) began to make the difference, as the zombies and Doc Bascher reached the sorcerer.

The sorcerer turned out to be a djinn – and no fool. He soon understood that, despite his power, the day was lost and, transforming himself once again into smoke, blew past Aurelia and exited via the hallway to the north.

That ended the session.

(continued...)
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Old 05-27-2020, 07:50 PM   #517
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Default Re: Campaign: Facets

(...continued)

Funny Quotes

(The party discusses how to deal with the utter blackness of the catacomb tunnels, at night.)
Beatrice: Hey! Don’t we have the glowy bird?
Claudia: What about my bird?
Beatrice: It would make a great distraction.
Claudia: You can’t use my bird as bait!
Beatrice: I didn’t say, ‘bait’! You said, ‘bait’!

Regan (OOC): Did anybody take, “Animal Control”?
GM: That would be a Doc Bascher thing, and she went with dead things, instead.
Samantha(sorta OOC): I like dead things! They’re useful!

Frank: Three hundred pounds of hamsters! You could send 1200 hamsters down that corridor!

(Steve, fumbling around in the dark, asks if Aurelia is coming to help.)
Bennie Rae (OOC): What happened, the last time, when Aurelia tried to get in close?! A broken leg! Twice! The same leg!

(Steve shoots Grunt.)
Beatrice: I shoot Steve!
Steve: Steve isn’t the one who put a dog in a gunfight!

Beatrice: A group of ferrets is called a “busy-ness of ferrets.”
Doc Bascher: I like, “a confusion of ferrets.”

##
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Old 05-28-2020, 03:51 AM   #518
coronatiger
 
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Trondheim, Norway
Default Re: Campaign: Facets

Always an exciting read. Thanks for sharing, tshiggins.
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Campaign logs: Chaotic Pioneering / Confessions of a Forked Tongue
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Old 05-30-2020, 06:54 PM   #519
SionEwig
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
Default Re: Campaign: Facets

Once again an excellent write-up. Looks like both groups acted appropriately to a changing tactical situation. Nice job by the PCs.
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Old 05-30-2020, 08:27 PM   #520
tshiggins
 
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
Default Re: Campaign: Facets

Quote:
Originally Posted by SionEwig View Post
Once again an excellent write-up. Looks like both groups acted appropriately to a changing tactical situation. Nice job by the PCs.
They struggled a bit, with this one, and some of them spent several rounds frozen in place, trying to figure out what to do.

The fact that the bad guys had grenades and area-effect spells that acted as grenades, combined with the obstructed vision, really threw them for a loop.

Anten was the one to take the initiative, here. He loaded up on spells that allowed him to breach, so he was the one able to get past the kill-box.

He and Ragan also helped Kaitlynn pick her spells, which proved quite effective.

Also, while I'm using the Ritual Path Magic rules, the spell list is one someone converted to RPM from the basic magic system. I didn't want to toss the group (who were mostly n00bs, way back when) into free-form spell creation.

With that in mind, I'm using the section, "Magic Rituals" on page 8 of G:Magic, to determine how well the mages know the spell, which determines the trigger conditions.

The si'lat knew her spells well enough that she doesn't need to speak a trigger word, and she's self-disciplined enough to not trigger the spell unintentionally.

That meant she remained an effective spell-caster, even when frozen in an airless block of ice. That messed with the group a bit, too.
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