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Old 01-20-2014, 05:55 AM   #1
Icelander
 
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Location: Iceland*
Default Treasure from the Sheikh of the Grinning Skull Oasis

The PCs in my long-standing fantasy campaign have recently succeeded in defeating the feared Sheikh Jarir Ar-Rabi, Lord of the Grinning Skull, a legendary raider chief who terrorised travellers for hundreds of miles around his lair in the most inhospitable part of the Plains of Purple Dust and the desert of Raurin, the spell-scarred ruinlands where the Empire of Imaskar once stood.

The Sheikh was lord over several hundred hard-bitten bandits and had accumulated considerable loot over 30+ years of unquestioned mastery of this part of the world. The oasis has been built up and provides several defensible stone keeps, as well as airy and comfortable housing for the elite of his men. There are also treasure chambers overflowing with loot.

His men own at least one horse each personally, with the richer owning from 2-6 horses and generally a racing camel or two. There is a 'common' herd of almost a thousand camels which is used for the raiding operations of the band, more than half of them working beasts, but a full 400 being racing camels suited for warfare.

Armament was similarly liberal, in that personal preferences (and tolerance for heat) rather than economy dictated whether a light mail shirt was worn and some of the bandits were armoured as fairly heavy cavalry. Swords, spears, jarids and bows were easily affordable even by the least of the Sheik's band, since he only accepted into his service proven warriors and raiders able to elude the justice of the governments of Murghom and Mulhorand, not to mention the tribes of the desert.

The campaign is set in a magical world and among the retinue of the Sheikh there was a wizard with Magery 4 and a priest of a very questionable cult with Power Investiture 5. Apart from that, commanders of Mulhorandi and Murghomi cavalry sent to exact retribution on the bandits for particularly daring raids would be armed with magical weaponry and carry all sorts of magical trinkets. And the Raurin is studded with ruins where magical treasures can be found and the bandits probably spent almost as much time seeking out and looting old tombs as they did robbing passerby.

All in all, the Sheikh is a significant enough character and powerful enough so that he was rocking an arsenal of awesome magical gear. During the battle where the PCs slew the Sheikh and his retinue, I statted out the effects of some of that gear, but often, I just assumed that the Sheikh and his closest cronies had between +2 and +10 to all sorts of stats or rolls 'because of magic', allowing the precise origin and shape of the magical trinkets that granted the bonuses to be determined when I had the leisure to do so.

I've determined that the Sheikh wore magical mail and his lance, spear and sword were all magical. He also carried a combination bow case / quiver which had enough extradimensional space to carry his war bow, hunting bow, lance and several spears and a fairly extensive collection of jarids of various lengths. His lance glowed a bright green when he was using it and his war bow shot arrows crackling with electricity.

His pet wizard, the skinny and greasy-haired half-elf Al-Warrakh had, among other things, a wand which could conjure giant scorpions.

The jackal-and-bustard themed death priest Abu Jafar no doubt had an extensive collection of magical items, but the manner of his death was such that their effects, if short of 'complete immunity to damage', were irrelevant in the combat. As such, I'm open to suggestions. Abu Jafar was powerful enough to construct* magical items for himself and for others in the band, so don't stint.

There were also several lieutenants, some of them powerful enough to justify having interesting magical items.

I'm looking for any and all ideas on what would be cool treasures to include among the rest of the bandit leaders and what powers to give the Sheikh's gear.

What does a green glow around a lance-tip signify in terms of magical powers?

What sort of magic gear did Abu Jafar carry?

What magical items would they have found in Imaskari or Rauric survivor state ruins that they did not carry as part of their combat gear and would therefore be found in the treasure chambers?

*With the rules I'm using for magical item construction, he'd be able to make anything with 150 energy or less with Quick-and-Dirty rules and would be able to count every day spent on enchanting with Slow and Sure as 10-100 days, depending on his willingness to make a penalised roll and whether he wanted to make the items at his full skill or accept skill 15.
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Last edited by Icelander; 01-21-2014 at 04:38 AM.
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