I'm six session of play into the game I mentioned back in March. While there has been some groans when they discovered yet another faction and complexity to the situation (a pre-invasion rebel group might have infiltrated the currently known rebel group), all of the players are still in the playing and seems to look forward to the next session.Former post in this thread, where I mentioned setting up a new game. Ending it with:
Two of the four players knows each other since before, but otherwise none of us know each other from before. So this can be really interesting, or a complete disaster.
The player characters are:
One half Vulcan from Star Trek (doing her best to hide her "elf-like" ears).
One Inquisitor from WH40K, that have shown himself able to dispel/cancel out magic
One elemental magic using warrior from Wheel of Time
One from late 19th century London, with training in some form of magic the other players, but not their characters, have recognized as necromancy.
For some, they have ended up in a more magical world than the one they came from, to others they can only use a fraction of the magic they once could wield.
Thanks to the three individual that was summoned at the same time, they got some simple clothes, some money, and some form of identification tag giving them the status of "friends of the Empire." Sticking out like sore thumbs, they pretty much had people following them around wherever they went in the city.
The temple they turned up at have been referred to as:
* Temple of the Celestial Order by an Empire from the north that occupied the area almost two decades earlier
* Temple of Ba'al by the locals, and the leader of the rebels is referred to as the chosen of Ba'al
* Temple of the ancient ones by a bedouin like people (one of two larger refugee groups from the south, since a large country there turned into a desert and now is overrun with undeads)
The Empire managed to invade while the locals were busy fighting of an orc invasion. Since then, the Empire has been busy fighting rebels and the war against the orcs then kind of inherited. According to the refugees, the land died after an orc army (let into the city by dwarfs) destroyed the temple in their capitol down there. The orc attacks have been focused on the city the characters turned up in, and it is believed they are after the temple there. So far, the Empire's chariots have easily defeated any army out in the fields, but any troops the Empire has sent into the great forests have been slaughtered.
The chosen of Ba'al was believed to hide in the same forest.
As they found out they can't be more than 2 km (about 1.25 miles) away from each other without all of them getting a severe headache, and at least two of them want to get back to their old world, they decided they needed to figure out more about how they were summoned. As the local rebels seemed to be amateurs, the Ba'al priests apparently never managed to summon anyone (and the lady from London thinks that Ba'al means the devil), and the priests from the Empire obviously has been able to summon people, they decided to get the local head honcho of the Empire to trust them.
After contemplating infiltrating the rebels, they changed their mind, and went to track down the three individuals that the priests of the Empire intended to summon. As they had suspected, those three had went on a mission to track down the chosen by Ba'al. Not being expert trackers, their task became a bit easier after they not only followed three people, but an additional fifty Empire soldiers. Which still they managed to muck up, and started to follow the trail of an orc raiding party. Luckily for them, they managed to spot an ambush by some orc scouts and defeat them. The former inquisitor was a bit extra happy by realizing it wasn't the kind of orcs he knew about. A mind-meld later, and they had figured out they had been heading straight for an orc village.
After doing a strategic retreat out of the forest, following the edge quite a bit more, they found two dead soldiers from the Empire. Both bleed to death after being shot by arrows made by a much higher precision than anything else they seen so far in that world. The arrow heads being long and narrow to better punch through armor; and having a triangular cross section, making it harder to stop any bleeding.
A blood trail lead them back to an ambush site where several soldiers of the Empire were found dead, and signs of injured people fleeing in all directions. They followed the quite obvious track of the largest group and the ones pursuing them. A couple of hours later, they came upon a group of soldiers surrounding a clearing with a grove in it, with a creak on the other side. These soldiers were the first they saw wearing mail armor (they learned a bit later it's most likely made by dwarfs). While spread a bit thin, they estimated there being 60-80 soldiers to be able to surround the area. By being able to surprise them, having quite some luck with shooting arrows at them, and with some display of magic; the soldiers thought they were being under attack by a lot larger force than just four, routing them.
The three they had been searching for were among those that had been surrounded. Out of the original fifty Empire soldiers, only seventeen remained. None of the three had anything useful to share about their distance predicament, or how they could be sent back, but perhaps people at their home could. The players decided to help them with their mission, and a mind meld on a wounded prisoner later, they knew the chosen of Ba'al was at a fort a few hours march from where they were. The good news was that the fort seemed to be at a very low readiness, and the three had some clay discs that could give them iron skin and healing which would make them pretty much invulnerable for a while. The bad news was that there were a hundred soldiers at the fort, beside the chosen of Ba'al and the about dozen well equipped soldiers he hadn't sent on the ambush. They decided they had a chance if they could get there before any of the ones fleeing could get there and raise the alarm, and if they could do it while being nighttime.
They did pull it off, with a shock and awe attack, taking out half of the posted guards almost immediately, setting up their seventeen soldiers (lacking the iron skin) covering four of the five barracks for the soldiers, creating a magical stone wall in front of the door of the fifth barrack. The character from WoT, and the leader of the three, rushed toward the sixth building; the commandant's house. Directly inside, they faced two of the chosen of Ba'al's personal troops. The Londoner came in close behind them, but instead of assisting in the fight -- and they had some trouble with them -- she rounded them and checked the doors instead. Behind the first door, there were several men almost ready to don their armor. As the door opened toward her, she slammed the door shut, and jammed it with a chair; managing to hold it long enough for the other two to finish of their opponents, so they could block the door with a quite heave desk that was in the room. Meanwhile, she had opened the other two doors, finding an empty office, and one bedroom with only one person that she ended up in a sword-fight with; the man they were looking for. He managed to hold her off until she got some assistance, by the leader of the three throwing himself over him and started to wrestle. She however ended the wrestling match with a good kick the the chosen of Ba'al's head.
With the chosen of Ba'al captured, they quickly retreated. Had it not been for the iron skin magic, at least two of them had been wounded with at least one of them losing an arm. Now, it had completely mitigated all the damage on the first one, and the arm was just wounded but still usable for the second one.
We ended that session as they had managed to get far enough into the forest to dare set up camp for the night, continuing with some one-on-one for the half vulcan as she mind-melded with the prisoner. Considering what she learned, it will be interesting to see how she will tell it to the others the next time.
Well, that was a long-winded way of saying I have one game going, and it hasn't crashed and burned yet.