#dirthari

[dalish-farther-roam]

Dungeons and Dragon Age

Tonight we played both games, the dungeons And the dragons. And also I guess the... Age? Anyway, in my Dragon Age d&d game, a lot of shit happened and I wanna talk about it ‘cause I’m real excited!

The team FINALLY cured their lycanthropy before they transformed, possibly making the condition permanent. They sacrificed a super badass magic item to allow the wolf that infected them to return to her human state and reunited a family. It was touching, and the 3/4 members of the party with family issues basically pulled a Mustang. 

They set up a plan to find out who charmed the Ranger, @lungguppies‘s Aislinn, into trying and almost succeeding in killing our Berserker, @istehlurvz‘s Ozazli. 

They also identified some cool new magic items, were rewarded skyrim style with a sweet new weapon which means that my Reaver, Dirthari for this game and my monk, Amon, for my other game are both wielding obsidian weapons.  They also whipped out the two most powerful items they have found to identify, the Box of Suggestion, which is a trap I never expected them to pick up and take, which when opened, casts mass suggestion with the command “return the box to the pedestal and wait.” A clever trap that ensured most people would spend the next 30 days waiting and die of hunger. the mage wasn’t able to identify it without opening the box, so thats all the info they have still. They also broke out the Shattered Crown, an item they found upon the head of Kuul’Shok, the Unquenched. A powerd up Deathkiss using the crown’s power to make thralls it could drink from indefinitely, yet never feeling satisfied. It was once wielded by the Lost King of Orzammar, who was exiled for using it to control whole swaths of the populace, bending them to his will. It was broken, he was exiled and buried with the pieces. the demon found them, put them back together. When Aislinn wore it for like, a second once, she realized she could use it to make anyone do anything she wanted. Well, that power easily corrupts, as the history of the Crown shows. And when this kindly old scholar cast identify on it, he went a little... 

He really wanted it. “to study, to learn from” etc etc. The party wisely refused, and @ghostering‘s Cyrus, our rogue/warlock multiclass intimidated him, using a charge from special eye, a gift from his patron. It is golden, and magical, and had been confunding the mages who cast detect magic in his presence, as it didn’t quite show up in the spell but seemed almost a little blurry to them. The mage gazed into Cyrus’ eye and the Eye gazed back... the mage’s nose bled, and he passed out. 

The party won some cool items, lost one, identified a couple and maybe made a problem they’ll have to work out later. Oh, and upon returning to their Inn, they received a mysterious note, signed only “O.” asking for a clandestine meeting in the Blackfens at midnight. What awaits our heroes? Will the old mage simply move on and forget about the Crown? Will they be able to break it again, and scatter the pieces? Will our poor group of friends ever catch a goddamn break? Time will tell! 

[dalish-farther-roam]

My Campaign, the Broken Crowns; Prologue

I made this page as a way to chronicle for myself, my players, and anyone else interested the many misadventures of my group, known in game as the Broken Crowns. I’ll be posting campaign diaries as well as encounter notes to help myself organize things and share what I learned from the encounters, including stat blocks, maps (either made myself or with links to where they came from). For starters, a brief summary of the first adventure: A Lord’s Request

The game is set in the world of Thedas, the setting of the Dragon Age games. It takes place post-Inquisition but pre-Trespasser, although we’ll eventually overtake the events of that DLC.      The story began in the Hanged Man, Kirkwalls worst tavern. Dirthari, the City Elf Warrior; Tamrahel the Dalish Mage, Cyrus, the human rogue; and Aislinn, the Surface Dwarven rogue and a Kirkwall native. We started in the AGE system which is based on 3d6 rolls the way D&d is based on 1d20.     I mention the system because after a while, you’ll see they PCs will have recognizable 5e classes.     The story truly began when the party was requested to retrieve and guide two noble children from the outer lands of Kirkwall back to their father’s keep. There had been a sudden influx of Darkspawn in the area, you see, and the children were travelling across that area. The party was joined by Alenka, the steward of the Selbrech house, the noble family to which these kids belonged. She was a former circle mage, and proved herself... somewhat useful as the party fought their way through darkspawn to find the kids. Alenka and her co-conspirator Barris, captain of the family’s guard, convinced the party to fake a ransom situation and convince the noble family to hand over the ransom fund Alenka had known about. They fled to Denerim with the kids, navigating a storm and “stealing” a ship.  They dropped the kids off with their grandma who lives in Denerim and decided to lay low for a while.            This adventure was loosely based off of one that came with the Dragon Age Table Top game guidebook, though I had to adjust a number of factors as I always end up doing. The combat was fairly straight forward, the greatest challenge being reaching the children in the final fight, who were atop a hill and beset by darkspawn on all sides. The party had a choice between a difficult short rout, climbing through a small gully and up the hill, or to go around and follow the path. They split up as I had hoped they would, and this made for a lot of interesting one-on-one mini-fights with the darkspawn, and was the first time Aislinn really shined as a ranged fighter (she would later become an archery style ranger using a Dwarven crossbow [not Bianca]). It also placed the fights against a ticking clock - the kids remaining guards were badly injured and the oldest of the Selbrech kids, Johanna, was only a fledgling mage with one spell - Mind Blast, which did no damage at all.      The real meat and potatoes of the adventure turned out to be the social encounters, the temptation of the ransom money and the navigation of that plan. I wasn’t sure if they would go with the kidnapping plan at all but they accepted it so quickly! This lead to me improvising the rest of the game and taught me a valuable lesson - if you give your players a major choice to make, be prepared for them to spend all game deliberating the choice, or to decide upon it instantly. 

    This also was the game that solidified my love of DMing - that scramble to improve and roll with their plans was so much fun, and my players’ dedication to it was inspiring as well. We improved “stealing” a ship, navigating a storm, and fleeing a country. Looking back, this quest sewed the seeds of what would become the Broken Crown’s signature style “cause chaos, fix it, profit.” I love this bunch of fools and I’m looking forward to sharing the rest of their story! It won’t all be chronological so I’ll find a way to organize it. For now we’ll call this adventure the Prologue.      

[dalish-farther-roam]

Dungeons and Dragon Age this week

     A moment that I think got overshadowed by 1) the bare knuckles fighting tournament, 2) the guest PCs turned NPC from an amazing in-universe one-shot @lungguppies ran recently and 3) the new super cool fighty NPCs, was the Ranger (Aislinn) and @ghostering‘s Rogue/warlock (Cyrus) getting gifts for their barbarian buddies, one of whom, the Beserker ( @istehlurvz‘s Ozazli) had never received a gift and the other of which, my Reaver (Dirthari) hadn’t received one that was non-functional since her mother got sick years and years ago. They got her a cute new dress to fight in and they got Oz some dragon scale earrings, and even some armor for her dog, Rock. The barbs learned something about each other, and were reduced to tears and hugs instantly. This coming the week after a series of events I was concerned might tear a rift in the group.

      I love these nerds, and how they cling to each other, almost desperately. 

      In the end, Dirthari won the tournament by default, after Oz lost to a hulking NPC with a plain wooden mask who fucking DESTROYED her with TEN STRAIGHT HITS never dealing less than double digit damage. She didn’t go down after that assault, and seems to have won some respect.       Then That guy, called “The Breaker” for obvious reasons goes up against the reigning champ of this tournament; a teeny tiny dwarf lady. The bell goes off, and they stare each other down, motionless, for minutes. Then she drops into a stance and lunges at him, preparing to strike with only two fingers. Before the hit lands, The Breaker forfeits. “I know when I’m beaten.” he says. Then it is meant to be Dirthari against the champ, but she never shows up for that fight, and then Breaker is gone too. Oz splits the second place prize with the other 2 runners up, Di gets the title and the prize.        Oh, and yeah, the horribly magically powerful crown the party were struggling to figure out what to do with was stolen from them by a figure who managed to teleport away, which exactly 0 people in this universe are meant to be capable of.