Plot

Plot! Story Arc 1

Day 1
Players: The players woke up in nicely furnished cells. An unknown NPC, unable to be seen, called out to the players and explained that he/she captured them, changed their clothes, and removed all of their items. Players talked to each other and explained their backstory. Ren stole an expensive rug. The NPC granted each player a credit of 100 gold pieces and allowed each player to spend their gold on items/weapons. The NPC then left and players broke open a wooden door and after a short puzzle, found themselves face to face with a metallic dragon, which they killed after cutting off its tail (part of the puzzle). Players then went into the next room, which contained beds for resting.
 * Ren
 * Aranethon
 * Narcissa
 * Maven
 * Fruhand

GM's Notes

 * Combat was slow. I'm working on fixing that by developing a program to fix that.

Day 2
Players: The players, after waking up, ascended out of the room via a ladder. They walked down a road where they found an odd city that had "logical inconsistancies." (Roads stopped randomly, some houses were split in two, a portion of the wall was made out of interrwoven flowers, etc.) After cutting down a part of the flower-wall to get into the city, players headed to Lord Tarmikos (the ruler of the city). Lord Tarmikos explained that a person who referred to himself as Pertinax's Disciple sabotaged the sewer system. He led the players into the sewer system, where they had to traverse a maze-like sewer system with randomly flowing water, where they tran into Pertinax's Disciple. Judging from his voice, the players recognized that he was the person that trapped them in the metallic dragon dungeon. The players completed the dungeon (after Elizabeth almost died) and took a crystal that seemed to be inducing the randomity, which caused the sewer system to break apart. In a moral choice, the players chose to risk their lives and save the sewer system. They saved it and escaped with the crystal.
 * Ren
 * Aranethon
 * Narcissa
 * Maven
 * Fruhand

Loot

 * Maven and Ren got 500 gold and a battlestaff (unknown type) from the sewer system.
 * Ren received some vials of poison from poison scorpions.
 * Lord Tarmikos gave the players 200 gold overall for saving the sewer system.
 * Lord Tarmikos is going to give special favors (not sexual!) to the players for helping.

GM's Notes

 * Combat was faster, it should get better with experience and time.
 * Sewer system dungeon worked well.
 * The game is now essentially open-world.
 * Players seemed a bit frizzled by the end, so I may establish planned breaks.

Day 3
Players: Players wake up in the town and talk to Lord Tarmikos. He explains that the town he presides over (the one they're currently in) is called Timberfall. There is a neighboring city called Treerun. He believes that Pertinax's Disciple placed another crystal in a cave next to Treerun and gives the players money to buy explosives to destroy the crystal. Players buy explosives, Svejk meets up with the group and is assimilated. Players travel to Treerun and talk to the leader, Noblewoman Chloe (she goes by Chloe) and Aranethon is infatuated. Aranethon plans to have a date with Chloe. Chloe explains that Lord Tarmikos told her that a treasure vault was in the cave, so she had it cleaned out, but her people did not find anything. Players go into the cave and see where they are supposed to detonate the explosives, but determine that there is no crystal there and detonating the explosives would take out a major part of Treerun. Players are suspicious of Lord Tarmikos and lie to him by telling him that they blew up the crystal and part of the town. He is pleased. He gives Maven a court mages apprentinceship, Ren gets a "special favor" in the Thieves Guild of Treerun because Lord Tarmikos has connections there, Svejk gets awesome boots, and Aranethon joins the Knights Guild. Players travel back to Treerun. Aranethon gets laid (he rolled a 20!) and Ren gets ambushed at the Thieves Guild, as Lord Tarmikos was racist against Tieflings. Ren kills everybody and starts the Thieves Guild afresh.
 * Svejk (first introduced)
 * Maven
 * Aranethon
 * Ren

Loot

 * Money from Lord Tarmikos.
 * Svejk gets Wallskipper boots, which allow him to walk on walls once per encounter, but with some stipulations.
 * Aranethon gets laid.

GM's Notes

 * Good game. Combat went pretty fast, players RP'd well, etc.
 * Players now have wallwaking boots and 4 explosives, essentially meaning they can blow holes and shit in any dungeon I make. . . PCs always ruin everything!

Day 4
Players: Not much went today, Ren and Fruhand attempted to rally support for the coup that will go on in the next game. They discovered that there was going to be a public auction tomorrow morning which will support approximately 400 people. Players are currently in Treerun. Ren talked to the owner of the Greengill pubbery (Alfrick, a half-orc) and he's content if with a 50gp/month rent.
 * Fruhand
 * Svejk
 * Aranethon
 * Narcissa
 * Ren

Loot

 * Corn

GM's Notes

 * Not much happened.

Day 5
Players: Players, in short, led a successful coup against the city of Timberfall. Aranethon and Fruhand took over the auctioner's stand, Aranethon led a speech, and at the end to get the crowd riled up, Ren blew up the Guardhouse and Narcissa blew up the front gate to the castle. The people ran into the castle, slaughtered all of the guards, then Aranethon let the mob determine what to do with Lord Tarmikos. One citizen grabbed Lord Tarmikos, ran him down the hallway, and threw him out the window. Fruhand leaped out the window and stabbed the now-dead Tarmikos on the ground, effectively breaking his leg. He later healed himself. Citizens grabbed, stabbed, and dismembered Lord Tarmikos's body. Aranethon held a meeting where the new government was established (which can be found here: Timberfall). Players went to sleep, Aranethon read Lord Tarmikos's note that stated that Tarmikos and Chloe were previously romantically involved.
 * Fruhand
 * Aranethon
 * Narcissa
 * Ren

Loot

 * Not much loot, I believe. Some gold from robbing nobles.

GM's Notes

 * Game went well. It was pretty RP heavy, I planned for some more combat, but it's difficult to get combat against 50 civilians.
 * Worked on being more descriptive. I shall continue to work on that.

Story Arc 1 Completed. Notes: Players now have a base of operations. First story arc was a bit bumpy , but I think that we're all getting better at it. Story was a bit RP-Heavy at the end, which I think alienated some players. (Brick and Elizabeth?) I'll continue to work with the descriptions and integrating combat into RP situations. Combat will now be harder, as to keep players interested and players will have the option of dying. Dying shall be discussed in the next game.

Day 6
In short, players bought shit then killed shit. The setting is 6 months after the last game and the government is more stable. Players receive a letter from Pertinax's Disciple that asked the players to head to an arena that Pertinax built, between Timberfall and Hitherhere. The letter included a Mind Control Ritual Players took ~1.5 hours looking for the correct equipment, companions, etc. Then players went to the arena and Pertinax challenged them to a wave-style game, where they fought a skeleton, baby dragon, then a headless zombie.

Loot

 * Fruhand
 * Has PonPon the mini-doggy.
 * Maven enchanted Fruhand's trident so that it is now the Trident of Volatility
 * Aranethon has the Sunsword.
 * Ren has the Dagger of Absorb Health (as checked by Maven).

GM's Notes

 * Game was evidently flawed: players took quite awhile to buy armor/weapons. In order to circumvent that, I think I'll be printing out inventories of important shops, so players don't have to take like 4 hours to determine what armor/weapons they want.
 * I think combat went pretty well. Players were acting pretty fast and determined tactics that worked best for everyone and managed to take down a 180HP headless corpse.

Day 7
Players fought some corrupted warriors then Pertinax (through Pertinax's disciple) rewarded players special items. That shall be shown in loot. Then Pertinax's Disciple conducted a ritual and allowed the players to go to the plane of Pertinax where they talked to him/her/gender-neutral. Pertinax stated that it was the deity of change, but since it was a bastard child between a demon and an angel, it was banished from both Celestial and Abyssal planes and its power on earth was contained in spheres of influence. 5 good spheres and 5 bad spheres. It asked the players to collect 5 spheres (of any alignment or any combination of alignment) and bring them to Pertinax's Disciple. When 5 spheres are collected, the spheres would recreate its physical being and restore full power. Its alignment would be of whatever spheres collected. (5 chaotic evil spheres would cause Pertinax to be chaotic evil, 3 evil and 2 good would cause it to be slightly evil, etc.) It said that evil spheres are guarded by good protectors and vice-versa and that the more spheres are collected, the more difficult the protectors are to kill. It stated that the closest good sphere was in the Sandysea desert. Players agreed, asked for the arena as their base of operations, and are now going to head to Sandysea desert after picking up supplies.

Loot

 * Fruhand's PonPon can now be transformed into a beast. Stats shall be worked out next game, but it will be a mount and attackable creature.
 * Ren got Boots of Silence.
 * Narcissa got 1.5k gold.
 * Maven got enchanted robes for better spellcasting.
 * Aranethon transformed his longsword and shield to a greatsword. (Still the daysword enchantment).
 * Svejk got an elephant.

GM's Notes

 * Game went well. Players are stronger than expected, so I'll put pretty difficult encounters.



Day 8
Players went to Hitherhere, the capital city of the Midlanders. When at the gates, they were ushered in to the large clocktower, which was the residing place of Lord Erikan. There he made Aranethon fight Chloe originally with clones, then directly. Chloe won the clone battle by throwing Aranethon's clones of the side of the clocktower, then Chloe knocked deliberately knocked herself unconcious during the real battle, causing her to lose. Lord Erikan flung her off the side of the mountain. Svejk shot an arrow to try to save her, only impaling the arrow into her brain. After a skill challenge, Aranethon and Brick convinced Lord Erikan to bring her back to life if they wouldn't return to the city. That happened.

Loot

 * Nothing.

GM's Notes

 * Players didn't have much autonomy during this game, which was deliberate. Not sure if that worked out well or not.

Day 9
Players were informed by Pertinax's Disciple that Lord Erikan's magic is derived from the Astral Plane, instead of normal arcana magic. They could sever the connection via destroying the channel item (a well in this instance). Players decided to go to that later and instead went to Waterwell, mounted on an elephant. They met crazed children on the way that spoke Abyssal that attempted to kill them then committed suicide. They chased after what seemed to be the demon-controller of him, but they failed to catch him. They loaded the elephant up with dead bodies. In the desert, they encountered what appeared to be a mirage and threw a part of the dead body into the mirage, resulting in a crossbow bolt being shot at them. There was a person in the mirage and that person was frightened by a large elephant donned with dead bodies and people throwing dead children parts at him, so he retaliated. The person inside the mirage had a small house and after some provocation, he led the players to where the fabled Waterwell was. There was just a well there. Players did a series of actions (sinking, dropping in a barrel, trying to drink the water, etc) to understand the well, but finally reached Waterwell when they swam to the bottom of the well. There was a gravity shift in there. Waterwell contained the Runas, a hybrid of dwarf/halflings that wear little clothes due to the heat. They have an anarcho-capitalist system. Players talked to the de facto leader and discovered that there was a dried up river near the edge of the underground town where sand forms have been coming out of. PLayers explored the cave to be attacked by the ephemeral sandforms.

Loot

 * Dead children parts.

GM's Notes

 * Wrote up the wiki a bit late, I hope I didn't miss much.

Day 10
Players essentially explored the caves and discovered the sphere during this round. They discovered that the sphere doesn't respond well to being stabbed and that fighting in contained areas is bad. Whoever contains the sphere has a modified alignment because it essentially "sucks" the good out of the environment if it is a good sphere.

Loot

 * None

GM's Notes

 * I need to provide more loot.
 * It's really hard to fight in a contained area, I should rectify that for next time.
 * This dungeon was pretty simple, I plan on making the puzzles and whatnot a lot more difficult.
 * Players were distracted and we started late.

Day 11
Exclusively discussed rules. Players gained a bit more knowledge of their actions and I integrated more combat mechanics in the game, such as immediate interrupts and opportunity attacks.

Day 12
At the start of the game, players were explained the enchanting and magic item system. Narcissa changed her character to a warden and chose the correct powers. Players then started off in pursuit of the Skytouch Mountains to procure the second "bad" orb. They met a dwarf owning an inn at the foot of the mountains, where Svejk sold him dragon testicles and players bought rope, sleeping bags, and jackets. Players started trekking up the mountains where they overcame a waterfall and an encounter with three frost hawks and an ice form. Then they trekked over a half-broken bridge where Brick fell and lost a large amount of hit points, but his healing surges were of great assistance. Players were near the entrance of a tunnel/cave when they went to bed.

Loot

 * Two sapphires (from the eyes of the ice form)
 * Rope, sleeping bags, and jackets
 * Svejk got some money from selling the dragon testicles.

GM's Notes

 * Enchanted/magic weapons shall be integrated more often, in addition to loot.
 * I need to develop a shop inventory system somehow. (Actually, this will come into play next game, probably.)
 * Brick falling off the bridge should have harmed him significantly more, so I'm going to work on non-combat difficulty levels.
 * Damage workspace is still a bit funny, working on that.
 * Good game overall.

Day 13 - 15
Players went through the cave system and killed some frost zombies. Svejk found a Bow of Frost +1. Players went into the town and sold one of their sapphires, but got ripped off, so they had a convoluted process of stealing back the sapphire and then avoiding a bunch of guards. They bought 2 bags of holding. They were caught and brought to the leader of the town, an enormous black dragonborn called Baharan, a descendent of Bahamut. He had an arcanely-talented child. He got the players to go down to the connected dwarf town and players fought through dwarves and then took the orb from the leader (Bronzeknuckle) and cut off one testicle. Players returned to the surface and were rewarded with 2 amulets of protection, money, and the Dragonborn messengers ferried them out of the town.

Chloe gave birth, two Dragonborn girls. (Somebody needs to edit this with the names)