Another gaming session rumbled through tonight and we experienced three 'fears'
The Fear of Evil
We created our D&D characters for CottageCon. These are not your normal characters and it was not your normal character creation. These are level 18 constructed characters of EPIC proportions. My Sorceress has a Charisma of 28 (!). The last hope for a dying world, they are suitably uber. They wield items of ... significant power. So where's the fear? Well, in a move that shocked me as much as it shocked the others, I created an evil character. Not just any evil character either, the daughter of an Infernal Lord, defacto General of his army and Queen of her own empire (which one of the other characters has attempted to destroy!). She wields a 'dark' version of the Staff of the Magi, has intangible armour woven from trapped souls and wears a demonic claw on her left hand that can drain the life of her witless foes. And in my minds eye she looks like the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls!
The strange bedfellows aspect that this brings to the game has filled me with interest in something that I felt might be more like a competitive convention scenario rather than a game of high drama. In the rest of the party we have a Cleric of the Sun God and a full blown Paladin - you know what there's going to be some fireworks at some point in time! Fear? FEAR ME!
The Fear of Success
Pendragon saw us finish off 499 with a great romp. We returned from our smashing of the Saxon army to find that our lands had been raided and Sir Merrin's wife (and some peasants) had been taken captive. Nothing loathe, we saddled up disguised as mercenary knights and travelled deep into the saxon King Cerdic's territory, infiltrated his capital, experienced anti-Briton prejudice, rescued the slaves, stole two boats, crippled the others and escaped. It was truly like an episode of Robin Hood and a smashing change of pace! We quickly moved into 500 and discovered that Bloody King Idris has moved to border us and is attacking Dorset - our ally. We gathered an army and marched to reinforce him. We gathered easily over 300 men and knights which was a bit of a shock. However, we have invested substantial monies into Salisbury and it has some pretty advanced defences. Anyway, we found ourselves inside a siege for once but our old campaigning ways worked well and for once we repelled King Idris' army. Ha! Back to Sarum it dawned on me how far we have come. We really have evolved into 'proper knights' rather than just jumped up footmen. With that success comes the responsibility of fulfilling our pledges and oaths and riding into battle again and again. Can we continue our winning streak?
Fear of ... Time!
Two inevitable things happened in Pendragon. The first was that finally, after so many rolls, one of our wives - the beautiful wife of Sir Merrin who we rescued from the Saxons - died in childbirth. None of us have lost a wife before so it was a strange moment, made even more potent by the knowledge that Merrin has pledged to marry the (evil, misunderstood, demonic - delete as applicable) Rhiannon, making him the defacto father of Aeryn the Youngers illegitimate child. Oh thats just going to go down SO well!
The second thing was ..... aging rolls! It became apparent, as Sir Guillame was RAVAGED by the savage nature of old age, that we have met our final foe. We can defeat massed armies, we can battle with giants, trolls, hellhounds and all manner of unearthly foes. But in the end, age will kill us if the battle field does not. We have nothing to fear except time. Inevitable time.
Neil
7 comments:
Bugger and Bollocks!
Sounds like a great session that I missed :-(
D.
I'd not worry about any character attacking yours - doesn't your ability to do a 10D6 attack every round, not useage restriction, and get the HP in return, make you the character to avoid?
Anyway, despite trying to sack your city, my character has experience of allying with less than 'perfect' companions to get the job done..so it shouldn't be a problem.
Should be exciting though!
Ian.
Hell, if you read my backstory I'm in a huge quandary as to where to place my characters alingment.
How do you fit in a religoius fanatic who obeys the harshest of harsh tenets of the grim Desert God of Justice into the (rather simplistic) D&D alingment system?
Certainly she is not good, as her aim is not upholding good, indeed, the concept of "good vs evil" is rather alien to her, there is simply complying with what her god says is acceptable, and not complying. Good and Evil?
Is she Lawful? well yes, incredably so, and yet, also, most definately not so. To a Lawful Good Paladin her precepts that natural justice, and her divine granted ability to be both judge jury and exectioner if need be would be abhorrent.
Yet, she isn't Chaotic either, as chaotic implies a lack of structure and rules, and she most definately has those.
The nearest I can get to it is True Neutral. In many ways she is a 2nd ed. Druid. In 2nd ed a true neutral druid didn't care that the orcs destroyed a town and raped the local village women, these where the way of the world... No... those Orcs had cut down trees! The balance of nature must be preserved! In-fact, if the humans where near to succeeding in destroying all the Orcs, the druids may actually set in to assist them to restore the "balance". Who wins or loses (Humans & Orcs) isn't important, nature and balance where.
Indeed, *so* many people just failed to RP this in 2nd Ed that I was glad to see Druids having to be True Neutral disappear from D&D.
Hell, if my character is True Neutral, I don't think your character has much to worry from the Cleric of the God of Justice :-)
Teaming up with someone who is Chaotic Evil? Bah, Justice needs to get it's hands dirty occasionally.
:-)
D.
Oh dear...I sense the impending arrival of a D&D morality thread. Blog to DefCon Four. Prepare bandwidth defences. Aroogah, arrogah, this is not a drill...
Neil
Worry not, alignment for PC's is something I dont really worry about. things like Demons and Angels can have alignment but I am happy to ignore it for players.
Of course it does affect a fairly small number of spells but I am sure we will cope.
Also, as I mentioned, all of the orc babies have already been eaten by zombies.
And in more direct reply to Dave's initial comment. Yes. It was a great session but in a totally different manner to some of our more recent ones. Sir Guillame the Easily Pissed is a new name that could possibly come into play. Hell, you even missed my 'never to be seen again' comedy Oirish accent!
Actually, another notable point in the preceedings was the copious food that arrived from all quarters - mainly Matt and Andrew. Doritos, bagels, seven(yes, count them - seven!) different types of cheese, some rather nice pate, coke, fresh orange, pears, apples, diced melon and organic lemon biscuits. Oh, and naturally Maltesers. Remember kids, our roleplaying group is sponsored by Maltesers!!!
It was a smorgasbord session.
Neil
Bah, she's Lawful Neutral :)
*ducks*
Ian.
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