No Saga can begin without its heroes well unless of course you start with the villains but that isn’t the case here so you should just quit trying to get me sidetracked.
At this time our heroes have lived their lives on a prime world that few among the grey beards could possibly name. They live in a small community with Oriental, Norse, among other cultures intermingling. The community hosts a fair sized monastery maintained by the Order of the Black Omega and a temple to the Norse Deities stands proudly in the town square.
Our four characters that are so central to our tale are Honsu a human monk in the Order of the Black Omega, Dar li Olvar a half orc Cleric of Odin, Malkin the half elven Druid, and finally Weeman a dwarven rouge. The druid Malkin rarely is seen without her trusted companion Mr. Ed the horse (who is also female go figure with the name.)
Malkin is Neutral Good, Weeman is Chaotic Neutral, Dar li Olvar is Chaotic Good, and finally Honsu is Lawful Neutral bringing us a wonderful mix of perspectives in attitude, class, and race.
This campaign will be my first Planescape campaign and only second time running the setting the other being a one shot demo at a convention which I hope to run again soon. I am a long time old hat 2nd edition gamer however I have switched to 3.0 for about 6 one shot sessions and now with the start of this campaign I am running 3.5.
This thread will be a mix of story elements from the campaign as well as comments on how encounters were constructed, gaming techniques I use within my campaign, and preparation for each session. This campaign will be placed in classic Planescape because I have a desire to run some of the modules from the classic line including most likely Faction War in either this campaign or my next one. Then I will transition into full fledged Planewalker material rather than just taking everything relevant to a 3.5 classic Planescape Session.
In our opening session the four soon to be planar adventures are all asleep in the village of Waterlily when they wake up to a loud crash. Honsu the monk is jarred awake he looks around seeing smoke he attempts to climb up the stairs out of the 2nd basement level at the monastery where he slept the night before. He finds the door blocked shut as the room continues to fill with smoke. The other three Dar the half orc cleric of Odin, Malkin the half elven druid, and Weeman the Dwarven Rouge awake and rush towards the monastery which is going up in flames. The action is cut short after an explosion and bright flash knocks the entire group unconscious.
The four adventures awake next to each other seeing the entire city in ruins every building is either knocked down or still burning. Soon a man starts to approach the group and quickly explains he carried them there and did not see any other survivors. The group agrees to go with him before whatever force destroyed their village comes back. The man introduces himself as Lan and opens a portal to his village. The 5 of them quickly decide to head into town to get some food at the Inn after its determined Mr. Ed Malkin’s horse will have better stabling conditions there. They reach the inn quickly and sit down for dinner and a few drinks. During conversation they discover the entire village is comprised of Tieflings and that this race is of demonic heritage and outcasts throughout most of the planes. A short while before the meal arrives they hear a commotion outside.
The 5 of them go to investigate and a crowd is gathering outside of a small hut. Malkin starts to ask questions and finds out that there has been a murder. The body is badly dismembered and it’s the third murder of its kind. The first one occurred about 3 weeks before and the last 2 within the last few days. The party talks with the local constable and is allowed to go inside the hut to view the crime scene after some discussion. They find a body that is badly mutilated with the only discernable parts were an arm the torso, and the head. Weeman goes off to search the house and finds a silver ring which he quickly pockets. The rest of the party searches for a short not finding much. Then Malkin casts a detect magic spell discovering a small cache of items that included a few magical items a dagger, a necklace, a few rings, and a lot of common items.
They show these to the constable and go back to the Inn to rejoin their host Lan. However he is no where to be seen and while eating their meal they overhear a conversation about a town meeting the next morning concerning the murders. They all turn in early except Weeman who stays up a bit to drink and Malkin going back to the stables with Mr. Ed her horse. Weeman heard a lot of noise outside the inn and went to check out what was going on. The constable was murdered not far from the inn in a similar manner. He goes to wake Malkin who is not yet sleeping and tells her what happened. They decided to turn in for the evening and talk about action the next day.
The next morning at the meeting a bounty of 500 gold is offered to anyone who catches the killer. It can be dead or alive they simply need to prove who the murder was and stop the crimes. As a bonus they will be allowed to keep any possessions of the killer that they find. A single individual speaks up against the bounty saying simply that it might be dangerous to award money and he worries about the rule of law. He is outnumbered completely at the meeting and quickly quiets down.
This opposition to the bounty draws the party’s interest so they send Honsu and Weeman to follow him and investigate. Dar and Malkin scour the rest of the city looking for information. They quickly find out that the man who opposed the bounty simply wanted to hire new guards for the city and that he is an alchemist and wizard of sorts. He gives Honsu a gift of 4 healing potions to aid in their capture of the murder. The rest of the day is spent investigating they find that the first victim was a women of the evening. She was well thought of but they assumed her murder was someone that was passing through and would not be back to threaten the village. However when a second murder happened of the same style they started to worry and the city was really panicked after a third then when the constable was killed panic started to ensue.
This evening all 4 turn in pretty early and after they are all sleeping Weeman gets attacked. Malkin had a premonition that Weeman might be in some trouble and rushed to the Inn to check on him. Dar and Honsu were jarred awake by the commotion. The party proceeded to do battle with the creature that was attacking Weeman. Honsu and Malkin arrived first one the scene while Dar was a little slow getting out of bed. They however were able to quickly flank the creature and defeat it. The cloak it was wearing covering its whole body dropped to the fall and they heard a clatter. Under the cloak they find the items they turned over to the guard the day before as well as many new items.
A small boy who witnessed the attack tells the mayor what happened and tells him about the creature going into Weeman’s room and disappearing once they killed it.
The party is given 100 gold right away and is told if they stay in town for 3 weeks and there are no more murders they will receive the rest of the reward. They decide they can use the rest and free lodging while they wait since they are new to the village.
DM Notes
The Creature the party was battling was an Alley Reaper from Sword and Sorcery’s Creature Collection. It actually has a special ability that I removed because it could only be hit by magical weapons. The only member of the party that was carrying a magical weapon was Honsu the monk so I decided to modify the Alley Reaper rather than use one of the other encounters I prepared.
Flanking turned out to be extremely useful in this encounter. I however use a modified version of the flanking rule because I dislike the official rule and believe that if something is flanked everything attacking it should get a +2 not just the attackers causing the flank. The modification in this instance did not cause any addition success since there were no attack rolls that close.
Malkin the Druid also made a huge contribution early in the battle by using the special action aid other giving up her attack for one round she needed to roll to hit an AC 10 and be in position for a melee attack. She was able to help Honsu the Monk with his attack giving him a +2 to hit without the aid from this maneuver he would have missed his attack.