Jeff, Keith, and Steve came to the first game, playing Jennish Cole, Kasskar, and Beowolf, respectively. My notes from the game include a few bits from their own impromptu character introductions.
Steve: Barbarian Beowulf; 6'5 235. Like Conan. Here for 19 years, brought here as a baby.
Jeff: Artificer Jennish; making his way in the city. Likes to tinker. Looking at mechanical gizmos. Rod: thundering armor +1 power bonus to AC. Looking for interesting mechanical gizmos.
Keith: Kasskar rogue; leather armor, could be bouncer for local gang; could be between jobs. Against press gangs. Good but as close to neutral as possible. Native of Hollin.
We kicked off the campaign with a look at the world map and Hollin map, and a brief description of each.
The world is called Balaal. The map shows it looking down on the north pole, where there's an Antarctica-like landmass called Hilde. The Bellem Sea surrounds Hilde, and in turn the Bellem is surrounded by continents including Anhault, Kiln, Beiden, and Luhne. The map scale is large - the visible part of Anhault is about the size of North America. The Bellem Sea is a kind of combination of the Arctic Circle, Northwest Passage, and the Mediterranean Sea. There's a network of major cities that trade on the Bellem, including Hollin, Naumkaeg, Kravnik, Welkin, and Blackwells.
The city of Hollin is the New York or London of Anhault. A good mental model is 18th century London combined with medieval Cairo. It's cosmopolitan and about a million people from all races and continents live there, including many foreigners. Hollin is home to the Anhault Charter Company. Originally the Company was chartered out of Naumkaeg to trade in cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpeter, tea, opium, and whale oil, which are all still big business. But, over time the Company grew to be the de facto government of Hollin and much of Anhault, with its own fleet and Admiralty. To many locals it's still a foreign power.
Besides the Company's trading, major activities in Hollin include shipbuilding, fishing and whaling, private trading houses, and a financial industry. The private trading houses manage the business of foreign trading companies in Hollin - just like the Anhault Company trades on other continents, other organizations trade here. The financial industry supports a range of enterprises: they might fund or insure a single whaling ship's single season; they might underwrite the Company and Admiralty; or they might charter yet more companies to build and populate remote settlements.
The campaign's home is Braddock, one of the oldest boroughs in Hollin, and much of the city's key activity is there. The salt and fish market is here, which is where fishing vessels drop off holds full of salted fish from their season's voyage and take on more salt. The Admiralty has a shipyard here. Besides partially completed ships in the dry docks, you can see the keels of new ships being laid there, made from huge oak trees. Besides the ships in the port and shipyard, the prison and asylum hulks are here - obsolete ships that hold overflow prisoners and patients from the prisons and asylum. And, navy press gangs prowl Braddock looking for hapless men to draft into service.
But, the market is the heart of Braddock - it's like the congested Times Square of Hollin. It includes costermongers, who sell fruit and vegetables; a rag fair that sells clothes; and a meat market with live animals called the Shambles.
People are afraid of the supernatural in Hollin, so magic users beware.
Gregor the naturalist (character sheet) brought the characters together by recruiting each at the docks in Braddock. He proposed a special investigation.
Gregor the naturalist collects cures, specimens, and hints from foreigners coming into Braddock's port. Some of the cures seem outlandish, like touching an elephant's trunk to cure headaches. On the other hand, a doctor near port named Burgess has confirmed Gregor's claim that mosquitoes spread malaria.
When they go to Gregor's lab, they'll notice a lightning rod going into the roof. You've seen those in a few other places around the city, now that they think about it.
He has many mummified animals - a crocodile, a crane - and a coelacanth that Anhault Company fishermen found recently. But giant squid are his real obsession. No one has ever seen one alive, but last year whalers brought him a giant squid's tentacle still wriggling on their hook, and with Brunn he's trying to keep it alive in a salt bath and make it move again.
Now, Gregor has word from a trusted source that a giant squid has taken up in the flooded caverns below Lofton Keep, across the river from Braddock. He's proposing to go check it out.
Before going, they picked up a few adventuring items they didn't already have: adventurer's kits, light sources, lock picks, and writing material. They also bought potions from the apothecary, Chambers.
The apothecary Chambers can supply some non-magical healing potions. He'll suggest his own tincture - a mix of quinine, opium, capsaicin, ether, and other secret ingredients - as a non-magical alternative to the standard healing potion. It's the Hollin equivalent of the orc medicine in the Lord of the Rings - harshly unpleasant but effective.
He'll also suggest treacle as a poison antidote, which will be effective against venom and possibly other things. Also, some smelling salts to rouse some characters.
Hoping they'd find the squid, they also bought a net, and Jennish, Beowolf, and Kasskar bought a +1 spear, a +1 greatspear, and +1 longspear, respectively. The party didn't have a healer, so Gregor suggested they bring one, his friend Stiles (character sheet). The party of five left for the castle with the walking order Kasskar, Beowolf, Jennish, Gregor, and Stiles.
As they crossed from Braddock to Lofton Castle on the Thoroughkill Bridge, they saw:
From the bridge and nearby they can see the castle consists of a hexagonal keep, with a large attached area surrounded by a high wall and towers.
The characters see fishermen with rods on the shore and boats. They see stray dogs who live on the abandoned keep grounds. The dogs follow them curiously, they can shoo them off or let them follow along into the keep.
The keep has been abandoned for a long time and since it's right in the city, any possible treasure was probably found by scavengers a long time ago.
The party explored the tower, eventually reaching the lowest basement. Despite the suggestion that any treasure would already have been taken, they found a forge with some easy loot.
On the map, "W" marks water, "L" marks dry land, and the dashes between caverns 1 and 8 are a flooded tunnel under the water's surface. The caverns formed three groups, which the party encountered in turn:
Caverns 1, 2, and 3 were flooded with black, inky water. Exploring these in the rowboat, they soon thought they heard rapping on the boat's underside. They discovered that if they rapped out a prime number on the floor of the boat, something would rap out the next prime number on the boat's underside.
Caverns 4, 5, 6, and 7 were dry. The party pulled the boat up on shore here, and found a few curious items - tin whistles, a glass eye, and a ship's figurehead, rudder, and brass fixtures. Exploring further in these caverns, the party was beguiled by an unseen trickster and temporarily disoriented. During their confusion, they were attacked by giant spiders - deathjump spiders with half the normal stats.
Cavern 8 was flooded, except for a dry landing on the west side. Coming into cavern 8 from cavern 7 on the east side, the party found themselves high above the water, but spotted a narrow ledge on the north side, crossing from their position to the landing. Trying to cross on the ledge, Kasskar was alarmed to find he was being pickpocketed by tentacles coming out of the water far below. When Kasskar panicked and fled back to the east side, the tentacles attacked him outright.
This was the sea creature Aachen. Each of Aachen's tentacles had the abilities of a thief and the following powers.
After initially being driven back, the party waited for the creature to leave, and ultimately crossed to the west landing. There, they found:
The layout of Lofton Castle's tower and basements were taken from Herubar Gular, from Middle Earth Role Playing, and the easy lot of treasure the party found came from there. The caverns under Lofton Castle were our own. The forge in the Lofton Castle basements became the Kirsies' (fairies') supernatural Raven Forge later in the campaign.
