Down on the Farm

19 July 2011~

Wow! It has been a while since we played fantasy; and with relatively new characters, most of us were left asking "What am I, again?" After all that was sorted out, experience points were spent and treasure from the last adventure was divided, and we finally got started on the actual adventure.

It started with us on the road again, wandering through some pleasant farmland and generally relaxed (for adventurers who could get jumped by anything at any moment). While passing a river, then, we heard a commotion, and saw a group of people running along the side of the river, chasing a young girl who was getting swept along in the current. Craig's reptile man jumped in (he's amphibious, after all) and rescued the girl, which made us welcome in the village, and we accepted their hospitality and stayed the night.

We were bivouacked in the barn hayloft that night, but awoke to another commotion. This time, a rough-looking group of humans (mostly- they did have one demon in attendance) were rousting people out of their houses and making ready to take their goods. As we woke up the characters not roused by their noise, the girl we had saved previously bolted for the barn, pursued by a couple of bad guys. Bruce's elven samurai and Craig's reptile man jumped to the floor and prepared to deal with the thugs, but Bill's illusionist beat them to it and had a large, [illusionary] fiery demon interpose itself between them and her, routing them.

That gave us time to gear up and get the locals into the barn, while the raiders regrouped. A thrown axe popped the demon, and the raiders approached the barn in a wide semi-circle while we finished getting ready. When their demon charged, we went into action: Bill flashed the advancing line, Kevin cast a force dome over three of them, and Jeff and Michael's dwarves introduced the demon to close-range musket fire. Craig loosed a javelin as well, but the muskets blew impressively big holes in the thing, and it went down. Our other fighters charged out and attacked their line, and easily dispatched the first group before they really knew what had hit them. Their leader attacked with a couple of his heavies, and they gave us more trouble; Brian went down to a lucky hit (it must have been luck, since he's the best swordsman in the world) and Craig was wounded. Jeff and Michael joined the melee at that point, and the five of us still standing started putting the bad guys down. Michael got a leg crippled and went down, but Bill and Kevin used create flame and control flame to distract the raiders (being on fire is distracting), and the rest of us finished them in a few seconds.

While looting the bodies (a couple of magic items and some uniformly-marked continual light necklaces, mostly) and discussing what to do with the raiders in the force dome, we happened to look up and see a translucent castle hovering in the clouds above us. Neither we nor the natives know who or what it belongs to, and we haven't yet had time to ask our soon-to-be prisoners. I guess we'll have to see what's "up" with that next week.

Hall of Reflections, If Not Mirrors

29 June 2011~

We picked up after a week or two of vacations right where we left off: at various points in a crowd, watching a politician speak about his upcoming run for office. We were there at the Moose Lodge early, essentially casing the location before Jeff went in under [illusionary] cover to see what the real story was on our benevolent-sounding suspects (we weren't all that sure what we suspected them of, but their attempt to create a benevolent association of super-powered individuals sounded inherently suspicious- we're just a little cynical about these things). As it happened, a senator associated with the CEO and his goons was making a speech and having a reception at the same place where he was to interview Jeff later on, so we were going to have to sit through that first.

Ghost Wolf left the podium, certain that he had been somehow spotted, and feeling himself reverting involuntarily to his human form. Luckily, his invisibility and insubstantiability held long enough for him to get out of range of the power drain (or whatever it was), and he changed back to his super form. From there, he circled around and went into the Lodge to see what nefarious preparations were underway inside, and discovered that there were some innocent-looking caterers setting up a buffet for the reception, and a bunch of not-so-innocent armored ninja types hiding in spare rooms.

Eventually, the speech ended, and the crowd came into the Lodge for a VIP meet and greet event. Schmitty's guy pick-pocketed an invite and came in, and schmoozed the crowd a little to pick up information. Eventually, the political crowd left, and the senator, the CEO, and his twin ate dinner with their ninja henchmen, who then hung out to wait for their meeting.

At this point, we discovered that they had invited several other potential supers (besides Jeff) to their meeting to hear their recruiting pitch, and so our outside people intercepted them and tried to warn them off before the new recruits entered the Lodge; only two of them persevered and came to the meeting. Jeff then covered Craig with an illusionary disguise, and sent him in to hear the pitch in his stead, while Ghost Wolf smuggled in several of the rest of our team by bringing them through the floor into some more spare rooms. Eventually, the bad guys decided to start the meeting, and they explained to these new recruits what they had tried to explain to us before- that they wanted to form a group of supers who could protect themselves from human hostility when their existence became more widely recognized. The senator, who was giving the pitch, then used some sort of magical/super power to seal the deal- and that's when things went bad, since Craig successfully resisted the attempt, and the rest of us finally got proof that the bad guys were- well- bad.

Ghost Wolf attacked, still invisible and in his werewolf form, but the senator could detect his attack, and blinked out of the way. Bill, Michael, and Schmitty came out from hiding as well, and Brian entered from outside. Jeff just maintained his observation through his Wizard Eye, and served as "high cover". Knowing that the CEO was a reflector, Ghost Wolf grabbed him by his legs and started swinging him around as a weapon, while Jeff used stun spells and Brian covered the combat area with a swarm of bugs (thankfully selective, but still icky). Bill grabbed the two super wannabes who had made it to the meeting with his telekinesis and kept them out of harm's way, eventually stuffing them in a room and locking the door to keep them out of trouble. Craig took on four of the swordsmen by himself, Kevin blasted several people with his lightning blast, and Michael used his cryokinesis to take out the CEO's twin brother, who was also a reflector, as it turned out. Even Schmitty's dragon made an appearance, breathing fire and fighting the ninjas. A good time was had by all (well, not the bad guys).

When one of the ninjas tried to escape with the senator, Craig decided to kill the two of them- after all, a mind-controlling super senator could be nothing but evil, and an arrest would be pointless. The senator's death broke his spell, and suddenly all of our opposition "woke up" and realized that they had no idea what was going on. Now we had to sort out everything anew!

After some discussion, we discovered that the senator was apparently recruiting supers against their will, and had had them all under a spell of some sort. The CEO and his brother agreed to try to hush things up (better for all concerned, it seemed) and take care of the families of the men who we had killed (oops!), and we decided to let them all go. God knows what the police will make of all the evidence, but there are several dead guys with swords, many of whom were killed by swords.

One interesting thing about this campaign: we really have to watch how we handle things, since we have no official sanction or support, and can't just arrest the bad guys. Maybe in the future we should see about some sort of official law enforcement status- although I don't see that happening any time soon.