May 09, 2009

Game Start Date
06/23/10055
Game End Date
06/27/10055
Game Master
Steve Ames
Adventurers
Erica Wiren (Chitter, Chitter)
Angela
Tanis (Barrister Extraordinaire)
Hason Goodrich
Dena
Zarush (Necromancer, inventor of weapon cast)
Actors
Wills
Drasik
Joshua
Friedrick

Hook

Trusted adventures needed for a snatch and grab (aka kidnapping) mission.

Plot Synopsis

Party showed up at Lord Drasik's at 7AM. A mage greeted them and explained the mission. Over the last week they have been tracking leads to locate the enemy. The day before they were given an outstanding lead, possibly to the enemies homeworld, and want to follow it quickly. It is made clear to the party that they cannot do or say anything that will give them away as Jaernian and if they should happen to do so they need to clean up the situation expeditiously. Their mission is to go to a newly opened world. There they are to grab a guy (picture supplied) and return him to Jaern for interrogation. The planned interrogation requires a live grab so they are instructed to be somewhat careful with him. The party is also told that they cannot allow themselves to be captured. If they don't possess a get away item, they will be supplied with a suicide pill on the way out. The party is offered a bit of extra silver if they will deliver a box (2x2x2) to a guy on the 3rd world they pass through. The party accepts.

The party procedes to the CGoW Basement-3. There they are joined by Frrederick (tall, clean cut, blond, chisseled arian type... and also a member of Centralian Intelligence) and Joshua (a ginger haired youth who is also a Hirudo). Together they pass through the portal to the Alpha site and then on to the mapping site. At the mapping site Frederick talks with someone for a few moments and then they return back through the portal to the Alpha site. They then step through Portal-97 onto a desert world covered with brightly colored tents. They spend a few moments looking around and a man approaches them and asks for the box. They party isn't sure how to identify who is supposed to get it but the man persuades them that he is the correct recipient. He takes the box and asks the party to follow him. He leads them to a large tent and ushers them inside. The inside of the test is temperature controlled and is occupied by Lords Drasik and Wills.

The box is opened and is found to contain a couple bottles of wine and some other local Jaernian foods. Wills opens a bottle with a happy grin. Drasik procedes straight to business. "Now that your here its safe to tell you the real mission... we have located a world that we believe is used as a center of recruitment for the enemies military as well as for slave labor. We have also learned that the enemies home world is adjacent. In the next tent over is a portal to this recruitment world. You will procede through the portal. You will capture a local. You'll put this ring on his finger which will make him cooperative. You'll then ask him about the enemies homeworld while holding this crystal to his head. It will capture a memloc. Once you have a memloc you can use this rock to make an adjacent shift onto their world. There you will track down the man in the picture, capture him and return him to me for questioning... and you will do all of this without letting the enemy have any clue that there is anything going on and certainly not by Jaernians."

The party goes to the next tent over. There they find a very small portal. It is only 2 feet in diameter. This necessitates some squishing and re-arranging of carried items but they all pass through. On the other side the portal is facing upward in the center of a meadow. The time seemed around dawn. Erica few upward looking for signs of life. She spotted some to the east in the form of smoke. She also noticed that the area around the portal became hard to see/invisible when you were more than 20' away from the portal. After shareing the info with the party a plan was discussed. The plan they conceived was simple and straight forward. Erica would fly invisibly over to the source of the smoke, bludgeon someone and bring them back. By the time they had finished their discussion the sun was up and the smoke was gone.

Erica flew to where the smoke was and saw an armored man walking around in the manner of one who is guarding something or is on watch. As she attempted to pass by the guard (believing he'd be missed if she snatched him) she was suprised and struck by several arrows. She immediately dropped her shield (the only material part) and ducked into the ground... then teleported back to the party and reported. The party decides to take a more direct approach and to cleanup afterward. One plan they had was to blue field everything around a single person and just take the person. Fredierick nixed that plan by virtue of it was believed that only Jaernians dropped blue fields on people. The alternate plan was to do the same thing using fireballs instead of blue fields. Dena flys upward to check things out. As soon as she cleared the 20' mark arrows flew out of the surrounds and hit her. With her echolocation and heat vision she was able to determine that they were humanoid, unarmed and unclothed except for a loincloth. Dena (who was practically unhittable anyway) whipped out a defensive spell that made her fat but more armored.

Other members of the party started moving outward toward their opponents. When it was only Tanis, Frederick and Joshua left, Tanis summoned a random creature and got a TerroDrako that was pleny annoyed. Its first action was to bluefield Tanis, Frederick and Joshua. Combat ensues between the drako, the party and their invisible opponents until finally the drako and one of the opponents are "black fielded" and the remaining opponents destroyed (save one that Dena had captured early). The party then waited for the blue field to fall. As soon as it fell they got into position ready to destroy the drako when its field fell a few minutes later. They made short work of the drako, and spotted the last opponent and dispatched it as well. The drako disapeared when it died.

The party then moved into the woods with the intent of removing any remaining witnesses and recovering Erica's invisible shield. The found a sparse encampment hidden by an invisible wall. Inside were a few cabins with bunks. They wiped out the remaining occupants and recovered the shield.

Back at the portal Erica was using fluency to communicate with the prisoner. After Frederick put the ring on the prisoner, Erica asked him to visualize a quiet, out of the way spot in their masters city. Frederick used the crystal to capture a memloc of the memory. The prisoner was then released (to its god) to the annoyance of Hason Goodrich who wanted it for breeding stock. The party checked their gear and used the rock to step sideways into the enemies homeworld.

They emerged in a cathedral. Ahead of them was a 12' tall statue and a very suprised priest. 4 seconds later the priest was more bludgeoned than suprised. Joshua dragged the priest into a confessional while the party secured the church. There was some discussion about how to find their target. A quick peak outside showed that this was a fairly large city (as they had guessed based on the size of the church). Joshua took on the Guise of the prist and went outside. He asked a random passerby to come inside to help with something. He also noticed a large sign out front indicating mass at 11 causing the party to wonder what time it was. Erica found a large device at the top of the church which may have been time but didn't use a standard circuilar format so she wasn't sure.
When the random passerby was inside the church he was bludgeoned. The party then suggested that Joshua drain his identity. He seemed hesitant to do Hirudo stuff in front of people but eventually went along with it leaving the body empty and dead (mostly becuase he took back the units he had spent).

With a local resource on hand the party started planning how to find their target. They also learned that they only had less than an hour before people started to show up at the church. Joshua assured them that the city was way too large to start randomly asking people if they've seen this guy. Plus, even with Dena's incants and local clothing, they wouldn't be able to pass as locals forever, someone would eventually make a mistake. Joshua looked at the picture again and was now able to identify the livery the target was wearing as belonging to a Count in a nearby territory. Two weeks by boat or 3 days by balloon. The party was intrigued by the balloon idea. Looking outside they saw a dozen moving around. Long cigar shaped balloons. Dena flew upward to aquire one. Her first attempt was to fireball the gondola to remove its existing passengers. This caused the whole balloon to explode. Bizarrely the people down below looked up when it happened, observed they were in no danger of falling shrapnel/carnage and went back to their business. Her next attempt proved more successful and she killed everyone aboard a gondola and flew back to collect the party. Tanis created a gate into a moving target (much precision involved) and the party went through before the balloon passed it by.

Once on the balloon they quickly discovered how to maneuver it (2 foot pedels, 3 push/pull knobs). They also found maps. And they found travel papers amond the dead. They worked in shifts for the next three days and set down outside the main city in the Counts territory. During the trip Joshua kept conference with Frederick and spent 3 days writing in a notebook. Dressed in local garb and armed with enough local words to get themselves in trouble they headed into the city. They were stopped fairly far out and their travel papers requested. Erica confused the guard a bit and then Joshua smoothed things over and not only got them past the guard but got the guard to give them directions to the Counts residence so they could pay their respects. As they approached the Counts mansion they saw his guardhouse off to the left. Frederick suggested that Erica make herself appear pregnant and then just approach the guardhouse directly demanding to see their target (flashing the picture around and spouting lots of "him" and "bastard" since she wouldn't have a name).

Erica knocked at the guardhouse, flaunted her belly and showed the picture. She demanded to speak to her baby's father. The guard, who clearly recognized the picture, told Erica there was no one there who looked like that. Erica yelled at the guy for a while but eventually went away sobbing. The guard went back inside. The party soon after observed a man leaving through the backdoor of the guardhouse who looked like their target. Sure enough he headed straight for a bar and ordered a drink. Frederick offers the party a vial that they can smuggle into the drink that will make him need to use the restroom at which point they snag him. It is suggested to just use Stray Thought instead to make him come outside to use the alley. The plan is successful. The target is bludgeoned, the party touches hands and uses the rock to shift back to the recruitment planet... where through the miracle of planar congruency they find themselves in the middle of another barracade of the locals. Tanis creates a gate back to his dungeon and Joshua orders all of the locals to go through it. They do so without hesitation. The party returns to the CGoW.

Most of the party hand over the target, take their pay and go home but Erica teleports back to Wills and Drasik. She finds only Drasik but gives him a brief rundown. Drasik thanks her... he then asks if she would mind taking his ring back to his house in Centralia. She says she can't teleport with the ring but agrees to do it when Drasik points out that the portal to the Alpha site is maybe 20 yards away. The ring explodes when Erica steps through the portal into the CGoW leaving everyone confused as to his motivation.

Everyone is paid.

Noteworthy Postgame Events