Category Archives: Campaign Log – Somewhere West of Light

Post Tagging Updates

Because I’m always in search of a better taxonomy, the cluttering of my post tag cloud in the right sidebar has become an annoyance. Accordingly, I’ve gone through the post histories for both of my currently-documented campaigns, Kaserne on the Borderlands and Somewhere West of Light, and removed, respectively, the Twilight: 2000/Twilight: 2000 4e and Shadowdark tags from most of them. Going forward, campaign log posts will only be tagged with the game system in question if the post:

  • is an initial post for setting up that campaign; or
  • contains mechanics or other general content that readers may find useful at their own tables.

My vague hope is that this change will make the blog incrementally more usable for readers who come here in search of material for a specific game line and don’t want to have to sift through the (currently) 106 Kaserne posts trying to find my NM-116 writeup or something like that.

Chapter V: Return to the Flooded Crypt of the Necromancer

This should have been subtitled Vengeance for Vraazox. Following their narrow escape, Tulk and Hazel swore vengeance on the ghostly necromancer who’d slain their friend. They went back with reinforcements:

  • Tulk: marked half-orc, ranger 3
  • Hazel Ravenvale: outcast halfling, thief 2
  • Nubbin Stump: drawn halfling, fighter 2
  • Ylva Fekyue: outcast halfling, bard 3
  • Mirena the Outcast: outcast human, priest of Freya 1 (reserve PC for Vraazox’s player)

… this crew sure does seem to attract a lot of halflings and outcasts for some reason.

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Chapter IV: The Flooded Crypt of the Necromancer

I’ve been trying to run Somewhere West of Light in a West March-ish, if not purely West Marches, style. Part of this is giving the players a log of available quests/delves in our Foundry server so they can choose where to go next. The players decided to pursue the following:

Hajnal, the ancient elven witch who lives in Plainwood’s slums, has sought you out. Something or someone is killing any practitioners of her art who enter the lost province. She’s so far managed to remain safe by staying in Plainwood – the responsible parties don’t seem to be able or willing to enter the town. But she would very much like this matter laid to rest.

Her divinations, though hampered by the proximity of so many destinies, have shown her the location of someone who may be able to provide information about these killings. She’s unable to provide more information than that, but she has given you a location: a former holy place of Gede, long abandoned.

The crew consisted of:

  • Tulk: marked half-orc, ranger 3
  • Vraazox da Pryist: wolfchild goblin, priest of Memnon 3
  • Hazel Ravenvale: outcast halfling, thief 2

They entered the delve site expecting a level 1 adventure, and the completion of the first milestone of the quest chain that will unlock the witch class (Cursed Scroll #1) for PC use. The GM should not have taken the module author’s word at face value…

[Spoilers follow for Flooded Crypt of the Necromancer, which appears in Shots in the Dark #1.]

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Chapter III: The Blackbridge Labyrinth

I felt like running Shadowdark tonight. Pop-up dungeon!

Hired by a young boy to locate his missing brother, the crawlers traveled to the tiny (and oddly underpopulated) village of Blackbridge. Tonight’s crew consisted of:

  • Tulk: marked half-orc, ranger 3
  • Vraazox da Pryist: wolfchild goblin, priest of Memnon 3
  • Ylva Fekyue: outcast halfling, bard 2
  • Yuri Völvason: witchborn human, priest of Ord 2

[Spoilers follow for The Blackbridge Labyrinth, which appears in Shots in the Dark #1.]

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Skunk Curse

As noted in yesterday’s session writeup, I took a swing at homebrewing a Shadowdark creature to give my orcs a little magical support. This was loosely based on the core book’s kobold sorcerer, with some orcish flavor:

These were nasty opponents, made all the more so by the PCs’ focus on their screening mooks. This let them keep casting Wolf Call for several unimpeded rounds, and the wolf spam threatened a TPK at one point.

I only got one Skunk Curse off, and I giggled far more than I should have when describing its effects.

Chapter II: Return to the Hoard of the Sea Wolf King

Having left their pilferage incomplete, the crawlers decided to return to the tomb of Skorgald and finish clearing it out. Upon setting out from Plainwood, the party consisted of:

  • Hazel Ravenvale: outcast halfling, thief 1
  • Kais: mercenary human, wizard 1
  • Nubbin Stump: drawn halfling, fighter 2
  • Tulk: marked half-orc, ranger 2
  • Vraazox da Pryist: wolfchild goblin, priest of Memnon 2
  • Ylva Fekyue: outcast halfling, bard 2
  • Shiraal: marked half-orc, thief 1

[I had originally intended to run Somewhere West of Light as an occasional pop-up and backup game when we didn’t have a quorum for Kaserne on the Borderlands. However, this was a scheduled Kaserne session where the GM wasn’t prepared to run, so this was a much larger party than I’d intended for this campaign.]

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Chapter I: Hoard of the Sea Wolf King

The lost province was once an imperial crossroads. It is said that an ancient northlander king once came south in search of glory and treasure and cut a bloody swath through these lands before the Old Empire finally stopped him. Struck a mortal wound by an imperial champion, he was carried from the field of battle by his followers, who entombed him near the site of his greatest triumph on the banks of Lake Aster. For centuries, his burial site was hidden from mortal view, but the ancient spells woven by his priests and seers have begun to fray…

Armed only with the information above and a good supply of blades and torches, a group of crawlers set out from Plainwood to seek the long-lost burial site. Tonight’s party consisted of:

  • Nubbin Stump: drawn halfling, fighter 1
  • Vraazox da Pryist, wolfchild goblin, priest of Memnon 1
  • Tulk, marked half-orc, ranger 2
  • Ylva Fekyue, outcast halfling, bard 1 (player joined late, PC introduced in play)

The following post may contain spoilers for Hoard of the Sea Wolf King from Cursed Scroll Vol. 3: Midnight Sun.

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Chapter [$undefined]: Tomb of the Dusk Queen

After a thoroughly enjoyable demo game of Shadowdark at RiverCityCon a few weeks ago, I’ve decided to start a side campaign with the usual suspects. This will likely involve most or all of the players from Kaserne on the Borderlands, and perhaps a few others from the same friends circle, but not all at once. Somewhere West of Light, as I’m calling it, will be a pick-up game – either “we don’t have a quorum for a scheduled Twilight: 2000 session” or “I’m bored, can I get three to five players for a dungeon?” It may wind up being West Marches-ish. I’ll be chronicling it here, both for my own memory and for entertaining my three loyal readers. Don’t expect writeups to be as in-depth as what I do for Kaserne, though.

We did a dry run tonight with four players. I threw together a set of level 1 pre-gens, and my players chose:

  • Pryist, goblin wolfchild, priest of Memnon
  • Worluck, human minstrel, warlock of Kytheros
  • Nyte, halfling amnesiac, Knight of St. Ydris
  • Baarrd, elf scholar, bard

(I may have been giggling like a twelve-year-old as I rolled up and named a score of disposable PCs.)

For our test-run adventure, I grabbed the free Foundry pack community content pack and selected Sersa Victory‘s Tomb of the Dusk Queen. It’s a delightfully tightly-written dungeon, and I suspect I’ll be buying more of that author’s content in the near future. Module spoilers behind the cut:

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