Gailbraithe

Probably a Mind Control effect would work better. Also, saw this and thought of you:

This evening the players were Hannewig, Shaz-ri-Zonni, and Ulfgar. While the Lord Mayor tried to keep the events at the Lachrymose Society's secret temple from becoming public knowledge, nothing in Magath remains secret for long, and by the time our heroes had returned to their respective domiciles House Korde was already in action, trying to eliminate any witnesses to Lady Neeri's activities. Hannewig took the exhausted Lady Seeta Zadi back to his room at Nesmiri's Teahouse, only to find Lord Keyvad Shani -- the late Lady Tara Adin's fiance -- waiting for him with a pair of thugs, while Ulfgar was lured into an ambush by the brothers Ivar and Rollo Torgerson and more hired goons. Hannewig gave a strong showing against the overmatched Keyvad, leaving the hothead lordling lying in a pool of his own blood, while the wiley Torgerson brothers slipped away once more, promising they would not underestimate Ulfgar again. Rutger contacted Hannewig a few hours later, confirming that every member of the party had been attacked separately. In addition, it was confirmed that Father Diadacus and his assistant, who had helped destroy the demon's bodies, had been attacked as well -- and had not survived. Worse, Mite and Ulfgar had disappeared as well. Hannewig and Rutger were able to track down Ulfgar, but Mite was missing and the party was forced to assume that he had fallen prey to assassins and his body made to vanish. The Lord Mayor called them to a meeting in his offices, the first time he had met with them so openly, and introduced them to Master Arih Lan of House Bijan, a man who had done the party several favors and who was now in need of a favor of his own. Master Lan's mother, the Dame Laina Lan, has become obsessed with recovering the various insignia of nobility belonging to House Bijan (signet rings, documents, etc.). Unfortunately, all of these heirlooms were with her father when he died in the Battle of Kharhat Pol. Khahat Pol is a massive fortress situated in the Horns of Hran, guarding the only contiguous pass through the treacherous region. It fell to the undead armies of Nyrodak Vhül shortly after he seized Hran, and while the fortress was lost, the heroic stand made there slowed Vhül's advance sufficiently that the Free Cities were able to mount a defense on the Plains of Khahre and drive the necromancer back into Hran, where he was eventually slain. No major expedition has returned to the fortress in the 50 years since it fell, but now Laina Lan insists on returning and her son insists she have the best protection available. The party agrees after Master Lan offers them a prize of 75 gold each to bring Dame Lan to Kharhat Pol and back again. Meanwhile Shaz-ri-Zonni, a Shemite pathfinder of the Zonni Clan, was sent by his father to escort his sister, Rach-el-Zonni, to Magath and deliver her to her husband-to-be, the Lord Amman Rouzi of House Heimel. Along the road a group of bandits tried to ambush them and learned the folly of ambushing a Shemite warrior. Upon arriving in Magath, Shaz found he could not stand his soon to be brother-in-law, and his obvious displeasure lead to Rach-el demanding he leave. His brother-in-law, also clearly happy to see Shaz leave, told Shaz of a job opportunity that would take him out into the wilderness and keep him out of Rach-el's hair until the wedding. Amman introduces Shaz-ri to Behrooz Misba, majordomo of House Bijan, who tells him that he is organizing an expedition for Master Lan... Hannewig, Shaz-ri-Zonni and Ulfgar are awarded 2 experience points.

That was extremely interesting, and completely changed my understanding of how bucklers work.

Congratulations on not shooting blanks. ;)

This evening the players were Hannewig, Mite, Rutger, Ulfgar and new player Ben who played two House Guard, but will be playing his regular character, the Shemite pathfinder Shaz-ti-Zonni starting next week. Weeks of investigation culminated in a raid on the secret temple of the Lachrymose Society. The plan was for Rutger and Ulfgar to enter through the main passage, leading a squad of six House Guard on loan from House Bijan, while Hannewig and Mite entered through a secret passage and covered Seeta Zadi's escape. She told Hannewig that the demon Wallifleur would be weakened at the end of the ceremony, and so he should time the attack to coincide with the attack. Meanwhile Rutger visited a priest and learned some ways of harming demons, and he and Ulfgar had their weapons sanctified in the name of Simon Rex. The night of the ceremony, the party moved into position, with Hannewig watching the ceremony through a crack in a secret door. The thirteen members of the Lachyrmose Society gathered, each adding her blood to a bowl which Wallifleur then drank from. Yet rather than culminating in the granting of a wish, as Seeta had claimed the ceremony would end, the demon Wallifleur instead turned on Seeta, denouncing her as a traitor and demanding the other witches seize her. He then revealed that he could sense Hannewig watching from the shadows, and so the combat began! Hannewig rushed in, with Mite close on his feels, while Rutger and Ulfgar burst through the doors at the far end of the temple, leading a charge of House Bijan soldiers. They'd come armed with clubs and saps, expecting to encounter only misguided young women and lesser guile demon, but suddenly found themselves facing not one demon but four! The three witches at the head of the coven -- the Lady Tara Adin, Lady Neeri Mundi and Lady Nehi Adieh -- revealed themselves as nearly fully transformed succubi, while Wallifleur transformed into the towering Malekith, Lord Incubi, the infamous father of all succubi -- and thus was revealed the true terrible purpose of the Lachrymose Society! The three succubi launched an attack against the larger group of invaders, easily lifting Rutger and Ulfgar off their feet and sending them hurtling into the walls with terrible force, while Malekith turned on Hannewig and unleashed a torrent of hellfire. Lady Nehi was the first to fall, when she made a second pass at the House Guard and slammed into a readied sword, which sent her tumbling to the ground where the House Guard fell on her and hacked her to pieces. Lady Tara, enraged to see her carefully laid plans falling apart, allowed herself to be distracted by her need for revenge on Seeta Zadi, which gave Rutger a chance to clip her with a well aimed thrown dagger, which sent her tumbling from the sky. Only Lady Neeri, who had most gleefully embraced her new life as a succubi, survived the opening rounds of battle -- performing so outstandingly that her fallen sisters were of little consequence. Hannewig dodged away from Malekith's attacks, even managing to land a few ineffective blows of his own, while Mite tried to affect the powerful demon's mind to little avail, but the battle did not favor them and Hannewig was taken out of the fight by a blast of hellfire, freeing Malekith to join in the attack on the larger group of warriors. Lady Neeri, grown overconfident, landed amongst the soldiers, lashing out with her claws, but their shields were ready and they repelled her attack -- and then showed her what a well-organized group of fighting men could do as they launched a coordinated assault that brought the demon down under a flurry of blows. Unfortunately, dogpiling on the succubi left them an easy target for Malekith's hellfire, and he took out the squad with a wave of his hand. A well-timed psychic lash from Mite distracted the demon long enough for Rutger and Ulfgar to get into position, and the two fell on him their sanctified axes in a coordinated attack that saw them literally split the demon where the good lord had done previously. No attack could have been more humiliatingly placed for the demonic Lord of Lusts than the blow Ulfgar and Rutger delivered*, and fortunately for the demon prince, he did not have to live with the consequences, as he was very, very much dead. The remaining members of the Lachrymose Society surrendered peaceably, and by morning all in the city had heard of the cult's existence and the terrible shame these girls had brought on the houses. The Lord Mayor was ecstatic, and gladly paid the reward of 500 gold crowns that is the standing bounty for the exposure and destruction of a dark cult. But the reward came with a warning: The houses would not take this insult lightly, and would be eager for revenge -- especially if eliminating the witnesses could call the events themselves into question. Thus he suggested the party leave Magath for the next month at least... Hannewig, Mite, Rutger and Ulfgar are awarded 3 experience points and Favor: Lord Mayor Atom Dashir. *if the flowery language is obscuring the point: They both managed to hit him in "the vitals." That's the twig and berries. Meat and two veg. I say, I say, it's the cock and balls, son. Terrible way to die.

Yes, you can purchase mastercrafted weapons. Those have to be custom ordered, and you'll have to do some legwork to find out who the master craftsmen are in the first place, but those are much, much easier to come buy than magic gear. As for what you can spend your money on: Hirelings and retainers, property, business ventures, shares in a trading ship, lavish lifestyle and luxuries, professional yes-men to tell you how right you are, wandering minstrels to sing your praises across the land (buying reputation!), noble titles. Want your own Great House? It costs about a hundred thousand gold. Or you could also buy a mercenary army and seize control of part of the Bandit Kingdoms and start your own bloody empire. Also, if you ever want to buy your old armor and other stuff back, the things you were forced to sell when the Brotherhood started messing with you, you can always go back to Kanir and track down the guy you sold it to. Probably easier than finding a Hybrovana armorsmith in Magath.

Depends on what you want it to do. Basically you just build them with point like ordinary weapons, except you can't run down to the shop and pick one up. Don't expect to find many such things in Rhune, magic items of any kind are exceptionally rare. They also tend to be cursed. Remember, this is a world where the most powerful magic sword known kills anyone who touches it. It's not D&D where loading up on magic items is the point of the game. If you want magic armor or a magic shield, your best bet is to find a sage and pay him to research the history of any known lost magic suits or shields, at which point I might be nice enough to point you in the general direction of such a thing. That is definitely quest-worthy. Also, most magic armor or shields won't necessarily be better as armor than an ordinary suit. It's far more likely to have some kind of funky special ability, like granting Power Defense or Immunity to Fire, or being a mirror shield that reflects spells, etc.

Well I did strikeout the claim that it was a quick summary... Actual quick summary: A girl got killed by a crazy bitch and it turns out all of the crazy bitch's friends are witches. And that's bad.

Here's a quick summary of the story so far for anyone having trouble keeping up: The city of Magath has been in a state of political turmoil ever since the collapse of the Hran Empire 50 years ago. Order was restored to the city by a cabal of powerful merchant Houses, The Lords of Gold, who set up a unique form of government, establishing the Conclave of Great Houses as a hereditary legislative body and an executive branch ruled by a Lord Mayor, who is elected for life. The most recent Lord Mayor, Atom Dashir, was elected 25 years ago. Dashir is a charismatic, extremely talented leader with the loyalty of the common citizenry -- this makes him a threat to the Conclave of Great Houses. Their fears came to a head when Dashir founded the Free Company of Magath, a semi-independent privateer navy that quickly racked up a string of victories against the pirates who had run rampant across the Inner Sea ever since the collapse of the Hran Navy. The Free Company was widely seen as the personal army of the Lord Mayor, and the noblemen of the Great Houses began to fear that Dashir would seize absolute power and try to rebuild the Hran Empire with himself as Dictator. To counteract thus, the Conclave arranged to frame the Free Company for piracy and forced Dashir to abolish them. This set off a politcal war between the Lord Mayor and the Conclave, which the Conclave won by subverting the Mayor's powers and leaving him toothless -- not only did they take the Free Company from him, they abolished the City Guard and replaced it with dozens of independent Ward Guards who report to the Ward Ministers, who are almost all in the pocket of various Houses. Yet the Free Company survives! Though their ships have been scuttled and its members have been made outlaws, many of the survivors of the Conclave's purge have gone underground, working as agents of the Lord Mayor in his ongoing war against the Great Houses. Seramina Muat, a sixteen year old girl, is the daughter of Algon Muat, a former member of the Free Company who now works as a caravan guard. Dashir recruited Seramina to work as a spy, getting her a job on the household staff of Master Seyvaadi Korde, head of House Korde, one of the most powerful of the Great Houses. Seramina was later found murdered, leading Dashir to assume that Master Korde had killed her, Yet household spies are so common in Magath that it defies credulity to suggest Korde would murder a young girl just for being a spy, which leads Dashir to assume that Korde must be up to something truly heinous. Outraged that Korde would murder a teenage girl, and feeling more than a little guilty that he placed the daughter of one of his trusted lieutenants in harm's way, Dashir is determined to see Korde face justice -- but lacks the official power to bring Korde to trial. Enter Rutger, an orphan raised in a state-run orphanage and steadfastly loyal to his city, who joined the Free Company in the final years before its dissolution, and remains loyal to the Lord Mayor still. The Lord Mayor approached Rutger with a special mission: Discover why Master Korde murdered Seramina by any means necessary, with specific instructions to use foreign agents who can't be traced back to the Mayor. To aid him in his mission, Rutger recruits two foreign warriors, the disgraced Brovanan nobleman turned assassin Hannewig Marcellus, and the northman barbarian Ulfgar Hjalmarson. Along the way they pick up an odd companion in the form of "Mite", a (possibly insane) street person who possesses strange powers of the mind. Their investigation leads them quickly to the conclusion that Master Korde likely had nothing to do with the murder, which appears to have been committed by Korde's daughter, the Lady Neeri Mundi. In order to learn more about Lady Neeri, Hannewig has gone undercover as a visiting nobleman from Brovana and insinuated himself into Magath's upper class. He learns that Neeri is a member of The Lachrymose Society, which is ostensibly a social charity run by young ladies of the Great Houses. The Society was founded by the Lady Tara Adin with the help of her close friend, the Lady Nehi Adieh, and serves as a cover for Lady Tara's true purposes: the formation of a coven of witches. The source of the coven's power is an ancient scroll, the Sheta Kekewey Hemet, that contains a ritual for summoning and binding the demon Wallifleur. The ladies of the Society have been making sacrifices to Wallifluer in exchange for the granting of wishes -- wishes they have used to make themselves more beautiful, to advance their social standing, and other rather trivial ends. Yet Lady Tara, along with Lady Neeri and Lady Nehi, clearly has far more nefarious goals. Most of his information has come from the Lady Seeta Zadi of House Yak-Ilat. Beautiful and seductive, the Lady Seeta was once the queen of Magath's social heirarchy, a position she held through her skillful use of blackmail and extortion. She was blindsided by Lady Tara's rapid rise to prominence, and only joined the Society to learn Tara's secrets. When Hannewig appeared on the social scene, she took an immediate interest in the new stranger, and quickly learned through her extensive network of informants and spies that Hannewig had spent the last several years in the city of Kanir working as an assassin and duelist, and that Hannewig had actually fled Brovana in disgrace after murdering his father (Hannewig was actually framed by his brother, Nico Marcellus, but Seeta doesn't know that). Thinking it might be useful to have an assassin with a dark secret in her pocket, Lady Seeta set out to seduce Hannewig and bring him under her control. Now Lady Seeta has recruited Hannewig, and thus the party, in a scheme that will see Tara brought down, the Society crushed, while Seeta walks away scot free and in control of the Sheta Kekewey Hemet, and thus the demon bound to its pages. There is also a subplot involving a pair of scheming brothers from the Stormlands, Ivar and Rollo Torgenson, who have been running illegal (and fixed) pit fights -- tricking warriors into entering the ring with a fearsome kalak (ogre). They thought they had found another mark in Ulfgar, but their plans came undone when the Ulfgar defeated their brute and revealed the fights as fixed.

This evening the players were Hannewig, Mite and Ulfgar. Washed up and rested after their disastrous raid on House Korde, our heroes set aside their quest to enjoy some good old fashioned pit-fighting. But first Hannewig and Ulfgar spent the morning running errands -- Hannewig sought out a Simonite Temple in hopes of getting some magical healing to mitigate the vicious beating he suffered at the hands of the flayswarms, while Ulfgar tried to buy a new axe -- only to discover that in Magath, weapons sales are closely monitored by the trade guild and melee weapons larger than big knives are hard to find. Meanwhile Hannewig discovered healing does not come cheap for those who do not follow Simon's path, and the effort left him once again flat broke and penniless. After securing healing, Hannewig stopped to get lunch at Nesmiri's Teahouse, a watering hole favored by the young nobles of Magath, and learned that the mysterious and seductive Seeta Zadi of House Yak-Ilat had come by searching for him, and had let the proprietor, Nesmiri, know that she would leave a message for him at the Golden Harvest, where Hannewig and Ulfgar rent hammocks in the common room. Seeta's message was an invitation to join her at the underground fighting club known as The Red Bull, which just happened to be where Ulfgar had gone to meet his countrymen, Ivar and Rollo. Hannewig and Mite went to the club, where they found Seeta and her friend Azin Amir of House Zabad. Seeta made some disparaging comments about Hannewig's outfit, pointedly noting that he must love the outfit dearly, as she had seen him wearing nothing else, and offering to take him shopping -- and perhaps finding him accommodations more suitable for a man of his status, with yet more pointed comments that it would do her image little good to be see cavorting about town with a man who had only one suit and no proper address. Ulfgar was lead out to the pit by Rollo and introduced to his opponent for the evening, whom Ulfgar was lead to believe was a warrior named "Kalak." Only when his opponent entered the ring did he learn the startling truth: his opponent was not named Kalak, but rather was a kalak, a race of towering, brutish ogre-like creatures native to the Azakalak Mountains far south of the Desolation of Shem. Standing nearly eleven feet tall, the bookmakers were giving Ulfgar a depressing 5 to 1 odds of losing -- numbers that convinced Hannewig and Mite to put most of the party's treasure so far on the line. A Kalak Fueled by the fury of the Iceborn, Ulfgar was able to not only keep out of the grasp of the towering kalak, but match its ferocious strength blow for blow. Much to his dismay the great beast proved able to shrug off even the mightiest of blows, and Ulfgar began to sweat as the fury of his berzerker rage started to wane, threatening to leave him exhausted and feeble, unable to continue the fight. If his rage ran out before the kalak fell, Ulfgar knew he would be so much dog meat. Summoning up his power into one desperate, mighty blow, he slipped in under the kalak's sweeping arms and delivered a two-fisted punch to its solar plexus, knocking the wind from its sails and winning the match. This was not the outcome expected by Ivar and Rollo, nor by the bookkeepers attending the match, who had all been promised that the fix was in and that Ulfgar would be no match for the kalak. Hannewig wasn't able to get even a tenth of their expected winnings from the weaselly bookkeeper who took the party's bet before an angry mob seized hold of him and beat him into paste. Meanwhile Ivar was forced to grovel and beg Ulfgar for mercy, as he and Rollo did not actually have the winnings they had promised to Ulfgar. Ivar gave up his own axe to replace the one Ulfgar lost in the sewers, and swore on his honor to get Ulfgar the remainder of his payment. Amazingly, Ulfgar let the cheating Stormlander live. The next day Hannewig joined Seeta Zadi, with Mite tagging along in his guise as Hannewig's manservant, in the market to do some shopping, letting her buy him several new outfits -- a fitting backdrop for the extended battle of wits between the two. Even with Mite surreptitiously reading her mind and passing useful information back to Hannewig, the Brovanan nobleman was no match at all for a talent born and bred in courts of Magath, the city in which political intrigue has been elevated to an art form. The wily femme fatale maneuvered Hannewig into revealing all of the party's secrets; that they worked for the Lord Mayor, that they were indeed the ones who bungled the raid on Korde Manor, and that their interest in House Korde began with the murder of Seramina. Seeta was disgusted by the revelation, fearing that she had misread Hannewig entirely and that he was, in fact, some sort of loathsome idealist, an actual honest-to-god hero. Hannewig was able to persuade her that his interest in the matter was purely finacial, and that he'd fallen into the work when he found himself at odd end's and unable to seek work in his chosen profession due to the interference of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. Her fears allayed, Seeta invited Hannewig into a conspiracy. Seeta reveals that the Lachryrmose Society is a front for a dark cult. Tara Adin of House Rumeh, once an entirely unpopular and homely girl, has risen to prominence within the young ladies of the Great Houses by calling on the services of the daemon Wallifleur, whom she has summoned with an ancient scroll, the Sheta Kekewey Hemet (roughly translating as "Secrets of the Dark Woman"), dating back to the Empire of Riddles. Tara formed the Lachrymose Society to recruit young women for her coven, granting access to Wallifleur's powers in exchange for their loyalty. What most of the members, with the exception of Tara's closest allies, Lady Neeri of House Korde, and Lady Nehi of House Sanjaf, do not realize is that Tara is somehow using the power of the scroll to transform herself (and perhaps the entire coven) into something...inhuman. Seeta herself only learned of this because another member of the Society, Gisou Hari of House Tari, accidentally saw Neeri mid-transformation and could not keep the secret to herself. Seeta loathes that Tara has usurped her as "queen bee" of Magath's young nobility and seeks to claim Wallifleur's powers for herself, which means that she needs the Sheta Kekewey Hemet. "ShTA KKW(Y) HMT" aka the Sheta Kekewey Hemet Seeta offers to deliver Tara and the rest of the Lachrymose Society into the hands of the Lord Mayor, a coup which will devastate the Great Houses and advance the Lord Mayor's agenda, if in return Hannewig will help her steal the Sheta and cover her escape. Hannewig agrees, much to the young noblewoman's delight, and she promises to meet with him later to deliver the necessary maps and make final arrangements... Ulfgar is awarded 2 experience points and Reputation: Ulfgar Kalakslayer! (Magath Only), +2/+2d6 11- Hannewig is awarded 0 experience points and Contact: Lady Seeta Zadi of House Yak-Ilat (Contact has Useful Resources, Good relationship with Contact) 11-, Mite is awarded 2 experience points.

Yes, it also means you have defend slights against your own honor.

You couldn't have picked a better one to miss out on, as I think this session is going to be all about Eli and Joey. Mostly its going to be about Joey, since tonight is Fight Night! I'm putting my money on the Kalak.

Please don't actually play a pig that farts fireballs.

Loren: You just need to write up a few paragraphs about the character you want to play, and I'll handle the actual point building. If you want to play a wizard or priest, or have magical powers of any kind, just let me know and I'll explain how that works. Basically I just need some key background elements (social class, race, important life events), how the character fights, what he's skilled at, any notable physical features (exceptionally handsome/ugly, etc.) You can read through the Player Handout (attached) to get a sense of the kinds of cultures available. Magath is the biggest city in the world and a major trade port, so it draws people from all around the world, which means you can be pretty much anything you want (except a Horseclan's raider, they never leave the Western Steppe). Right now the party could really use a traditional wizard or priest type character, someone with a lot of arcane knowledge and education. But seriously, let you imagination run wild. You can play a the wandering soul of an alien god or a pig that farts fireballs. It's a very open system. Eli: The more the merrier! PlayerHandout.pdf

Oh, and I have been informed by my players that over the next few months they will be travelling all around the world or heading off to college. It looks like we're going to have a continuously empty seat through the next few months, so I'd really like to find a fifth player. If you've got Thursday nights free and have been enjoying this thread, think about joining the campaign! It's never too late!

The guys at the store didn't seem to know where they were, so I have not picked them up yet.

This evening the players were Hannewig, Mite, Rutger and Ulfgar. The party escaped into the sewers to avoid the numerous squads of Ward Guards pouring on to the streets, but quickly discovered that the sewers of Magath never offer safe harbor. Forced to enter the sewers by an alternate route, the party found themselves in a large collector. The chamber was the lair of a sewer tyrant, a beast bred over centuries to control the goblin populations in urban sewage systems. After a furious battle, in which Ulfgar lost his axe, the beast was driven off -- but the party wasn't safe yet. Continuing forward, they spotted a number of dirty, filth-caked beggars huddled in the corners of the sewer tunnels, and as they continued further in the number of these poor, downtrodden wretches continued to increase. As they passed under the city walls they found themselves caught between two squads of Ward Guards who had entered the sewers through other entrances. Thinking quickly, Rutger threw out a handful of coins, hoping to rouse the beggars to action and hinder the guadsmen - but as the coins clattered across the stone floors, Rutger met one of the beggars gaze and realized to his horror that the man was not alive at all as numerous glittering beetles spilled from his empty eye sockets. The wretches -- empty human husks animated by flesh-eating beetle swarms -- lurched to their feet and began to buzz with a terrible, unearthly sound, falling upon guardsmen and heroes alike. Hannewig attempts to run, but when Mite fell into his second catatonic trance of the evening he lost the ability to see in darkness that Mite's telepathic manipulations provides and is forced to re-enter the fray in hopes of stealing a guardman's torch. The guardsmen fell quickly, but the party was able to keep free of the flayswarms long enough to cut them down, though Hannewig was overwhelmed and nearly suffocated under the mass of creatures that fell on him. Once the last of the flayswarms had fallen, the few remaining guardsmen decided that they had more important things to do than arrest the party and let them escape. As dawn crept closer, they made their way back to the Golden Harvest Inn, where Ulfgar and Hannewig rent hammocks, and Ulfgar learned that the Iceborn fighters he'd met earlier had left word with him to be ready for a match in early evening, giving the wearied warrior little time to rest. Hannewig, Mite, Rutger and Ulfgar are awarded 3 experience points.

I'll pick them up tomorrow and keep them safe until we work out a plan.

I feel like this is my fault. When I suggested donating to the club, I didn't mean to imply that the club was ready to accept donations. Starting a club library is a neat idea, but we should work out the logistics of it before just donating random stuff.

Maybe you could donate them to the whole club, and we could start a library of old, out of print gamebooks and magazines.

Just wanted to point out that I changed the reward from last night's session. Eli, Bahou Bakhti is the chubby, gossipy woman you were getting so much useful information out of. Your reward for listening to her prattle on is that she now likes you and considers you a friend, so you can call on her as a contact. She is a noble from one of the hundreds of Lesser Houses; her House is House Bade. Current experience totals: Hannewig: 7 exp and Contact: Bahou Bakhti (Contact has useful contacts of her own) 8-. Mite: 8 exp Rutger: 7 exp Ulfgar: 6 exp

This evening the players were Hannewig, Mite, Rutger and Ulfgar. Our merry band continued to gather information in preparation for the infiltration of Korde Manor, with Rutger and Hannewig both pursuing different avenues, hoping to gain access to Master Korde's itinerary so as to stage the mission when the Master was away, but neither was able to discover much of use. Hannewig did have a quite interesting encounter with the mysterious Lady Seeta Zadi of House Yak-Ilat, a smoldering temptress who seems to know Hannewig's dark secrets, and clearly has designs on the disgraced nobleman. Meanwhile Ulfgar was approached by two of his countrymen, Ivar and Rollo, who had heard of the brutal beating he delivered to Amman and invited him to a meeting later that night, where they revealed their participation in an underground fighting club where the stakes are life and death and the reward is gold enough to keep a man in a life of luxury. After Ulfgar's meeting, the group assembled to launch a midnight raid on Korde Manor. They followed their map into the underground, hoping to evade the city's internal walls, but the map turned out to be grossly inaccurate, and they found themselves lost. When they stopped to get their bearings, they were ambushed by a Cthonic Hunter -- a serpent-like lesser earth daemon that bores through the earth and stores rare elements in its gullet, allowing it to belch a noxious cloud of toxic vapors. Though the creature nearly felled Hannewig, Rutger was able to slay the beast. Shaken by the encounter, but undeterred, the party forged ahead and eventually found their way back to the surface and inside the High District where Korde Manor lays. Hannewig and Mite entered the manor, with Mite taking advantage of a guard's drunkenness to push him into a gentle sleep as the pair slipped past. Creeping through the manor, the pair accidentally alerted a guard to their presence, and Mite's attempt to project an illusion of an empty hallway into the guard's mind failed disastrously, leaving the unstable psychic in a catatonic state as he was suddenly overwhelmed by a flood of terrifying memories from his years in captivity, when an evil wizard used him a host for daemonic entities from beyond time and space. Mite's sudden collapse so shocked the guard that Hannewig was able to stab him in the face before he could scream a warning. With Mite's collapse, the psychic network he'd established between the party members collapsed, leaving Hannewig alone in the manor with no means of calling for help and an unconscious Mite. So naturally, Hannewig started looking for things to steal. This lead him into the bedchamber of Master Korde and his wife. When her found the later sleeping in her bed, Hannewig decided to retreat, but a stubborn door gave away his presence and woke the mistress of the house. Hannewog attempted to impersonate the Master Korde from the other side of a door, but horribly misjudged what the Master's voice sounded like and Mistress Korde sounded an alarm. Throwing Mite over his shoulder, Hannewig made a mad dash for the streets beyond the manor grounds. Several of the Korde House Guard gave chase, but Hannewig lead them into the waiting blades of Rutger and Ulfgar, and the three warriors were able to easily overpower and defeat the House Guards. The clamor of battle drew several squads of Ward Guards towards them, and the party escaped into the sewers, hoping to find a path back under the walls before the Ward Guards locate and overwhelm them... Hannewig, Mite, Rutger and Ulfgar are awarded 2 experience points. Mite, Rutger and Ulfgar are awarded 2 experience points. Hannewig is awarded 1 experience point and Contact: Bahou Bakhti (Contact has useful contacts of her own) 8-.

Oh man, Brad I want to play some Car Wars when you get that. I'm going to remake my favorite car of all time: sedan, steel armor, hardened ram, zero guns, six pack of bumper trigger missile launchers in the front. Hit one side of your car, drive out the other side of your car.

I have played Car Wars. It's one of my favorites.

Friday afternoon the players were Hannewig, Mite, Rutger and Ulfgar. When our intrepid heroes were stopped at one of the city's many inner gates and found they couldn't even enter the same ward as Korde Manor without raising alarm, they decided that perhaps infiltrating the place would require more research and less spontaneity. Rutger and Hannewig both turned their considerable skills towards learning all they could about Korde Manor and it inhabitants, and through their research they were able to acquire a map to the city underground which would sneak them under the city's internal walls, as well as a official pass that would get them past any gate guards. Meanwhile Mite and Ulfgar were able to case the joint and get a sense of its layout. Hannewig, himself a nobleman familiar with the ways of aristocrats, also attempted to learn more about about the Lady Neeri. His efforts to befriend some of the lower status courtiers, always a good source of information on aristocratic intrigues, were largely thwarted by a belligerent and bullying young nobleman, Keyvad Shandi of House Shefa, who nearly provoked Hannewig into a duel. Fortunately Rutger was able to secure an invitation to a ball thrown by House Bijan. There Hannewig learns more about the Lady Neeri, discovering that Keyvad Shandi is Neeri's fiance, and that the young lady is known to associate with Tara Adin Rumeh of House Rumeh, and that both of them are heavily involved in something called The Lachrymose Society, a charitable organization that helps downtrodden women. Meanwhile Ulfgar -- a foreigner and stranger in Magath, with no connections -- is able to find a bare-knuckle boxing match, where he takes on a young slumming nobleman, Amman, and leaves the young man in a coma. Hannewig, Mite, Rutger and Ulfgar are awarded 1 experience point.