What I've Been Up To

Playing my online game every week or two or three.  It was a month between our previous session and last week's session.  The guys are involved in an assassination attempt on "The Overking of All the Lands," a purple orc with a broken neck and a spear who his side, who's stolen the 17-Eyed Spite Crown of Scorn the Androgyne from the Princess Derrida von Chasm, and taken her as his consort.  Jaime von Klaw (played by Michael Tom), a rich wizard from Belmric and an atheist, got drunk in Olomoc several months ago and was waylaid by thugs, and in his drunken stupor appealed to the God/dess Scorn for protection.  The thugs were turned to stone and he was laden with a geas to retrieve the 17-Eyed Spite Crown and return it to a rightful priest of priestess of Scorn.  Every day he doesn't seek the crown he loses one point from a random stat.

Okay.  So what do I need to make this happen?

I need a villain.  I need a base.  I need a list of all his minions.  I need to know what they're doing and when they do it.  I need a countryside for them to waylay.  I need a country between the players (who were in Olomoc) and the destination (somewhere in the Goblin Wastes).  I need the Goblin Wastes.  So I wrote all of this.

In addition to the standard red goblins who cast magic missile at the person who slays them and yellow goblins who cast confusion on anyone who touches them, we have green goblins as a random wizard, blue goblins who start tiny and grow a size every time they're hit, black goblins who are high level fighters and have special weapons and armor, and white goblins who can cast a single high level spell and are stretched across the shields of the black goblins.

Plus I can use this for the rest of the Overking's minions.  And this for his fortress (more or less).  And I can say that the original builders of the fortress were obsessed with (roll, roll) camels.  And that the warband of the Overking of All the Lands worships (roll, roll) Abjecta, Queen of Maggots.  So they're roaming the countryside, stealing people, planting the maggots of carrion crawlers in their flesh, and cultivating them in preposterous egg-shaped cages on long thin legs.

I got to use this scene.  Frederick Longtooth, a werewolf monk of Fenrath, decided to climb up the cage and cut her throat, dodged the torrent of carrion crawlers maggots that flooded the cage area, and avoided taking I'm pretty sure any damage as his friends doused the swarm with fire.

Afterwards Sad Ed goes "Nate, I'm killing all of the prisoners, and burning their corpses."  "Okay Thomson.  A column of greasy foul-smelling smoke winds upwards over the fortress."

Before this they had a long sneak and kill in the fortress that ended with a running battle with the forces left behind to guard the castle while the Overking and most of the warband were off gathering people for the maggot making process.  They killed so many goblins.  They killed the dark elf cleric Veshtoroc von Toxin.  They set some goat men on fire and sent them running into the shanty-town goblin camp, which caught on fire.  When the Great Grub (size H carrion crawler, HD 8) plugged into their tower and climbed the stairs and started waving its bazillion paralyzing tentacles at them, they threw a potion of turn-to-stone into its mouth and turned it to stone.  When the remaining goblins and tiny jackal men and guys with mouths on their hands and wargs barricaded themselves in the throneroom, Sad Ed drank a potion of eat metal and bit a hole in the door and uncorked a bottle of hallucinatory green smoke and smoked out the goblins and they ran in and murdered everybody.

And there chained to the throne in a chainmail bikini was Derrida von Chasm, lost princess of the Moriad, and a formidable priestess of Scorn.  "Untie this collar at my throat!  For it makes me invisible to the eyes of my God, and unable to cast their magic."

"Right away!" sez they.

"Thanks," sez the princess.  "I was on quest to the Canyons of Pain and Misfortune when I was waylaid by this orc. I would have slain him in an instant, except the weapons of my companions could not wound him, and my spells could not harm him.  Slay him!  I will aid thee."

And now they have a high level priestess on their side, just as the returning warband of the Overking thunders on the horizon, and my players are sending emails back and forth going "Fuck, what do we do? what do we have? how are we going to do this?"  They're very smart.  I'll have to think up something good for Wednesday.