AAR: [8H] Tower Defense 2020-11-11 2359 GMT

[bronzemountain]

LFG: Tower Defense
GM: Dvarim
ECR: 8
Difficulty: Hard

Rumor: Work on the Tower of B'shon is nearly complete. Left with time on their hands and a shrine of Upandal so close, many of the artisans and crafters who worked on the tower have elected to stay in the vicinity and continue their work there. An artisans collective is taking shape at the base of the tower. Thorkell has invited Adepts to come visit and to see the work that's been done. Among those who have accepted are you, the ones who signed up for this adventure. Nothing bad will happen, surely.
Requested by: Thorkell
Reward: Questor progression: Upandal; half price mundane crafted items / tools
Benefit: A place to revere and quest for Upandal.

Notes:
- Adventure runs at 7:00pm EST on Wednesday, November 11th
- As always, I run groups of 5 players.

Sign up format:

Code: Select all

[b]Name:[/b] Character name
[b]Date of Last Game Played:[/b]
[b]Circle:[/b] Circle of your character
[b]Discipline:[/b] Your character's Discipline(s)
[b]Unique:[/b] What your character is bringing to the table.
[b]Downtime:[/b] Talents and Skills that other characters can use over downtime: [Talent] [Step including +Karma Step if appropriate] ([Rank]) ([Further Details])

[verse86]

Name: Thorkell Gulbrandsen
Date of Last Game Played: My Rumor
ECR: 8
Discipline: Weaponsmith 8/Warrior 1
Unique: Thorkell brings the downtime activities. Besides that he is a perceptive and tanky troll.
Downtime:
[Craftsman] Rank 8 / 23 can make mundane items, weapons, and armor
[Efficient Forge Weapon] Rank 10 / 21 (+2 if metal) (can forge rank weapons at once)
[Forge Armor] Rank 10 / 21 (+2 if metal)
[Item History] Rank 4 / 19
[Research] Rank 6 / 17
[Design Enchanting Pattern] Rank 9 / 24
[Craft True Pattern] Rank 9 / 24 (+2 if metal)

[sigfriedmcwild]

Name: Norg
ECR: 9 (343245lp)
Last played on: 2020-11-08
Discipline: Gauntlet 9 / Air Sailor 5
Quote/Unique: The punch is not the goal, the punch is the way
Notable Abilities: PUNCH! JUMP! some awareness, some navigation, some wilderness survival, the worst physician this side of the mountains
Downtime: none

[Lashana]

Name: LaShana
Last played on: 2020-11-06
ECR: 8 (171315)
Discipline: Thief 8
Quote/Unique: Well that was....interesting/fun/unique!! Can we do it again?
Notable Abilities: Enthusiasm and an ability to fumble/stumble into trouble. Can also open...and close....doors - possibly even if they are locked....and a wicked bow
Downtime: none

[predajey]

Name: Vralino Hammer-Shield

Date of Last Game Played: Nov 5
ECR: 8
Discipline:

• Spear Master (Circle 6)
• Elementalist (Circle 5)

Unique: Spears, Spells, Speaking, and Surgery...somewhat. I also navigate and alchemate... in moderate.
Downtime:
Item History (Rank 6 ESR 17)
Alchemy (Skill Rank 1, ESR 8)

• Booster Potions

[bronzemountain]

AAR: Tower Defense
GM: Dvarim
ECR: 8
Difficulty: Hard

Player Rewards:
Norg: 28,000 LP, 1,350 SP, 5 TIPs
Vralino: 28000 LP, 1350 SP, 5 TIPs
Thorkell: 28000 lp, 1350 sp, 5 TIPs
LaShana: 28,000 LP, 1350 SP, 5 TIPS

GM Reward: A'horangi: 19,000 LP, 900 SP, 3 TIPs

Downtime:
Vralino: Item History 6/17, Alchemy 1/8 (Booster Potions)
Thorkell:
[Craftsman] Rank 8 / 23 can make mundane items, weapons, and armor
[Efficient Forge Weapon] Rank 10 / 21 (+2 if metal) (can forge rank weapons at once)
[Forge Armor] Rank 10 / 21 (+2 if metal)
[Item History] Rank 4 / 19
[Research] Rank 6 / 17
[Design Enchanting Pattern] Rank 9 / 24
[Craft True Pattern] Rank 9 / 24 (+2 if metal)

Summary:
Quela Henrilzen's Parade of Destruction has been thwarted. The Tower has been defended, though two buildings and a little over a dozen people have met their end. Still, the Tower of B'shon is restored and stands proud. Barsaive has new (old) sacred place of Upandal.

[predajey]

The following is a recollection from Vralino Hammer-Shield, a 16 year old Ork girl who grew up avoiding society. By this time, her father has been missing for a couple months. The text remains unaltered to maintain its authenticity (Certain terms and names written wrong to keep in character). It is written in Or'zet.

I got a message from Thorkell inviting me to a party! I came up with this wonderful new meal replacement grog. Maybe he'll like it? Anyway, I packed up all my crap, gave some money to Orfen to cover the costs of the orphanage and infirmary, and rode out towards the Tower of B'Shon. I haven't been here in a very long time, so it'll be interesting to see how it's changed.

When I arrived, the tower was amazing looking! I dove into the crowd and started drinking. Screw my grog, this stuff and the food was way better! Although, my grog doesn't require any cooking. I should keep it around. So this guy jumps up on a table and raises a glass for a drunken toast, then started babbling some non-sense about the tower being a lie. Who is this clown? When he finished, he fell off the table. He was unconscious, but otherwise uninjured. He did lose a tooth, though. I spent a few minutes looking for it, but I couldn't find it. He did say there was going to be a parade, though. Maybe he's a troubadour? He did say he was a carpenter. So we discussed how to handle this parade. The entire crowd was willing to fight it, but it's a parade! Why would we need to fight a parade. Nevertheless, Thorkell asked me to train some of the mages, and I even helped build up the fighters' armor.

Five days later, the parade came through. It was widely dispersed and consisted of violent and deadly creatures. I watched my mages as they assisted in the fight against the parade. These guys are better casters than I am. Two wyverns made it to the small community at the base of the tower. One of them immediately destroyed a hut. I threw a fireball at it. Then a seemingly dead boar sprang to life next to me. It didn't do much before Thorkell jumped in and squashed it. Then another boar came at me from inside another building. I counterattacked, then attacked, then kicked. These things are tough! Even after all that and LaShana's arrow, it was still standing and strong enough to go after Norg. It must've had a death wish. Norg killed it and another boar he was fighting.

There was much rejoicing. This was a wonderful distraction from more depressing events. I found out my dad died. Even after decapitating the savage troll that killed him, I feel empty without him in my life. He wasn't there often, but he was my dad, and he did make the attempt to be a dad quite often. He was definitely there more than my mom. She just took me away from my childhood. Maybe that's why they weren't married? Speaking of which, I should start looking at potential mates. I'm dreading having a kid, so maybe we'll adopt? Still, I'm sick of being alone. Orfen's fun to be with, but she's just a kid... I think? She might be 12 or 21? I should really keep track of her age...

[sigfriedmcwild]

From "The Skies of Barsaive", as penned by Norg, Brother of Earth and Sky, Corsair of Throal

Returning from the trips in the Scytan mountains Thorkell invited me and LaShana to join him in the celebrations for the grand opening of the tower of B'Shon. On the way down to the tower Vralino joined us, but looked more subdued than usual. Her cooking though was the same as always, meal replacement grog?

Orkish culinary "delights" notwithstanding, we made our way down to the tower with no trouble and the festivities were soon in full swing. Which, of course, is when things went weird. One of the craftsmen, an orc whose name I've forgotten, drunkenly jumped on the table for a toast and mid sentence his entire demeanour shifted: he threw off his hat revealing garishly died hair in green an orange, ripped off his vest to show and even more garish burgundy and black shirt and even his voice changed.

In short one Quela Henrilzen, who claimed to have orchestrated the some situation in Dviel, mocked Thorkell and told us to prepare for a "parade" in five days. Then whatever was possessing the ork left, he fell off the table and knocked himself out. Vralino and I checked on him, he was mostly unhurt other than a bump on the head and a chipped tooth, and had no memory of the entire thing. Then Quela chimed in again to announce the "parade" would be coming from the east.

Thorkell made a big speech about dieing for the tower, which seemed a bit wacky to me, but apparently the craftmen all wanted to lay down their lives to defend it and who am I to argue. I did make sure they understood what a chain of command is though, the last thing we needed was a clueless tailor getting themselves eaten because they did not understand what an order is.

The next day we found some narrow gorges we expected the "parade" would have to pass through and set out to fortify them while also teaching the craftsmen which side of a spear is pointy. I focused on working with the two groups that would engage in melee, trying to get them to understand that in a shieldwall it is not the shields that are the wall, but the people. Meanwhile Vralino helped the few magicians come to grips with the idea of setting living things on fire with your mind and LaShana and Whispers went to town on the archers.

Five days later we had two solid palisades, good nests for the archers and magicians, and maybe even somewhat competent people to man them with. With all that done we left them to their own devices in the gorges while we played backstop at the tower itself to protect those that would not or could not fight but had not left yet for reasons beyond my understanding.

Over the next few hours only a couple of harpies and blood bees made their way to their village, until two wyverns landed and started to make a mess of things. One of the wyverns had "elephant" painted on its side while the other had "hippopotamus". I managed to take down "elephant" just as it was tearing down one of the buildings around the tower, while "hippo" almost skewered Thorkell. Vralino was busy dealing with one of the dead hogs that has mysteriously appeared around the village, so I went to break "hippo"'s glass jaw.

Turns out the three dead piggies were in fact no dead, or piggies. They were razor boars and also part of the parade. They had "tiger", "five monkeys", and something I could not read painted on their side. They were also really good at charging and manged to bowl me over repeatedly. More annoyingly their spines easily break off and get everywhere, and, let me tell you, gauntlet or not there's some places no troll wants razor sharp metal shards.

"Five monkeys" managed to rampage through another building before we took it down, but overall we only had two buildings and a dozen people dead, it could have been a lot worse.

The people at the gorges returned with tales of weirdly coloured animals and ogres dressed as clowns but minimal losses and we had another celebration.

[verse86]

Thorkell's Journal:
It is finally time. All my hard work is finally paying off. Repairs have been more or less on schedule. I have planned a grand opening event for Tower of B'shon. I have invited my adventuring companions. It seems only Vralino, Norg, and LaShana were not out adventuring. I'm glad for their company, though.

Vralino brought some kind of crazy alcoholic stew. I tried it to be nice, but it is not to my taste. At one point I believed one of our Orc craftsmen had had too much of it, but it turned out he was being controlled by Quela Henrilzen, the Vestrial questor whom we had "met" in Dviel. Through our Orc friend, she warned us of a coming "parade" that would destroy the tower and town in five days. Needless to say this put a major damper on the festivities. I wanted to assuage my fellow crafters' fears so told them that I would let no harm come to the tower. I asked them to help me build defensive structures in the coming days to defend ourselves and asked them to leave before the coming chaos. Upandal bless them, they refused. They asked to defend the tower as well. Between building up our fortifications; Vralino, Norg, and LaShana trained the crafters on how to defend themselves.

I would receive word from them later about dealing with wolves, boars, bees, harpies, and ogres. They did a commendable job holding them off. My adventuring companions and I decided we would be best as the last line of defense to deal with anything large that they let through. Two wyverns made it to town as well as some razor boars. The wyverns immediately took to destroying the structures around us. From that moment forward all I saw was red. I just remember slashing at the creatures with all the fury I could muster. The boars had been playing dead but got up and attacked some of our craftsmen. We ended them with extreme prejudice. Despite the damage to the town, the tower stood tall. I mourn the loss of the craftsman who died defending our work, but they will be honored.

I must also find some way to repay Vralino, LaShana, and Norg for helping me protect that which was most important to me.