Ekemon

With permission from the DM, Ekemon is now a shade rather than a tiefling. Pretty much all the options for shadow power source are dex-based strikers, and tiefling is actually not a good pick.

We will be going straight from level 0 to level 5, and I have built the 5th-level Ekemon. He should kick ass. Not 100% sure about one of the feat picks, though. I grabbed the “agile recovery” skill power – but meh. Being prone isn’t as bad in 4th ed as in 3.5, as it doesn’t trigger an AAO.

These people are fools.

After defeating the slavers and being the only crew aboard, they elected to knock the captain unconscious. Normally a fine idea, but he was the only one who knew how to sail a ship.

We sailed into port like – like idiots who don’t know hw to sail a ship. Impaled it on the end of a dock. I had had the foresight to suggest that we douse the captain with rum and blame it all on him.

Establishing Ekemon’s charcater. He is a bad guy.

We negotiated with the dockmaster, offering “our” ship and cargo as payment for the damage. Then we got out of there.

Odd. I keep saying “we”. Battle forges such bonds, I have heard, and now I find it to be somewhat true. These ten or so are no more to me that all the rest of the rabble in the world, save for one thing: I have fought alongside them, and survived. If I had to choose someone in all the world yo guard my back, I would pick one of these over a complete stranger.

But I shall not become sentimental.

To continue: we needed work. I and two others ended up at a bar, the two others becoming involved in a stupid bar fight. No-one was injured or looked like becoming so, so I held back. My new comrades handily dealt with the two, who – it turned out – had nothing but a silver between them. I paid the unconscious drunk a kick in the ribs for his silver. No-one challenged me – it was that sort of place. I am beginning to appreciate just how lawless this city is.

More RP. After the fight, Ekemon stealthed over to the unconscious guys and went through their pockets. Rolled a 13, which means someone is going to notice. But Ekemon doesn’t give a shit what people think of him – he’s evil. He assumes that everyone would do as he did, and would expect everyone else to do so, too.

We all wound up at some merchant’s place, looking for work. Our captain was there with nothing but good to say of us – after we foundered his ship, lost his cargo, and tried to blame it all on him. Either he is an idiot, or playing a deeper game. We were given a mission to “prove ourselves” – the recovery of something or other without much clue as to what that something or other might be. Frankly – I wasn’t paying attention. There were more than enough of us keen to win the dubious prize of a mission of some sort. I simply tagged along.

Just keeping my options open.

Character for Rise of the Runelords

This post is really just to get the RR blog entries started. All I really have so far is that I will be running a dwarf paladin with the “stonelord” template. No casting – I have done enough casting for now 🙂 . I think he gets an eath elemental instead of a mount – have to check. He will name this companion “son of lava”, which he has incorrectly translated to “lava boy”.

“Lava Boy! Attack that skellington!”

But apart from that, I don’t really have anything yet. Need to work out why he is in Sandpoint.

And so it ends

Michael,

We are alive. All of us. And Nerissa is dead. Or, at least as dead as she can be. She lived in a separate pocket plane – wheels within wheels. It was the fact that Locate Object could not find Briar that was the main clue. I tripped the portal to her plane within a plane with a correctly keyed visualisation. Happily, we had a group share thoughts effect, so the others were able to follow.

The fight was – well, as tough as you might be able to imagine. 8th level spells, and a pair of shambling mounds tricked out with just about every artifact we had discovered over the past few years. All scattered across the astral plane, now. She was beaten up by the boys – my main contribution was Glitterdusting her so that Rainor could see where to aim (oh – and dealing with a Wall of Force at one point), but once the mounds were dead she abandoned stealth and simply dropped one high-level spell after another on us – I recognised Prismatic Spray, Firestorm, Gruyere our healer was Mazed at one point … I was twice within a fingernail of dying.

But we have prevailed. And Fredonia faces now the harrowing prospect of a few decades of Peace and Prosperity. Perhaps His Majesty will be up to the challenge, perhaps not.

I will remain a season or two, to see the royal heir. Morgana tells me that the queen carries twins. Then I will come home and heal my soul for a while, under th trees, under the stars. Father sent me out about the annuals to grow up a little. If seeing bloodshed makes an elf an adult, then surely I am one now.

After that – I really don’t know. I hope that King Jope’s line continues – perhaps even beyond my lifetime. But our shared destiny is done, now, I feel its ties slipping away.

Expect me home by – oooh, let’s say before two turnings.

I am,
Switch, thief and convict
Countess Verdant, of Fredonia
Once chosen of Zon Kuthon
but always,
Your sister, Seldryn

Goodbye Switch! It will be a melancholy moment when I put you into the shredder! You will always be, for me, proof that Arcane Trickster rocks as a class.

Thanks most of all to Dave, who for just shy of three years has DM’ed above and beyond the call, not just running game but fleshing out each of our characters with backstory and seamlessly and imaginatively integrating those stories into the campaign, inventing whole slabs of module – cloudarc temple, the kobold slaves, and God knows what else because it was so well done that even at the end we didn’t know what was Paizo and what was Dave.

Amazing job.

He wrote a coda for each of our characters.

Switch, it seems, grows bored of the elven court and – after a series of high-profile burglaries, each of which bears the tell-tale evidence that no-one has any clue how they might possibly have been accomplished – shows up at Castle Tuskwater with a bag of holding containing a number and variety of rather powerful magic items. Many which she herself crafted … but some which she almost certainly didn’t. She shows up just in time to either assist her old comrades explore (ie: annexe) parts of the feywild, or to deal with some rather nasty developments happening up north in Brevoy. Epic-level stuff.

But, as Michael Ende said – that’s another tale, and will be told another time.

Next post will be Andrew’s campaign, running the rebooted “Rise of the Runelords”.