#not certain what happened with boshara in the fade

[nemossubmarine]

DA RP Write-up #1

So, as promised (to myself at least), I’ll try to recount the first 6 adventures of my DA RP-group. They won’t be done with bullet points, but as a narrative, mostly because it’s easier to do so for a campaign that took place 3½ years ago.

The first campaign introduces our first four player characters: Boshara the Mage, Randulfr the Warrior, Jelaina the Rogue and Cahair the Other Rogue. It is also the first and so far only adventure we played that was pre-written, though the GM did do some changes, seeing that Cahair took the place of a plot-relevant NPC. The story is called The Dalish Curse, I believe, and can be found in the DA RPG Game Master’s Guide, the very first one.

Few things before the cut. There’s some NPCs that will remain unnamed or only vaguely referenced at, because I’m not sure where our NPC notebook is. I will rectify that at some point if I can. Most of these write-ups for campaigns where Cahair is present, will probably be pretty Cahair-centric, because that’s what I remember the best, but I still hope to give a pretty accurate picture of what went down.

Edit: 15.3.2019 - Some NPC names added

Adventure started late January 2014 4 sessions 1891 words

The story begins with three merchants on their way to the town of Vintiver in Southern Ferelden. Well, Jelaina and Randy are the merchants. Jelaina used to be a turnip farmer, but now has upgraded herself to a turnip seller. Randy used to live with a caravan of surface dwarf merchants and mercenaries. Now he goes around making and selling weaponry. These two had banded together some time prior, because surely traveling together is more fun. On their way they had picked up Boshara, an escaped Circle Mage. Randy and Jelaina know she’s a mage, but seem to have no problem with this, both being quite liberal in their views.

Before they get to Vintiver they spot a farm by a forest. The nearer they get to it, the more apparent it becomes that something is wrong. The heroes are attacked by a pack of wolves, confirming their suspicions. A brief look around the farmstead reveals corpses of the farm’s owners. They snoop around the farmhouse, picking some fancy clothes for themselves as souvenirs.

The last place they enter is the barn, and from the upper level of the barn, laying inside a hay stack, they find a confused, scared and hurt elven man, Cahair Teravest.

Our heroes ask whether he is to blame for the deaths of the farm people, which Cahair vehemently denies. He tells that his clan had been visiting Vintiver, but left because of some disputes. They hadn’t managed to get far when scouts started disappearing, first one disappeared being the clan’s hot-headed human-hater Harralan. Next, some kinds of monsters attacked his clan in the middle of the night and took everyone away to an old abandoned fortress in the forest. The monsters dragged Cahair to some kind of room in the cellar of the fortress, and tied him up in chains, but somehow Cahair managed to break free. He fled through the forest, stumbled upon the barn in the darkness, hid in the hay and kinda lost consciousness at some point. As proof he still has with him the piece of broken off chain that he ripped from the wall when he escaped.

The others are suspicious, but they can’t prove that Cahair is lying anyway. Cahair’s willingness to show them where the fortress is speaks in his favor.

They realize that villagers are approaching the farm, so they agree that Randy, Boshara and Jelaina will go talk to them, while Cahair will try to sneak past the villagers. They would meet up later in the woods and try to figure out what happened to Cahair’s clan and whether it is related to the death of the farmpeople.

So this is what happens. Cahair stays in the barn to wait for an opportunity to flee, while Randy, Jelaina and Boshara try to distract the villagers. The villagers are a bit suspicious of our three heroes at first, but it seems that they too think that the elves are to blame of the killings. Some villagers agree to take our heroes back to Vintiver, but they can’t manage to get all of them to leave, so they’ll just have to hope Cahair will make it.

Which he doesn’t. He tries, but the villagers spot him before he can reach the forest, beat him up and tie him up.

Our three heroes are taken to an inn owned by a nice human couple by the names of Haran and Kesla Mullin and given a room. They are alerted by commotion outside, as Cahair is dragged into the village. This is bad. While our heroes have no reason yet to believe Cahair isn’t responsible, it’s beginning to look like if they leave him to the hands of the villagers, a lot of questions will remain unanswered, since they look like they might just murder the poor elf. The village’s smith Caelie, a burly woman armed with a big hammer, seems especially keen on some killing.

Luckily for everyone Randy, Jelaina and Boshara manage to persuade the villagers to hand Cahair over to the three of them, so they can go investigate what really might have happened and if there’s any danger still out there lurking.

Our heroes decide to stay the night at the inn, and begin their investigation in the morning, once everyone is well rested. Well, most everyone. Cahair asks whether the others might let him loose of his ropes, but the others decline, so he spends the night in a nice tight bundle face-first on the floor.

In the morning, the four of them head out of town towards Cahair’s clan’s camping site, to see whether there’s any clues left behind on who might have taken them. It takes them a better part of the day to reach the abandoned campsite. There’s no one left there. By the campsite looms the forest, where the elves were taken, and Cahair’s pretty sure he can lead the others to the fortress where the clan was taken.

But before our heroes do that, they decide to rest for a bit in one of the tents still standing.

While resting, they suddenly hear noises coming from outside, and they don’t sound good. Our heroes decide on a full-blown attack, and leap out of the tent to face a strange, twisted creature of darkness. There’s a brief scuffle that ends with Cahair shooting the creature to death. Once the body hits the ground, it transforms in front of the very eyes of our adventurers into the body of Aideen Teravest, the best hunter of the clan and Cahair’s best friend.

There’s a brief pause for some despaired wailing from Cahair, but this confusing turn of events only resolves to strengthen the desire of our heroes to get to the bottom of this. So it’s time to enter the woods darker than night.

Cahair picks up the path he was dragged along pretty easily, but soon they come across a spot that he doesn’t remember. There’s a fallen-over trunk going across a deep ravine. Our heroes start going over one by one, only to be attacked by ravens. They manage to drive them off, and no one even falls, though there’s a close call with Jelaina. Minor scratches is all our heroes receive. Cahair picks up on the path again and they continue deeper into the woods.

The fortress looms in front of them, a piece of shadowed broken stone in front of the dark forest. Our heroes do a bit of searching around the fortress before entering, but see no signs of anyone being around.

The first room they enter is a great hall full of mostly broken furniture. Oh and some skeletons. Who come to life for no discernible reason. Our heroes deal with them pretty quickly though.

There’s two ways to head from the main hall, either down to the cellars or upstairs, and seeing that Cahair was taken downstairs when he was captured, downstairs is where our heroes head.

There, first, they come across a cell holding several members of clan Teravest, mostly children, but also the clan’s Keeper Orellis and some adults. The Keeper is happy to see Cahair alive and well.

Keeper Orellis tells that Harralan is the person behind all this. Something has taken over him, transformed into an abomination and he is the one who has turned all the other elves into those vile creatures as well. These news are devastating, as it means that the elves were indeed to blame for the killing of the family at the farm, as Harralan seems to be using his clanmates in some sort of revenge quest.

While Cahair is talking with his Keeper, the others take the stairs to the level below, coming upon some kind of a chamber, the walls of which are littered with chains. There is also someone there, another Teravest turned into an abomination. Our heroes call for Cahair for help, but there’s nothing they can do, and they have to kill the young boy.

The Keeper tells that Harralan has taken the clan members he has turned and is heading towards Vintiver to destroy the village. There might be a chance that our heroes could reach the village first if they take a shorter path. It is decided that the four of our heroes plus few of the hunters in the cells would go to stop Harralan, while the Keeper would make sure the kids would make it out alright.

Before they can leave however, they notice that Boshara is gone. Boshara had stayed behind in the chamber to see if she could figure out what had happened there. She investigated the chains on the wall, and unfortunately was not strong enough to resist them, so she kinda slipped into Fade. Woops.

Well, there’s no time to wait for Boshara to wake up, so our heroes start carrying her and head to Vintiver.

On their way there, there’s unfortunately a giant spider blocking the path. Our three awake heroes deal with it relatively quickly. Well. Randy does, because our baby rogues do no damage. Zero. None at all.

Meanwhile Boshara wanders around the Fade trying to find a way out, but it’s a new situation so it takes her a while. She does wake up, before our heroes get to Vintiver.

And Vintiver, well, the village is in flames, and there’s people running around and it’s not hard to spot who’s to blame. There’s a tall abomination, who bears little resemblance to the elf he was before.

Our heroes attack Harralan and few of his clanmates turned abominations. (I’m pretty sure Cahair yells “how dare you Harralan Teravest” at some point during initial contact) Cahair hopes that the others would not be killed, only subdued, so that’s what our heroes aim for.

It seems that Cahair is getting some special attention from Harralan, and soon our heroes realize it is because he still has the piece of chain from the summoning room with him. So, Cahair does the only logical thing he can think of; shoves it into Randy’s pants. Once Harralan’s attention is turned toward a more sturdier target, our heroes can turn the tide of battle and finish him off, Randy delivering the final blow.

Cue another desperately wailing and holding a dead body moment from Cahair.

All’s well that ends well? The village’s people are grateful that their village was saved, and the disputes between the elves and the villagers gets forgiven and forgotten. For their bravery, in turn, our heroes receive a cart and an old horse, named Ripeä Ropso.

Our heroes also get to attend the funeral of the elves, as the clan’s dead are buried near the campsite of the clan. In total clan Teravest lost 13 of its members, essentially halving its numbers.

Where next then? Randy, Jelaina and Boshara decide that they should head for Denerim, the capital of Ferelden, as there will surely be great opportunities to sell some turnips there. They also ask whether Cahair would like to join them. Cahair declines, saying that he’ll have to be with his clan for the moment and he has no interest in big cities, but maybe he’ll join the party after that?

Thus concludes the first ever adventure of our merry band of merchants. Next up we’ll move to more unknown waters as I took the GM’s reigns for the very first time for our heroes’ stay in Denerim.

[nemossubmarine]

DA RP Write-up #15.4

Our heroes’ adventures in time are coming to an end, or a beginning? No definitely an end. Let’s see how it goes!

We pick up where we left of, that is at the large cavern where the heart made out of people was ba-bumping. Our heroes are not sure what to do.

Boshara suggests magic, but Thomas disagrees. He says that our heroes can’t be certain where they’d be sent to, there’s a chance they’d end up in time where there isn’t a cavern and that would be bad.

Elspet would like to take a look at the hearts again, so Randy uses his grappling hook and in a pretty swell move, grapples two undead for inspection.

Elspet takes her first dip into autopsy-doing, and manages to do just fine.

Boshara isn’t doing so fine, she throws up again.

Elspet takes out the heart of one of the undead and takes out the pit inside its heart. As soon as she touches it, the pit starts sprouting small vines, that tangle around Elspet’s hand.

Upon Elspet’s request, Thomas uses his templar powers to de-magic the seed, which then lets go.

Thomas is rather worried about this turn of events, as he had left Konstantine alone to study the seeds. He feels must go back to check on him, Konstantine is his ward after all.

Our heroes are left alone at the ledge. Below them, the undead are suddenly becoming more active, starting to clamper towards them.

Our heroes each try to slow them down, but it’s clear they’ll soon be knee-deep in undead.

Humbert uses his sword’s special power and creates a bubble of magical energy, under which our heroes are safe from the undead.

While some of the undead try to attack the bubble, some simply wander off.

The bubble leaves a clear shot at the heart, and our heroes wonder if Alf’s electric arrow would be enough to clear it off. There’s only one way to find out.

Alf shoots so so good that he manages to shoot two electric arrows instead of one. This causes all the undead on the heart to drop off, all except one.

Elspet turns into a bird and she and Alf’s owl Haukka go to investigate the body.

It is a body of a man, dressed in fancy clothing, pierced through the heart with a stalactite, expect the stalactite is somehow fused into parts of his body. 

Haukka notices the golden necklace around the man’s neck, after all she has been trained to spot such things. That must be the time travel necklace. It looks like it’s half-stoned over as well.

While Elspet investigates, Randy decides to take care of the rest of the undead around them, before they get away. He pulls out his blood-magic weapons, let’s out a battle cry and rushes the group outside the bubble, knocking them back as he swings his weapons, hitting one, two, three! In few moments most of the undead are laid to rest, and though few feebly swing at Randy, they leave no mark. Randy chases some of the undead lumbering away down. In total he finished about 30 to 40 undead in only a handful of minutes.

When Randy returns to others, he and Boshara have a bit of an argument about it, as Boshara thinks Randy is being too much of a goody-two-shoes, which, according to her, the group has never been about. Randy says that he has learned some stuff from Humbert, which Boshara doesn’t buy.

Elspet reports back about the stuck necklace. Our heroes decide that now it’s time to try magic, but perhaps they should try to do it above the ground, not below it.

Alf manages to perfectly replicate their steps in the cellar and the caverns above the ground, leading them to the exact spot, below which the man and the necklace lay.

This time it is Elspet who uses magic to bring them back, she heals Randy and again time slows down and picks up and the fog raises.

Our heroes are in the fog, holding hands. Alf calls out to the darkness, and soon our heroes (all expect Randy) hear someone approaching.

The fog is suddenly pierced by a beam of light, carried by a figure who speaks to our heroes in a language they can’t understand, but which Boshara recognizes as Ancient Tevene.

The fog fades and our heroes realized that they are surrounded by Tevinter soldiers and in front of them is the man from the cave, the owner of the necklace, dressed in fantastic finery, half of his face a stone mask.

Our heroes are put into chains, and when Randy tries to resist, the man uses blood magic on him.

Chained, our heroes are taken to a Tevinter camp, where they are thrown into a pen with other slaves. Alf is separated from others and is put together with another elf at one corner.

Soon a person comes to ask about their names and Boshara communicates with her through writing. She introduces our heroes, and is very dismayed to find that the people are planning on keeping them as slaves, even when she tells her that she is a mage.

That only earns her some magic-suppressing handcuffs.

Finally she tells that she can speak the local language(s) (she can’t), and the woman tells she’ll go get someone.

Left alone, our heroes can get to know the other slaves, except they don’t speak neither old Nevarran nor old Tevene.

To their surprise they find that the elf speaks elven and dwarven.

She isn’t very fond of speaking with Boshara, her appearing human, but with Randy she chats willingly.

She tells that the magister in charge is name Tilano Amanti, that she was captured and the rest of her group killed.

Randy asks what year it is, and she says it’s 5328, which doesn’t say much.

Randy notes that she doesn’t look like she is well, and she says that she is fading and that “Arlathan burns”.

She also tells that she is basically immortal, but doesn’t know for how long.

Alf notices that the elf is toying with something in her hands, and gets Randy to ask to see it.

It’s a peach pit, and the elf tells that if she dies, she’ll make sure the humans will go down with her. It’s clear that she is behind the undead apparently in the future-past.

Randy asks her not to use it, but she says she can’t help it. It will activate if she dies, unless she can be freed to deactivate it.

The Tevinter people come back and Boshara tells them that she is from the future. Also she counts what the date would be according to the Tevinter count based on what she picked up around the camp and her sick math skills she learned from Fahim the qunari (callback!).

This catches the attention of the Tevene (more the time travel than the math), after all, magister Amanti owns a time travel necklace.

They ask if any of the others are mages, and Boshara tells that Elspet is, so the two of them are taken to meet magister Amanti in his tent.

Once there Boshara manages to convince that she is a descendant of the magister. Amanti is clearly rather self-conceited so Boshara plays to that. 

She tells she came back in time to learn about controlling the necklace from the very best, its creator.

Amanti agrees to teach her, but only if Boshara tells him of his and his family’s great future and Elspet takes a look at his face.

Meanwhile, Alf and Randy have cooked a plan. They ask the elf if Alf were to free her, if she could make the ground below them disappear as there’s a cavern below there. She says that can be arranged.

So Randy causes a distraction, he yells the maybe two words of Nevarran he knows and punches one of the Nevarran prisoners a bit too hard, but hard enough to cause a fight.

While everyone is distracted, Alf picks the lock of the elf’s chains and as she is freed, she starts casting.

In the tent, Elspet is looking at Amanti’s facial disfiguration. She concludes that this must be from an overuse of lyrium, and as far as she knows, there’s no cure.

She still however pretends to totally what she is doing, so she can be freed from her chains, which she is.

While she is healing, there’s angry Nevarran shouting and then rumbling like an avalanche.

Everyone exits the tent, and the outside world is in chaos; the elf has started pulling the earth itself into the cavern. She herself is riding the waves of ground, while everything else is unceremoniously being pulled down.

Boshara starts rushing towards Alf hoping to get her shackles off. Alf starts rushing towards Boshara.

Magister Amanti starts casting something, and with a single flick of his wrist, everyone still wearing chains have their arms sliced open and blood pouring out to fuel his spell.

While Magister Amanti is distracted, Elspet steals the necklace and turns into a bird just long enough to get to Alf and Boshara.

Randy rushes the magister, the two guards chasing Boshara try to slow him down, but he shrugs them off. Randy doesn’t quite manage to tackle the magister to the ground, but he does enough to disrupt the absolutely massive inferno he was casting.

Alf has freed Boshara, who takes the necklace from Elspet. The three of them run to Randy.

Boshara pretends to give the necklace to Magister Amanti, but before he can reclaim it, Elspet uses Mind Blast to clear off the people around them.

In the moment of peace they have, Boshara concentrates on home, and casts magic into the necklace.

There’s a lake now, and everyone (except Humbert) is feeling shorter than before. 

It seems that our heroes have not quite reached the right time. Boshara appears to be two years old, Elspet 5, Randy 7 and Alf 10. 

Humbert (~29 and looking mighty fine) fishes the little ones and their equipment out of the lake.

It seems that the hole the elf created has turned into a lake, and the surroundings are far less swampy than before.

This times Elspet tries to work the necklace, but it only takes them few years forward. Finally Elspet and Boshara both try, and they reach the current age.

The town of Meünzenbern has been transformed from a poor berry-picking village to a nice looking beach-village. Unfortunately this means that the deal our heroes made with Esteri in the past hasn’t happened, so they won’t be getting their wine. 

Our heroes go to the local tavern and order some sweet coctails. THE END

That’s it! And since our heroes undid the time they spent with Konstantine by going back farther, the timeline’s not all that wonky too! Yay!

Next campaign, I’m still in charge, we’ll start reaping the seeds send down for sowing with Arkaitz, as our heroes go on a mother hunt! Exciting and scary