 |
| Vulture-Tribe Orc Berserker - Kent Hamilton |
The next morning, Face and Heather sat in the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Flant sat across from them, his dirty old boots propped up on his messy desk. Two of the hunks of silver ore that they had liberated from the Sunbeam Silver Mine rested atop a stack of coffee-stained papers. Flant took another puff from his pipe, then wheezed, his grey moustache bouncing along with his rattling cough.
“I have to say, everyone in town is mighty pleased that you found silver in that mine, seeing as we was all told it was played out. Silver was the lifeblood of Sunbeam; without it we been withering up, fixing to expire. Problem is, that mine is still property of the Deuclair Mining Company. Mr. Deuclair bought up the whole damn mountain less’n a year after the first silver strike. Course, weren’t two years after that the mine up an closed, citing a lack of ore, which we can clearly see is no longer the case!” He laughed and tapped the ore with his foot. “We cain’t draw none o’ that silver out without oversight from Deuclair. Our town’s got hope again, but hope’s gotta go through a whole mess o' clerks and lawyers afore it can reach the people.” He paused and took another puff from his pipe. “Course, being as the silver ore you liberated was already mined, that’ll fall under spoils of war. No need to notify Mr. Deuclair on that account,” he winked.
“Anyways, back to the business at hand. Nearest outpost of Deuclair Co. is at Fort Crawdon, east of here. I’m sure they’ll be glad to hear that silver’s back in season. If you all could…”
Just then, the town's deputy, Garrot Welch, burst into the room, panting and sweating. Sheriff Flant was on his feet, hand on his holster. “What is it?”
“Greenskins knocked over a whole damn train down on Farley’s Flats!” He squeaked. “Ran into some survivors while I was on my morning long patrol down country, led ‘em back up here.” He gestures back to the door as it swings open again. Six figures shuffled into the office behind him, including a dwarf and a huge hulk of a man.
“There was a whole army of ‘em, the savages!” one of the men offered, his arm bound up in a bloody sling. “They hit the train from all sides, whooping and hollering. Some of ‘em had guns! They blew up the tracks, derailed the train. Chaos!”
The Sheriff was all action now. “Sounds like a war-party. Someone’s gotta tell Lord Tinnis! How many of you are in fighting shape?”
Heather and Face signaled their willingness, along with the dwarf, the huge hairy man, his skinny companion, and a crusty looking prospector.
“Good, it’ll be dangerous country between here and Fort Crawdon with the greenskins on the warpath. Ride out at once. Those of you ain’t got horses can borrow ours. Stop by the train wreck and look for survivors, but your priority should be getting to the fort.”
The huge man introduced himself as Big Bjorn, a circus strongman, and his companion was Falco the Flexible, an acrobat and contortionist. The dwarf was Skip, a warpriest whose entire congregation had been killed by the undead, and the prospector was his human nephew, Rusty Dwarfson, an alchemist with a great love of dynamite.
The party rode east, down the mountain, through scrub pine forests and grassy meadows, startling deer in their hurry. Soon, they came around a bend and saw a flat expanse of land below them. Near the horizon, a pillar of black smoke marked the wreck of the train.
When they rode up, the engine of the train was listing and half-buried in the earth, having dug a mighty furrow where it came off the tracks. The tracks themselves had been blown up, right at the point where another track veered off toward the mountain; Heather, being a local, was surprised by this, because she knew that there were no railroad lines that passed through the mountains in this area. The rest of the train was derailed and piled up behind the engine. A party of orcs was looting the wreckage, some of them dragging out corpses and tossing them in a large pile. Some of the orcs bore the charcoal footprint markings of the Stonefoots, a tunneling tribe of mountain orcs, and the others wore the feathered collars and vulture skulls of the Vulture tribe, desert orcs from the south.
As the party charged in, two Stonefoot riflemen opened fire from the crater. Big Bjorn leapt off his beleaguered horse, unslung his greatsword, and charged one of them, cleaving right through the orc's brigandine armor. Face and Skip opened up with their shotguns while Falco tumbled in with pistol drawn and Rusty started hucking bombs. A group of orc raiders wielding stone clubs and steel tomahawks charged the party and engaged some of them in melee. Bjorn was attacked by a vulture berserker with a vulture skull painted on his face and wearing a ruff of white feathers around his neck. Greatsword clashed against battleaxe as the two titans faced off. Then a Stonefoot scout leaned out of the ruined engine of the train and started raining arrows down on the adventurers. The party whittled down the orcs one by one, giving slightly better than they got. The orcs took a pounding, as orcs do, but finally the last remnants of the raiding party turned tail and were cut down with lead and steel.
Worried about the prospect of the much larger orc war-party that they knew to be out there somewhere, the party opted to make camp in the ruins of the derailed train. They were awakened the next morning by loud clanging and some high-pitched voices. Skip soon discovered a band of scrap goblins tearing apart the train's engine looking for useful parts. The tiny scavengers opened fire on Skip with their makeshift revolvers, and soon the rest of the party rushed into battle. Bjorn and Falco climbed on top of a sideways train car for a better vantage while everyone else opened fire. Skip took a nasty cut from one of the scrap goblin's rusty swords, but he managed to find a chink in its makeshift scrap-metal armor and blow it away. The party made short work of the cowardly tinkerers, helped along by two other figures who happened along: Dawne Silver, an angry sorceress trapped in the body of an 8-year-old by a jealous rival wizard, and her reluctant companion, sharpshooter Ashley "Ash" Graves. Yes, they joined the party.
Another day’s ride brought the party to Fort Crawdon, the large wooden palisade fort that was a far-flung outpost of the Kingdom of Caldura. Their story of an orc war-party derailing a train startled the stodgy adjutant, Captain Smallwood, and got them an audience with Lord Tinnis, overseer of the fort and commander of the Calduran garrison there. However, when they gave the news to the portly nobleman, they found him to be more concerned with his lack of resources.
“Stories of greenskin warparties are all well and good, but I can’t risk sending my garrison out on a rumor. And if the war party does appear, it would be better if my men were here to defend the fort rather than scattered about in the countryside trying to defend some doomed town or farmstead. I’ll have Smallwood wire the capital, see if they’ll finally think about sending more troops out, but I won’t hold out hope. Though, as this is as much a rail problem as a security problem, you might want to bring it up with Mr. Finnclair over at the Railroad office.”
They did just that. Mr. Finnclair told them that the railroad was aware of the derailing and that a repair train would be dispatched the next day. The news of orcs was new, however, and he assured them that extra security would be sent out for the salvage operation. When asked about the mysterious rail line that headed toward the mountains, Mr. Finnclair was puzzled. He consulted some charts and discovered that the railroad had been set to blast a tunnel through Sunbeam Mountain, but the track had been abandoned some years ago.
Next, the party moved on to the offices of the Deuclair Mining Company to tell them of the silver in the Sunbeam Mine. They met Hanc Growlon, chief officer of that company outpost, a thin man dressed in a mustard suit and a bowler cap.
“You’ll forgive me for my incredulity," Mr. Growlon said, "but that mine was closed. That means there was a full week of mining with no ore found, followed by a thorough inspection by at least two company prospectors to confirm the mine’s death. We’re a mining company; we don’t give up on mines easily. But, since you’ve produced some ore, I suppose I’ll have to investigate. Give me a day to prepare; I’ll come return to Sunbeam with you in the morning and assess the mine before sending my report back to HQ. And if you’re trying to pull something here, you’ll pay. HQ will know where I am, what I’m doing, and who I’m with - if I disappear, it’ll be on your heads.”
Exhausted by the treacherous web of bureaucracy with which they had to contend, the party retired to The Hare and Bison, the local hotel and saloon.
The next day, they met Hanc Growlon in his mustard suit and fresh adventuring gear, and set off. They rode until they reached the train wreckage. There they saw another train, a short one made up mostly of flatbed cars, backed up as close as possible to the wreckage and being loaded with large chunks of the wrecked locomotive. The rear car was fitted with a steam powered crane that was in the process of righting an overturned rail car. As they got closer, they saw a team of men working to clear debris. Another team was stacking bodies on a funeral pyre. A group of soldiers in railroad company uniforms stood guard over it all, scanning the landscape around them. In addition, four iron humanoid figures, like big tin cans with legs, stood guard around the train as well. Above them all was an imposing figure in a long blue duster and pointed hat, holding a jeweled staff, pacing atop the train.
As the party drew up to the train, two of the walking tin cans swiveled toward them and made a ringing sound as crystals on their torsos glowed red, but at a word from the man on the train, they stood down. He introduced himself as Ixander Cleve, a high-ranking wizard in the employ of the Calduran Western RR Co. In a terse and businesslike manner, he told them that he was there to monitor the situation and oversee the recovery of the train. He also told them that he wasn't there to protect them, and they had to make camp somewhere outside of rifle range of the salvage operation.
The party made camp in a nearby scrub forest. That night, Hanc Growlon got up to heed nature's call and was abducted by a party of Stonefoot scouts. The rudely awakened party shot off in hot pursuit of the orcs, following the abandoned track. They soon came to an arched wooden railroad bridge stretching over a wooded gorge. Wary of crossing it in the dark, Falco plainly stated, "I’m not gonna die for a man in a mustard suit!" The party agreed, and returned to camp until dawn.
The next day, their crossing of the railroad bridge was impeded by a troop of Stonefoot riflemen. Ash laid down deadly fire with his .52 caliber rifle while the rest of the party crept cautiously forward, Skip and Face opening up with shotguns at close range and blasting away the remaining orc gunners while Heather bolstered them with healing magic.
Further on, nestled in the hills, they found a massive camp of wood and hide structures surrounded by a crude palisade surmounted by the tribal banners of the Stonefoots and Vultures. The camp looked to be mostly deserted except for women and children. The overgrown railway, barely visible, passed right through the center of camp and up toward a sizeable cliff face. The rail terminated there before a gaping hole blasted into the rock, flanked by Stonefoot and Vulture warbanners, and guarded by two orcs.
The party gave the camp a wide berth and headed toward the cave. Rusty created a diversion with one of his bombs, drawing one of the orc sentries into the woods to check it out. Bjorn tried and failed to ambush him, and the encounter turned into a short and brutal fight, Then they headed into the tunnel, but not before trying to set the mangled corpses up to make it look like they killed each other in the hopes of setting the two orc tribes to in-fighting.
The main tunnel into the cliff was wide and strong, blasted by dynamite and worked with picks, but it ended unfinished in rubble about 150 feet into the mountain. Crude tunnels to either side extended the tunnel into an underground warren. As the party ventured into one of these side tunnels, they stumbled upon a few Stonefoot and Vulture tribesmen, a very small remainder of what had been a large war party massed here, judging by the sheer number of sleeping hides rolled out on the floor of the cavern. As Bjorn held them off in one narrow tunnel, some of them circled around and alerted another group of orcs. Soon the party was assaulted from the other side by a group of riflemen and an orc bard beating a pair of war-drums. The riflemen dealt some serious blows; more than half the party, including Skip and Bjorn, were knocked out of the fight.
After barely mopping up the last of the orcs, the remaining party members revived their fallen comrades with potions and healing spells and, despite being low on resources, continued into the dungeon. They soon encountered an isolated room filled with acrid smoke and covered with pictograms. Out of the smoke stepped a hunched orc shaman covered in war paint, shaking a carven spear and flanked by his man-sized vulture companion. The exhausted adventurers leapt into the fray, but the shaman caused a cave-in, and overheated Bjorn's greatsword while the giant vulture swooped in to attack. The healers and heavy-hitters of the party were cut down under the shaman's spear and the vulture's sharp beak, leaving only Rusty the prospector and Falco the Flexible to take down the bloodied enemies.
The party slept - most of them unwillingly - in the smoky cave until they had recovered enough to heal themselves. As they ventured back into the tunnel system, they heard a loud, horrid sound, like the air itself was being rent asunder. It echoed around the tunnels, becoming more and more distorted. They would hear it on and off for the next several minutes as they explored the rest of the cave system. First they came upon a makeshift prison and chased off the two frightened orc guards. They rescued Hanc Growlon and some civilians who had apparently been taken from the derailed train. Delving further into the tunnels, they found a series of natural caverns, one of which opened out into a massive, yawning chasm.
After quickly dispatching a cave fisher that had taken out the two fleeing orc guards, they circled around back to a familiar part of the tunnel system. Just then, a whole stream of orcs, mostly women, children, and the elderly, came running down the same tunnel. The party stood aside to let them pass, only to encounter one of those tin-can soldiers they had seen at the salvage train the other night. The crystal on the walking cylinder glowed red and a loud clanging alarm echoed from somewhere within the metal construct as it began slamming into the party with its arm and firing rapidly with the gun mounted in its torso. Bjorn hacked at it with his greatsword as Skip fired round after round of divinely charged buckshot at it. Finally, Bjorn cleaved deeply into it, peeling away its metal exterior and letting a fountain of unspent ammunition pour out of the lifeless construct. Just then, a troop of soldiers wearing black and white railroad uniforms burst in, but quickly shouldered their rifles when they saw that the adventurers were not orcs. They took them out of the tunnel system, and the party finally discovered what had been making the horrifying ripping noise. The whole orc camp was on fire, and in the middle of it all was an armored train bristling with soldiers. Bursts of gatling gun fire ripped through the air horribly, cutting down unarmed orcs. Above it all strode Ixander Cleve, calmly overseeing the carnage.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Usually I start my party at 2nd level and put them on the quick XP progression track so that they can get more powerful and fight cooler monsters. This time around, since I'm playtesting a very different campaign setting with a lot of new systems and mechanics, I started the party off at 1st level on the medium XP progression track. This gives me an opportunity to highlight one of my GMing philosophies - low-level play should be hard. Hard is interesting.
Adventuring is a tough business. It requires that you manage limited resources effectively, and that you know when to fight and when to run away. It's a tough business, but the rewards are great - you become a wealthy, powerful, badass hero. But if you start out as an unkillable badass who easily wins every fight, there's nowhere interesting to go. The party in this campaign has had the crap beat out of them by a gang of thugs, undead miners, orcs that just refuse to die, and a 3rd-level druid with a giant vulture - and that was all before they leveled up! They've been in many situations where death seemed likely, where the peril was very real, yet none of them have died. Now, I'm not trying to kill them, but I do want them to know that death is a possibility. After enduring these hardships, becoming wealthy, powerful, badass heroes will be all the more satisfying.
The difficulty does not just come from tough monsters and the threat of death. Adventurers have to prove themselves to be great heroes to gain traction with others. I wanted the party's trip to Fort Crawdon to be disheartening. They are the heroes of one small village, but at Fort Crawdon no one knows them, no one can just take their word that the things they say are true. They have to navigate a web of bureaucracy, being passed from person to person, each one seemingly unconcerned with the adventurers' heroism or good intent. Thematically it fits because you can't have a Wild West setting without a distant, corrupt, and/or uncaring government, but it also fits because low-level adventurers are just people. If they start off being mostly ignored by low-level bureaucrats, it will be all the more satisfying when their actions can make a king take notice.
Finally, the adventurers need to know that there are things at work far bigger and more powerful than them. In this case, it's the railroad, specifically Ixander Cleve. The wizard is ostensibly on the same side as the party, but he's pretty blatantly Lawful Evil and very powerful. He commands his own private army, complete with gun-toting constructs, and has the backing of a wealthy and powerful corporation. He's clearly much more powerful than the Calduran government out here, orders of magnitude more powerful than the party. And thus, when the party meets or surpases his level of power, it will be (say it with me:) all the more satisfying.
So, the hardships of low-level adventuring are emphasized through combat, through setting, and through story. I'm not trying to say that 1st-4th levels should just be an uphill slog against the odds; the party has faced many challenging and potentially deadly battles, but there have been plenty of other encounters that were more easily dealt with, from kobolds to scrap goblins to frightened orc guards. The players should not be made to feel powerless, they should be given the motivation to become more powerful.
-your character-building d20 despot
No comments:
Post a Comment