Drd’zzoth’s Journal -- Crellar’s Inn ...the Frozen Ones failed to locate all members of our hunting party during their stay in this place of warmth and isolation. I escaped by killing one of the elves and then claiming that he had tried to take my form. Astonishing gullibility. Joined my comrade in the woods, and waited for the departure of magic and sharp steel from the house. We are entrusted to ferry the thrice-cursed blade to its destruction, and must not fail. However, there is danger in travelling with diminished numbers during the months of cold. We shall remain here, and play our games.... ...I slew the magic wielder, donned his garb, and placed his corpse within the cold meat locker. I dared not take the staff, for it Knew me. The noises continued in the common room. I mingled with these Stiffs, these Defenders of Daybreak. The ones called Grundo and Tom-Tom have returned. Tom-Tom cannot be penetrated, but knowledge of my deeds burns in Grundo’s mind. They have found the hidden bodies of Gardis Crellar and his son Kellog beneath the wood pile. Great care, now. My comrade has already been warned. A distraction is needed. I must get The Sword.... ...went with Alix and Tom-Tom to search the bedrooms. They found the box and bypassed the well-laid traps upon it. Opening it, they uncovered The Slayer, glittering with runes upon the velvet. I attempted to take it, on pretext of examining the runes. No longer caged in its container the blade turned upon me, blazing with white light and searing my fingers. Dropping The Slayer, I howled and fled the room.... ...while Tom-Tom examined the blade, Alix came to assist his friend. I found Alix alone with me in the hall with his back briefly turned. Silently, I made an end of him with my hands.... ...distraction has been achieved. While the Defenders sought the body of Arcade Deltarion, I rapidly passed through the house and set it afire at strategic points. We dare not remain. They have The Slayer, and despair finds me. But as we flee into the night I am comforted, for my comrade’s seed grows even now within my "mother" this night.... [Ed. Tom-Tom left the bedroom seeking Alix, only to find him lying dead in the hall. Instantly he knew that Arcade was dead as well. He searched the kitchen, but while looking for Arcade’s body with infravision missed it entirely in the cold, lightless, meat locker. He then spiked the door to the locker closed! Tom-Tom then returned to the common room and gathered the party to tell them what had happened. Suddenly a green flash lit the room and Arcade’s staff appeared in Glimmer’s hand. "I am displeased," it said. "Why is that?" said Nolin, astonished that the staff could speak. "My perambulatory extremities have been disabled!" said the staff. The staff informed the party of Arcade’s location. Just at that moment a chambermaid ran down from the upper floor screaming that the inn was on fire. The Defenders managed to grab their supplies and Alix’s body, extricate Arcade’s body from the locker, and flee. They spent the night in a magic pavilion created by one of the merchants. The party was then faced with the horrible task of telling Gertrude Crellar what had happened. She became, naturally, distraught and hysterical. Cadrienne took charge of her and escorted her to a nearby relative’s home. Later, the sword recovered from under the bed was revealed to be "Cambion", a unique Sword of Shapechanger Detection. It glowed strongly in the presence of shapeshifters, was plussed against them, and with a successful hit had a high probability of forcing one back into its own shape. The doppelgangers escaped, and nothing more was heard of them. For several years. |
AnnotationsArcade did a fine job of playing his own doppelganger and then killing Alix. This session had even more of a sense of growing horror, especially when they uncovered the wood pile and realized that Crellar and his son were there. The ground must have been too frozen to bury them. Favorite parts of the evening include the look on Bandeeto's face when TomTom opened the ice shed to look for heat signatures, found none, and spiked it closed... along with Arcade's body. The other fun part was the psionic staff coming back to sentience after having drained off part of the dying Arcade's life energy. Hey, it helped, though. The long sword mentioned was named Cambion: 3e stats would be +2 shapeshifter bane, detect shapeshifters in a 60' r. by glowing (this almost led paranoid party members to attack a druid once), shapeshifters hit must make a fortitude save at DC 15 or be forced into their true shape as a full-round action. Obviously, not everything the Defenders did came back to haunt them; in fact, they made friends and allies as well as enemies. Crellar's Inn (later renamed) became a sanctuary for them, and after their mother died Cadrienne ended up adopting Kelsey (the youngest boy) and his probably-a-doppelganger little brother. bandeeto As much as everyone in the party occasionally wanted to strangle Alix, I (as the doppleganger) was the only one ever given the means, motive, and complete justification for doing so. I have been invited to play monsters by many DM's, and I have always loved the thrill of matching up against a whole party (especially if I know the players well.) One advantage of this approach is that it lets the monsters fight as hard and nastily as they can, giving them more verisimilitude. One disadvantage is that you lose the unified "game-face" that a single DM presents, and risk damaging the game thereby. The wonderful thing about playing with P'Cat is that he gives the party plenty of rope to hang themselves with at all times. Because the Defenders go so many places and make so many powerful enemies, their actions come back to bite them (or save them) over and over again. This has led to another strange phenomenon. The players know that P'Cat loves to take an old foe or plot hook and resurrect (or occasionally Reincarnate) it later. So the players (some of them anyway) are constantly trying to keep track of the hundreds of plot strings just in case, and trying to make connections between disparate events years and leagues apart. This means that the party frequently does P'Cat's work for him. Thus... Defender's Rule One, never give the DM ideas. |