I've been working hard on the preparation side of things for the next chapter of our Beasts & Barbarians campaign. A campaign I decided to call The Beggar King. This campaign, announced a couple weeks ago, is scheduled to go live on Google Hangouts On Air! (and Youtube) on November 13th at 10pm EST. I've since released the first preview and player introduction.
Because the Virtual Table Top application +Fantasy Grounds offers many campaign management tools, I've been updating my reference manuals (B&B and Jalizar, City of Thieves pdf) for easy in-game look up, creating dozens of NPCs cue cards and, as you can see in the picture above, creating a new desktop. This theme, I hope, will help players feel like their characters are indeed in Jalizar.
While I have an eye peering into the future, allow me to gaze into the past and summarize the events that has lead our group of heroes to where they are today.
This all began with a ragtag group of thieves, fallen nobles, ambitious lotusmaster, former gladiators and barbarians. They came to Jahballan, a town in the Red Desert hoping to harvest the rare and previous Desert Crystals. Soon, they were recruited to find the ones responsible for the attempt on the Sultan's life. They were eventually duped by the man who had hired them – the Sultan's very own brother. They thought they had found the culprit but when the battle was over, they found out they had actually slain the Sultan instead of the mastermind behind the assassination attempt. The Sultan had gone to the meeting place under disguise with his bodyguards believing he could ambush the ones responsible for the attempt on his life. This was all too well orchestrated by the Sultan's brother. They soon found themselves imprisoned in the dungeon while the brother was taking his place on the throne. One of them managed to escape before the others but did not come back to help them – his name was Jond Al'Khal. Another one of them – Elkyr – lost a precious artifact in the process.
For a decade, are "heroes" went into exile, hunted by the Red Nomads sent after them by the new Sultan.
But it was time to face their demon so they found their way back to Jahballan with revenge in their hearts. Meanwhile, the Sultan had become a worshipper of an evil God, Ulasha the Devourer. It was during the Night of the Devoured Sun, when the Tyrant of Jahballan was to be vulnerable that an arrow from Kazan the Hidden struck true and defeated their long time enemy.
Fleeing into the desert they found the tomb of Kazan's beloved Kira. All this time, he had been looking for a cure to her death, a cure his friend Elkyr had promised him so they had hidden and preserved her body from her murderers. The body was missing though. For Nameless, Kira's brother and guardian, had witnessed everything, He watched helplessly as Kira was taken by lizardmen through a mirror, to another world called the Green World.
In the Green World, they found that Jond Al'Khal (their former friend who was first to escape the Sultan's dungeons) was working for the Tyrant now and had been tasked in keeping them prisonners in this world. To pour salt into the wound, he had managed to revive Kira and she now had love to give to Jond only.
This Green World was a world within an Orb of demonic origin used by the Keronians and their slaves to escape the devastation brought down by the Dread Star, a meteor that changed the world into the Dread Sea Dominions, the world as we know it today.
They found their way out of the Green World, defeated Jond Al'Khal and the Tyrant but Kira, now with powerful artifacts –the Green Orb and Three-Faced staff– managed to escape. One of their friend, Kara, a damsel in distress they rescued in the Borderlands, has gone missing. Everybody knew she was pregnant. What they didn't know was that apparently her lover, Arctophylax, isn't the father. No, it appears one of the heroes is the father. She would not say who the father is and the couple fled Jahballan.
After months of searching they finally picked up a trail. That trail has lead them straight into Jalizar, City of Thieves, Flower of the North. Laden with treasures from the Tyrant's Palace, our heroes are getting settled in their new home, looking for Kara and Arctophylax and, of course, indulging in the finest carousing the Dread Sea Dominions has to offer.
This is where our story begins...
***
Now on to the next player introduction.
+Daniel McLaughlin is as much a Beasts & Barbarians fan as I am. Him and I are probably the most knowledgeable about the Dread Sea Dominions in the group. He's a fine strategist and has managed to master the Savage Worlds rules over the year I started role-playing with him. His character, Elkyr is multi-dimensional and has gone through so much over the first season. Daniel understands storytelling. He'll give me a lot of food-for-thought with his character's decision during a game and inner struggles through character journals. He's very easy-going and place himself last for the benefit of the group whenever he feels it's necessary. You can't help but notice how much he enjoys playing Elkyr and I fear the day when the dice Gods claim his beloved Elkyr's life. I feel we've barely scratched the surface here. Until then, I'll enjoy the great storytelling opportunities he gives me through his play style and interesting character.
This is what Daniel had to say about himself as a gamer and his character:
"I don't know when I first became aware of games as RPGs. I just called them adventure games. I remember playing computer RPGs on an original Apple II with text programs like Adventure and Dungeon Adventure and my first graphicals, The Dragons Eye and Akalabeth. I played all sorts of text adventures especially enjoying the Infocom offerings. It was the early 1980's. I was 11 or 12. I read a book called Hobgoblin by John Coyne that made me study Brian Boru, as this was the protagonists player character . I saw the movie Mazes and Monsters and became fascinated about the cleric Pardiuex, Tom Hanks player character. By then I had my first TSR red box and had found pen and paper proper. I held games and introduced people to the setting. My library expanded: Twilight 2000, Middle Earth Role Playing, Call of Cthulhu. I was hooked, but it felt like I was always hooked, caught between the paper and the digital world, computer RPGs like Wizardry, The Bards Tale, Might and Magic, the Ultima series. The blend between these two styles of gaming is what make Fantasy Grounds such a compelling platform for me.
I play the disenfranchised Tricarnian, and very slight of build, Prince Elkyr. Elkyr has forsaken his royal position, murdered his father, spent his time as a wastrel and drunken carouser, seeking his solace from his actions in the forbidden pleasures of this world. He bore a demon possessed sword, that gave him the ability to leverage his sorcerous powers to make his battle mighty. This relationship became co-dependent, unhealthy, and broken when the sword was stolen. For ten years Elkyr walked the Earth with the geas to reclaim this weapon that he commissioned as Endbringer. A legacy of high adventure followed, culminating in a final conquest for the blade, in which its possession was gained, but the cost was disenchantment. Elkyr continues his wandering, piecing together events that seem more than happenstance, gradually becoming uncertain of even his own freewill in his life's decisions."
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