A Live 13th Age 2E Kickstarter and a Correction to Ongoing Damage!

The 13th Age Second Edition Kickstarter kicked off yesterday and it's rolling. Blowing through stretch goals is a high-class problem! You can find the page here.

What do you do when a multi-year project hits the crowdfunding stage? We played! Last night Jonathan and I played a celebratory 13th Age game with our Wednesday night group pushed forward to Tuesday. I thought I would GM, but we had quorum for Paul's "Teachers of the Court" campaign, so I got to play my half-elf cleric, Esh.

It was nearly Esh's last dance. Both Esh and Sala, the high-elf bard, ended up with 4 Skulls. If you haven't been playing 13th Age 2E yet, that's one Skull from death, get knocked to 0 hit points again and it's curtains, time to start a new character. It was the closest-run battle we've ever had. I select the monstrous opponents for Paul's game, and if you want a tough synergistic group to throw against four third level heroes as part of a 3-battle arc, here's the roster: one troll, one orc berserker, one wight, one demon-touched ranger dropped a level to 4th.

Of course we also discovered several things we'd left out of the draft, and one of those things matters way more than the others. It's about what happens when an attack that deals ongoing damage scores a critical hit. Here's the text that should have been in the Critical Hits section and in the ongoing damage notes on page 278, and isn't. We tested what's currently in the book and it was too evil, these are the actual rules:

Ongoing damage is also doubled when you crit, but only for the first turn. For example, an attack that deals 5 ongoing damage scores a crit. At the end of the target’s next turn, they’ll take 10 ongoing damage, but if they fail the save, that ongoing damage drops back to 5. Ongoing damage is scary, and even Jonathan thinks that doubling it indefinitely is too much.

As a rule, other conditions and effects of damage are not doubled. GMs are free to break this rule for their favored monsters and make non-damage effects worse on a crit.

The Bard, an intro adventure, and two playtest campaigns: 13th Age 2E progress

It has been a busy month!

Kin powers on the Pelgrane website: I’ve been running some of the new kin powers on the Pelgrane Press website. These are powers that may change in the design process. They’re not guaranteed to be what shows up in the Beta packet, but they’re what we’re using now.

Humans are here. Dwarves are here. And the silver elves, aka drow, are here.

Jonathan’s work: We played through the first playtest of the new introductory adventure Jonathan wrote for the back of the book. It went great and it covered territory not explored in Blood & Lightning, our original intro adventure. Jonathan helped Paul, a new 13th Age GM, with GM-support material while Paul was running the intro. Jonathan has also been working on the monster chapter and analyzing the current state of several revised 2E classes, with results feeding into the playtest.

Teachers from the Court: Our second-level playtest spun out of the intro-adventure is now called “The Teachers from the Court,” since that became our PC group’s cover story. The campaign has spawned notable shifts in the barbarian, and seems likely to create some things for the ranger.

Bards among us: And since last week, the playtest includes the actual 2E bard! The high-elf dance-bard that Sean had been using with was entirely playable but had little to do with the direction the bard class is headed. I’d handed Sean a playable pseudo-bard that I’d mocked up to play in J-M DeFoggi’s Rumble in the Stacks adventure that’s being serialized on the Iconic podcast.

My main job last month was to create a bard with a structure that hasn’t been seen in other F20 games. Given that bards have generally not entirely lived up to their potential, I’m happy to experiment with something new. I’ve got the class playable up to 5th level and later this week I’ll be tackling higher level spells.

The Dwarfoids Campaign: For nights when we don’t have a full quorum for Teachers from the Court, I’ve restarted the third level campaign I was running before we started designing 2E. The initial concept: Suicide Squad for dwarven deviants looking to prove themselves to the Dwarf King. I call it Spearpoint, the players call it Dwarfoids, and their irreverence is winning. You’ll find the original outline of the campaign here.

Now that we’re testing 2E, several characters experienced personal transformations.

Tuli, the lava dwarf chaos mage, has kept his back story but is now a cleric. To differentiate him from the cleric in the Teachers campaign, Tuli is the most random and worst cleric possible. By which I mean, healing is not his thing, and all his talent/domain choices have been chosen as the things we think players are least likely to embrace. Testing by setting oneself on fire. Tuli can take it. He’s a lava dwarf.

Djkuud, the disturbingly almost-undead ‘hopping monk’ who’d served the Gold King, is now a spellfist sorcerer, testing the breath weapon approach the sorcerer in the Teachers campaign avoided. Less mobility, more firepower. Same creepiness.

Jak Manblood is still proving that he’s the dwarfiest of all fighters, and now he’s doing it using the new maneuvers and without using the Combat Rhythm talent, because our playtest nerf-hammer seems to have pounded that talent down far enough that it is not necessarily the correct option.

The Occultist, Thorinn Oakenshield, has retired to be the charismatic leader of the derro clan who call themselves The Startouched, now converted—by our heroes—to a way that’s closer to the King’s Forge. And instead, Jonathan is playing Gurski, a half-orc barbarian. In this campaign, half-orcs are derived from dwarf barbarians on the frontiers rather than from humans. Gurski has a secret One Unique Thing that none of the rest of us (including me, the GM) know about. What we do know is that Gurski is testing a promising revision of the rage mechanic.

And finally, a photo taken during the Teachers from the Court game by Rob Dalton. Jonathan added a caption to it, using my nickname, Beto.

Beto: Hmm, these rules are too harsh. Must adjust.

JoT: Hmm, these rules are too forgiving. Must adjust.

13th Age 2E early October Update

In the last couple weeks, I spent a bit of time going over Jonathan’s work on the magic item chapter. It’s one of the chapters I’ve managed to digest all the playtest feedback on, and the version we’re finishing now is quite fun.

Mostly I’ve been working on the revision of the sorcerer class. I’m about one talent, five spells, and a bunch of level-by-level math short of finished.

The core of the original sorcerer class remains but every talent and spell that survives has been revised. The adventurer-tier playtest game we started last week should reveal whether the new twists in the sorcerer’s action economy and turn-by-turn choices will survive and show up in the Beta playtest packet.

Speaking of our at-home playtest, Jonathan’s work the past couple weeks was to finish the first draft of the new introductory adventure that will be in the back of the 2E book. Our friend Paul is GMing and I haven’t read the draft of the adventure because Jonathan wants me to find out what’s-really-going-on organically, along with the rest of the players! Jonathan is playing, but has made it clear that for a change, his low-Intelligence dwarf barbarian (well, he calls himself a fighter, but he’s awfully rage-y for a fighter) will not be offering sound tactical or strategic advice.

Badger Badger Skunk, aka Badgery!

Two years ago on my birthday, I ran a 13th Age game centered on a game-within-a-game, a sport played underground that the gnomes involved called badgerbadgerskunk. It was the 31st session of the Adventurers’ Lament campaign. Gherophy, the gnome bard who glows golden when rocks are placed against his skin—who still manages to walk in shadows like a rogue thanks to blessings from the Prince of Shadows—was celebrating his birthday in Axis and the local gnomish community put together a special game of badgerbadgerskunk in his honor.

Campaign Background: What you need to know about gnomes in this campaign:

a) They are frequently scoundrels, bandits, edge-workers, masters of the grey areas whose culture heroes are people like the Dread Pirate Fishstick;

b) They’re natives of Glorantha, emigrants to the Dragon Empire, and whenever there’s something weird going on with the gnomes, the players (who are the ones who decided on this) wave their hands and say “Well that’s Glorantha for you,” and

c) They talk with animals, especially underground critters like badgers and bulettes.

Maybe it was the Glorantha connection that got me thinking about a sport the gnomes would play. I’ve always loved Gloranthan trollball, where the ‘ball’ is an expendable trollkin that scampers when fumbled and is definitely going to need to be replaced several times each game.

Gnomeball: For the gnome version, I decided that the ball was gonna be a badger. You’ve gotta sweet talk the ball into going along with you or it’s gonna tear your ear off. Unlike the troll game, the gnome game makes seriously hurting the ball an unthinkable faux pas sure to get you ostracized . . . after the badgers have had their fill of you.

Of course it’s not just badgers. My starting mechanic for the game was that 1 in 6 balls are a skunk instead of a badger. The new ball gets hurled up out of a hole in the center of the underground playing burrow, a central zone with various tunnels and levels of chambers and corridors and slides, with teams attempting to carry the ball across the other team’s goal line at the far ends of the burrow. In long games, you’d expect that the ‘new ball’ might be a badger or skunk that has already been in play earlier in the game, so you’d better make friends with the ball or you’ll pay for it all game long.

The Birthday Game: Gherophy’s team started with threee NPC gnomes: Gimplenappe, Rusty, and Pumpkin-who-wants-to-be-known-as-Grimkin. These ne’er-do-wells had been introduced as members of a quickly-defeated gang of gnomish bandits. They were childhood friends/tormentors of Gherophy, and the PCs spared them instead of treating them like other bandits. (Good thing: later they become our low-level PCs for all-gnome sessions!) Getting the badgerbadgerskunk game organized was the low-gnomes’ moment of glory.

Gherophy’s team was allowed to have two dwarves, the central combat-ready characters in the Adventurer’s Lament PC group. This was viewed as a handicap by the opposing team, because although dwarves are pretty close to being able to stand up straight in most of the chambers of the badgerbadgerskunk burrow, they’re also likely to get chewed on and sprayed whenever they attempt to advance the ball. Dwarves have no communication skillz, not in gnome-terms. This held true for Bromach, the group’s dwarven barbarian, who got clawed, sprayed, and sprayed again. Eventually he realized that there weren’t many rules about illegal blocking and so he took out his frustrations on the other team.

But Dhomnin, who the group always speaks of as a paladin (thanks to his earnest domination of high-Moradin ground and his golden-spiral GGW helmet), is actually a dwarf ranger who puts a lot of effort into his relationship with his monitor lizard animal companion. Dhomnin hit very difficult skill rolls skunk-after-skunk. He couldn’t quite talk with the beasties, but they came to an understanding involving treats and I-no-longer-remember-what, so even when Gherophy wasn’t grabbing the ’ball’ and spinning through shadows, the group’s offense kept humming.

And I did say, skunk after skunk, not skunk after badger. Because dice are my friends and when I’m rolling a d6, a 1 in 6 chance of a skunk instead of a badger turns into a single badger mixed in with 4 skunks. Whahahahahaah! You’re all getting sprayed!

Most of the rest of the dice rolling I left to the PCs, treating skunk-talking, badger-carrying, skunk-tracking, gnome-tackling, and tricky goal line hand-offs as skill checks of various types, some easy, most normal or hard. Everything was harder for the two dwarves but that didn’t faze Dhomnin.

I did a bit of dice rolling myself for a couple skunk and badger attacks when it was dramatically suitable. Poor Rusty, good thing he has a left ear. But it wasn’t a game about running out of hit points—for the real heroes, getting damaged applied penalties to your next skill checks and made it more likely your team would get scored on.

The PCs won in high highlight style with moments of glory evenly distributed and a barrel of Klinkhammer’s finest Black Dog ale to soothe the barbarian’s cuts!

Post-game Show & the Wider World: Yesterday I talked with Lee Moyer about badgerbadgerskunk. By the end of the day, after phoning me a couple times to ask questions about where the game might be played, Lee came up with his preferred name for the game, Badgery. And then he designed the logo that’s painted on a signboard outside the arena-burrow of the Badgery HQ in Concord, the Dragon Empire city where gnomes feel most at home. The Badgery Concord League!

So yeah, I’ll have to do more with this, won’t I? Thanks, Lee!

If you use badgerbadgerskunk in one of your 13th Age games, let me know at 13thAgePlaytest@gmail.com.

Kor, the Ograkshasa Monk

What does rebellion look like when dad is an ogre mage and mom is a rakshasa?

In Kor’s case, rebellion looks like obtaining magic that makes you look mostly human and studying to be a monk in a monastery run by the Dragon Emperor. Of course, many of Kor’s forms don’t look a lot like styles practiced by Imperial monks. There are limits to how straight you can be when the Black Dragon is an old family friend.

Yeah, Jonathan says this is the most-me character ever.

I used the beastblooded modifiers and the bestial fury ability from Book of Ages (page 77). When Kor (it’s kinda Rak backwards, natch) goes beasty-fury, the spell making him look human drops temporarily and you get a glimpse of the tigrish-ogre beneath. I didn’t realize I could have sung “ograkshasa ograkshasa ogra ogra ograksasa” until now.

I’m using the past tense because we were right there, deep in the Stone Thief (thanks in large part to the activities of Kor’s older sister Kyla), when Paul Hughes gifted me with the certificate that crafted Kor at HeroForge. I decided to keep Kor’s hands facing human-style, instead of trying to show him full-beast. And then my wonderful talented friend Brittany Broyles (@blondeofmystery) painted Kor. Now we know how to make sure campaigns don’t get played again: make a HeroForge mini of your character.

Still, hope remains. If not back inside the Stone Thief, some other game. Maybe I’ll get really old school and blow a character created for one campaign into another version of the Dragon Empire, like a leaf in the wind. A leaf with fangs!

(a much better photo from Brittany, with the other two minis she painted for me accompanying Kor)

Spearpoint! A 13th Age mini-arc for deviant dwarves

These are the PCs of the new 13th Age mini-arc we started playing last week. 

While writing Icon Followers, I made up an organization ambiguously devoted to the Dwarf King called Spearpoint. As I wrote about azers, derro, and Gold King mutants who are part of a Suicide-Squad style group of potentially salvageable—and definitely DENIABLE—Dwarf King covert assets, I realized it could make a fun story for a group of player characters, not just NPCs. 

People were expecting me to start running a new game none of us had played before. But I liked it less the more I understood it, so instead I switched tracks and began Spearpoint as a not-forever 13th Age arc, starting at 3rd level. 

 From left to right, the PCs are . . . . 

    . . . Tuli, a lava dwarf chaos mage who is new to the Dwarf Kingdom. 

    . . . Thorinn (jokingly referred to as Thorinn Normalshield), a highly disturbed/disturbing derro madness savant ("I am not an occultist; I am the Madness Savant! The onllllly Madness Savant!") who wears the shield on his back because dwarves are supposed to carry shields, and more convincingly wields a huge axe. 

    . . . the world's only half-dwarf, Jak Manblood, determined to prove he's more dwarf than any of these dwarves that fit properly into their dwarven armor. 

    . . . and a truly disturbing "hopping monk," i.e., an undeadish former (?) follower of the Gold King named something like Djkuud, pronounced to sound something like the French j’accuse. 

The players agreed that they wanted to push the icons to fit this dwarf-centric story, and after some discussion, the Madness Savant, aka Jonathan Tweet, came back with this preliminary assessment of the icons for the campaign. It’s going to be fun, and it’s a great example of tweaking your lens when you want to focus on a very specific type of campaign.

Also, there are fourteen. 

    the King (compares with the Dwarf King): Rules "the Kingdom", a subterranean land vaster than the Dragon Empire; most of it is currently in enemy hands. 

    Lady Scratch (entirely herself): Mysterious enemy of the Kingdom. 

    the Silver Queen (the Elf Queen): Surface dwellers interact with the Silver Queen through the so-called "Elf Queen." 

    Prince of Shadows (same): Archenemy of the Kingdom, an interloper who has stolen the treasures that had been held safe for Ages, a worthy foe. 

    the Green (the Three): Wingless and tortured, the Green worms through the Underworld spreading monsters. 

    Grave Lord (Lich King): Vast underground chambers contain undead waiting for some future uprising. 

    the Sun Emperor (Dragon Emperor): Keeps surface dwellers from bothering the Kingdom 

    the Sun Mage (Archmage): A dwarf who serves the Sun Emperor instead of the King, it's fine. 

    the Imperial Priestess (Priestess): Humans eat this shit up, I'm telling you. 

    Orc Lord (same): He sends troops and monsters through the Kingdom, searching for a route to Axis; everyone figures the Silver Queen is manipulating him into it. 

    Crusader (same): Glad that the Sun Emperor has this guy so the King doesn't have to get in there. 

    Archmaster Slime (High Druid): A drow ally of the High Druid, leader of the "slime mongers" (subterranean-style druids). 

    Diabolist (same): You know, don't spread this around too much, but she has proven to be the sort of archvillain that you can work with. 

    Great Gold Wyrm (same): The Great Gold Wyrm is the most admirable creature ever constructed and brought to life by dwarven artificers.

The Adventurers' Lament (13th Age Campaign Character Summary)

I've been running two 13th Age campaigns. The campaign that's been more active is a Thursday night game with two of our teenaged godsons and a couple good friends. The game has been a delight, mostly because of what the PCs bring to the table. This is the first time I've run a game in which a character uses icon relationship advantages to prevent other characters from the learning the truth about their icon relationship advantages! 

The players named the campaign 'The Adventurers' Lament' during the first session. I'm not sure what they'd had time to lament by then, but it hasn't gotten less appropriate. They started at first level headed towards The Strangling Sea and the NPC summary below covers events up to their long-awaited level-up to third: in-and-out of the Stranglesea; into a running battle with the forces of the Lich King and the Crusader; into a network of elven teleportals (under attack by the Lich King) that eventually took them to Axis and the warrens beneath the Crown of Axis amphitheater. The players say I don't let them level up enough, and I respond by saying they knew what they were in for when they chose the name of the campaign. 

I suspect that the summary may not strike readers as a document from a second level game. I use 13th Age to get characters involved in seriously dramatic events from the very first session.

I started the list to keep track of a storyline that was generating complications faster than it was resolving them. The current version of the NPC Summary lives at the bottom of the campaign's google drive doc. While I'm using the Zoom-swoop method for battles, we use the google drive doc to write session notes, record the worst puns, and track initiative. 

The summary got rolling in October. For fun I'll probably keep the summary semi-updated in this post. 

The Four PCs

Butters: ‘Human’ necromancer who was thought dead for decades after an unfortunate fireball accident (probably not an accident) while fighting for the Emperor. No longer has his original spellpowers, the extended experience with death has taught him necromancy. An old acquaintance of another PC somehow ended up providing Butters’ skeletal companion; see Billy. Butters provided the campaign’s tagline by proclaiming that this time around he was going to be 8.3% less evil. But subsequent actions have caused the GM to reduce that percentage a couple times, and raise it once, so that it’s presently hovering at “7.8% Less Evil.” [[1/9/21 update: Down to 7.6%]] The other PCs don’t know that Butters broke a tentacle off the statue of the elder god, Glark, in the Stranglesea, and is transporting it in pockets and other unsavory places, but given the weird flying fish and the bizarre friendly acknowledgements by worshippers of dark gods, they would have figured it out if Butters’ player hadn’t been using skill checks and icon relationship advantages to keep them in the dark. [[Lucas Pina]]

Gherophy: Gnome bard who pretty much screams instead of singing. He glows golden when rocks are placed against his skin, and spent an unhappy childhood being used as a glow lamp in the gnome burrows, which were not happy places. Despite the fact that he’s known as the Golden Gnome, or the Glow Gnome, he has improbable stealth skills and increasing advantages from the Prince of Shadows, who knows a trick in plain sight when it’s disappearing. Gherophy isn’t an active problem for the other PCs, as Butters sometimes manages to be, but he regards damage as something that other characters are supposed to take, and takes cover accordingly. [[Robbie Myers]]

Bromach: One half of the game’s ongoing existential question: “What, Then, Should a Dwarven Warrior, Be?” Bromach’s answer involves rage, a sharp sword, and staying drunk enough that you can’t even hear the would-be orders of your would-be dwarven exemplars. Bro grew up in the wildlands among the timberwolf nomads and married above his Charisma score to a (probably) elven woman he calls the ‘queen of the nomads.’ When they separated because of Bromach’s tendency to sell the artifacts of the tribe to pay drinking and gambling debts, she cursed him with a unique problem: inanimate objects in his vicinity wake up just enough to trash-talk him. Usually it’s mockery. Every once in a while it’s helpful information, which indicates to Bro that his wife actually does want him to survive. Which is sweet. [[Miguel Friginal]]

Dhomnin Light-Braid: The other half of the Dwarven Debate. Dhomnin isn’t a paladin. He just acts like one, a tendency that got more pronounced when he was gifted with a golden spiral helmet from the Great Gold Wyrm that helps him point out the unwise or unsavory actions of others. See Chuck, below, for the main evidence that Dhomnin has a different class. Despite not being a paladin, Dhomnin is frequently said to be the highest Charisma dwarf in the world. It’s probably not true, but he did mediate a famous dwarven feud and survived long enough among the Cold Ones, a tribe of lizard people, to become a two or three time winner of their annual Games. (Honestly, the GM forgot Dhomnin’s actual One Unique Thing: which is apparently ‘having healed the Black Dragon of a mortal wound.’ So Dhomnin has performed some diplomacy tricks on the GM as well!) [[Tim Baker]]

The NPCs

Ataya: The multiclass librarian/rogue/sailor who helped the PCs escape from the Stranglesea, with information if not magic or swordplay. The PCs have agreed to help her a bit as she travels with them, she has messages to lost-sailors’ families to deliver. She may be more adventurous than she’s letting on, but she steers clear of the combat scenes.

Billy: Butters’ skeletal companion. Apparently a friend of Bromach’s in life. Apparently dead as a result of drinking a ‘healing’ potion provided by Butters. Butters says “It was an accident!” Provides a bony ear for Bromach’s (drunken) meandering musings. I believe that’s why Billy has been termed an ‘emotional support skeleton.’ Bro may or may not realize that Butters hears it all. Billy now also flames.

Byornnolf-Broddi: The feud that Dhomnin is sort of famous for having mediated. It was a Jedna’s Folly problem. Not well known outside those parts.

Captain of the Stonehammer: Not much of a sailor, or a repair expert, but all-dwarf, and determined to fix his ridiculous boat even though that’s pretty much impossible. He’s not so much going down with the ship as slowly strangling with the ship and everyone on it.

Choralinthor [slain]: Elder faun in the service of the Elf Queen; probably a spellcaster, who left the PCs to fight in the portal battle alongside the elves. // To everyone’s surprise, slain during the running battle in the portals. Not that the PCs saw the body themselves. But there *really* isn’t any obvious reason the elves would lie about it, since the rest of the interaction was played straight.

Chuck: Dhomnin’s fierce monitor lizard companion. The visible sign that Dhomnin really truly is a ranger, though mostly the PCs think that Chuck has a friend who is a dwarven paladin. Or something. // The party sublimates their affection for each other by lavishing their affection and nurturing on Chuck.

Edgar O’Dun: the necromancer (now rogue?) previously known as Ser Vant

EKKYON the Forgettable DEMON [‘killed’]: Not sure why this undead demon with a giant axe is on the list since the PCs killed him already during that horrible battle ‘guarding’ the teleportals. He did say he’d be seeing Bromach again, but undead demons always say that kind of thing as you “kill” them. “

Elyssa: Former paladin in training who had no taste for weapons and armor. Seconded to learn from the Archmage’s people, so she’s one of the more talented magicians in the service of the GGW in Axis, at present. Helping the PCs track down the elemental troublespots that have been throwing Wyrmblessed off its Axis. The GGW’s people presented her as something of a non-combatant but that was almost certainly a cover story. No one had time to think about it at the time, but in retrospect the stunt she pulled with the force bubble and the wizards’ duel with the would-be elemental saboteurs marks her as a couple notches above the PCs’ level.

Firigin: Cowardly but skilled inventor, Inigo’s former partner, somewhat indebted to the PCs for screwing up so badly while they were doing their best to guard him. Lives in a dome that has a lot in common with Butters’ new teeth. It must have taken a lot of dead walruses to build the dome. // Also the creator of the Stone Girl. // Incapable of multi-tasking, as proven by the fact that Ser-Vanh was able to steal so many gems while Firigin was distracted sending Dhomnin’s message to the Dwarf King.

Fishstick the Dread Pirate: A dread gnome pirate apparently buried near Firigin’s place on Silver Cove. Who knew? Rusty, that’s who. The pirate’s ghost says it owes Gherophy a favor, as the gnome who cleared his tomb of the Lich King’s attempted takeover. That favor isn’t preventing Fishstick’s skeletal parrot, Korthas, from systematically retrieving the gems the PCs stole from the tomb. 

“French”: Real name is Crunch, but after surrendering this burly half-orc bandit (Dead Flowers gang) admitted that he hoped to a) be sentenced to the gladiatorial games; b) eventually open a wine and cheese shop. So it looks like his original name will be buried by my original mispronunciation, by his having surrendered in the first place, and by his newly arrived ‘French’ accent.

Galadon: The lizardman in the service of the Great Gold Wyrm who commissioned the party to track down Inigo Sharpe in order to fix the floating island of Wyrmblessed above the city of Axis. Galadon fought a high-level cloaking action to keep the main portion of the Lich King’s forces off the PC’s trail, according to Gerophy’s glowing golden dream. More recently he’s been gifting the PCs with magical treasure of their hearts’ desires. (In Butters’ case, that turned out to be magical armor that looked like cured human skin. It is. It’s Butters’ skin, back from when he was recognizably human and alive. The PCs haven’t had time to investigate how Butters’ fireballed-skin became a magic item only to turn up in an Imperial armory decades later.) // When the Wyrmblessed rituals are complete, Galadon is arranging the force-teleport that will get the PCs back to the Stranglesea to rescue the dwarven and human survivors. 

Glark: Apparently a goblin god? Some sort of weird idol in the goblin shipwreck maybe? A Stranglesea thing? Who could say? Who indeed? Someone who broke a tentacled piece of the idol off and keeps it in their pocket?

Hornharrow: super weird Inigo-created potential demon-banisher artifact, but not a magical artifact. Inigo freaked out when the PCs found it in a cave with cultists and he wants them to get it to the Great Gold Wyrm. (For a change, Inigo’s new plan succeeded; Hornharrow does not appear to be the PC’s problem any more.)

Inigo Sharpe: Problematic human inventor turned weirdass robot head. Still an inventor. Shocked sober, recently, by the discovery of his demon-wrecking contraption (just above), which he had thought destroyed. No longer wishes to be taken by the Crusader and cooperating with the PCs. // Presently handed off to the Great Gold Wyrm’s people, who he appears to be getting along with surprisingly well while fixing Wyrmblessed.

Klinkhammer: Former gladiator and owner of a tavern near the Axis arena district, the DeeOhGee. Tavern sign: a black dog. That’s also the name of the tavern’s signature drink. Maybe a racist. A dwarf.

Korthas the Skeletal Parrot: “Loserssssssss.” Has been stealing back gems that the PCs had liberated from the dread pirate’s tomb. // Update: Has now turned up perched in Unta’s office, apparently negotiating a business deal of its own. This was a big surprise to everyone; to Gherophy and Butters because they thought Korthas was a dungeon-problem, and to Bromach because he’d been too drunk in Fishstick’s Tomb to remember much (we’d played Miguel’s character for him to give the scaredy-characters some muscle); and to Dhomnin because he has no idea what’s going on, since he was too straight-laced to be trusted by the dread pirate’s ghost when he sought PC-assistance.

Melinda & Keller: Wreck rats left behind on the Stranglesea. Dear friends of Ataya. Therefore probably people worth getting to know. If they’re still alive. 

MR. X: He teleported into the middle of the Lich King/Elven Lawyer fight that played out across the teleportals. He was surrounded by dead undead and magical lightning that he appeared to control, which writhed around him to strike down any undead that showed signs of unlife. Mr. X recognized Gherophy and said he’d see him again, though he didn’t introduce himself in turn. Dark skinned, power rippling from an ivory cane. Some type of sorcerer. Badass as Jules in Pulp Fiction and not necessarily trying to be the shepherd.

Nameless Hungry Ghost: The entirely fearsome spirit that nearly killed Bromach, put the rest of the PCs on their heels, and flew away with the head of Inigo Sharpe. Luckily for the PCs, the Crusader magicians controlling the ghost didn’t have much control over it, and when shove came to stab the hungry ghost stood aside after being promised a respectful burial ceremony in the wreckage of the unhealed battlefield named Oldblood. Butters lived up to that promise, which means the ghost wasn’t nameless to everyone, but Butters is good at keeping secrets.

Pumpkin, Teal, & Rusty: Gnome bandits. Or gnome layabouts. They seem pretty awful at banditing. At least one of them is now dead, slain in the hungry ghost/Crusader zombie attack, but it’s not clear if it was the dude who wanted to be called Grim Grimkin (instead of Pumpkin) or if it was Teal. The gnomes knew Gherophy when they were all younger and Gherophy was being more or less tortured as a light source, so that’s not all good.

‘Queen of the nomads’: Bromach’s ex-wife; definitely connected to the Elf Queen. Cursed Bro with the thing that makes the gritty guy unique: inanimate objects speak to him. Yes, often at inopportune times. Mostly at terrible times. But there are moments when the objects appear to want him to stay alive. Bro is sure of it. It’s just that their moments apart are more fiery than other peoples’.

Quentin Bonerazor/Boneraiser: Bro’s new magic sword, found in the aftermath of the battle at Oldblood, the draconic battlefield which the Crusader’s people made the mistake of trying to use as a bastion against the PCs.

Regna: Strangely perceptive. (GM has no idea who this is. Players have not yet helped. We shall see.)

Rusty: See Pumpkin. But Rusty is a bit more daring and knows where things are buried. Or maybe that’s because he was temporarily possessed by a long-dead fearsome pirate.

Ser Vant: A glibly coined name for Butters’ ‘servant,’ a former magician in the service of the Lich King who chose service over death-by-PC. Also, Butters has promised to seek the revenge that drove our loyal (?) Ser Vant to serve with the Lich King in the first place, against the evil (we’re assured) Baron Von Hendriks, near Glitterhaegen. So it’s close to Butters’ old turf, the Duchy of Turin. 11/5/2020: Ser Vant has been released from service. We are told that he is staying to help the Great Gold Wyrm’s people with the Wyrmblessed project. Butters counts this as a success, a reformation. Butters is at least 60% right. The man’s real name is Edgar O’Dun, and it seems he has left the necromantic ways behind and is now a lovable rogue.

Shiny: Gherophy’s new pet skitter lizard. Has officially survived 1 hour in range of Chuck’s jaws, but maybe that’s because Shiny is safe within a sack and kinda doped-up on ritual magic.

Skullface: High elf leader of the Dead Flowers gang. Captured by the PCs in a battle that was too one-sided to be remembered as a battle. Nearly escaped by teleporting through a trapped corridor but was run down and taken out by a very determined Dhomnin, who won handily by bringing both fists to a knife fight.

Stone Girl, The: The boat invented by Firigin using Inigo’s original work. Gherophy has a real connection to her. For the rest of the PCs, she’s just a boat, but Gherophy probably knows better.

Turin, Duchy of: Butters’ ancestral grounds, taken from him when he more or less died thanks to that errant fireball.

Unta: She’s a former gladiator and a (rare) human friend of Klinkhammer, the proprietor of the DeeOhGee. She also has recently taken over the management of an old arena that’s trying to make a comeback, the Crown of Axis. Butters decided he wanted to invest. Unta has big plans for the PC’s investment, starting with getting them to clear out the warrens beneath the amphitheater. Mission in progress.