Legendfalls Special: Into Twilight

[janestarz]

Reason for me and Keffie to request this special was the fact that players cannot handle the entire concept of a scout. You see, if you have a scout, you send him or her to scout, and report back. It's not a person who walks two meters in front of you and is of the first people to get hurt.
I dare say we succeded, if only very minorly, to let the players come to grips with these terms.

First off, there was a sermon. *sigh* Lanelle stood around and geared up and scouted a bit ahead. Then when we were finally on the move, the paladins of Eveleen refused to wait for any signal whatsoever. Even though I scared a bunny (go me) and a mouse or rat or other small rodent-like critter, this put a damp mood on the party. The party passed me on the road and I resisted the urge to shoot one of them. I stepped out of the bushes with a lot of noise to make my displeasure known and glared at a hastily apologizing Hagor.

It went better once we stuck to the roads. Apparantly the paladins wouldn't mind being ambushed from the forest and told us to just scout the roads. Hagor and I almost even got around to doing the bunny hop: one scout walks forward 10 meters and stays put. The other scout overtakes him and scouts 10 meters ahead, then stays put in turn, only to be overtaken by the first scout again. This enables a scout to look carefully at the surroundings as well as make excellent progress. It's one of the Pathfinder trade secrets.
The signals went well too. All communication with the paladin group had to be done by hand signals, because Lanelle refuses to speak to them. They understood what I meant most times. Very basic army signals like "hurry forward" and "stay put".

We ran into vampires, which the paladins were hunting, soon enough. I mainly took care of Ialis from that point onward. Highlights were when Sanne the Setite "chose not to chase us" and we outran him. Always know when to run. I also made some pretty sneaky moves. I circled around a couple of major fights and kept a close eye on monsters who in the end turned out not to be there. Clementine twisted her knee in one of those fights, which was pretty sucky.

There was also a cat-like creature following the group. At first, it didn't allow me to come close, but when we were lost she guided us closer to our quarry. At some point she went pretty cross-country and I completely ignored Hagor when he crawled up to me as I was following the cat to say that he would take the group by another road. The cat fell from a tree she had been hiding in shortly after, and I called Ialis in to heal the poor kitty. It pretty much warmed up to us after that.

The feelings I got from the forest and the cat were weird though. Out character, the forest gave me a kind of warning before we started our quest: to be careful. It allowed us in though, it was day, after all. During the night it's less happy to oblige (if you can call it that).
In character, I heard a weird kind of laughter, like the voice of the Dryad, but different. It had something to do with the barkskin on my hand. I also felt a kind of connection to the cat. Personally, I am thinking the changes in the forest (wilting, growing dead, and then suddenly blooming back to life) had something to do with a 'Blighter', a kind of anti-dryad. Perhaps the cat itself is the anti-dryad. As Lanelle though, I have no idea, and I just wished my brother Adriel was there to help me talk to the cat.

Oh yes, we also found the vampires. John Walker, one of the paladins, ran off when it turned out they didn't want to fight, leaving behind the people that had been abducted earlier and who were forced to stab eachother in the chest too. Mieky, the girl with the Cube, stayed behind with me. Hagor had tried to return to Portshire earlier, to warn them of the dangers, and returned to us, unable to get there. Finally, after being taunted, he ran so far into the vampire's lair that he was bewitched by one of them and turned simple. I don't know this In Character, but suspect they did something to him. It took a lot of reasoning to get him out of there again. I shouted, as Mieky was standing by my side, that the humans were too stupid to find their way back home without him, and in the end I got him out of there. He did have to leave behind some stuff, and even I lost one of my swords there, but at least we got away. His sister will hear about this nonsense though.

Picture by Claudia Meijer, a colleague of mine.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Damnit, i should have just joined Claudia when she told me she was going. Sounds like good fun and it is always good to learn some pathfinder skills from real pathfinders!

[glimworm.livejournal.com]

euh, oops that was me just now.

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

I think the LF SL's would have liked to have you as a monster but I can imagine them being grumpy about last minute additions. I'd want to know if people would join up at the last minute.