Bob The
Referee
Me Hildigard, heavily armed lunch lady
[Fighter]
Andrew Thilvos, 6’ tall blond wood elf [Elf]
Dave Otto, German bounty hunter with a
mancatcher [Fighter]
Session One
Hildigard is traveling south. An army of invading Swedes
pursues her. Not her specifically, but it’s not exactly a friendly army of invading Swedes, now is it? This is 1630s Bavaria.
Shit’s about to get fucked.
Carrying most of her worldly possessions on her back,
Hildigard stumbles across a band of travelers inspecting some termite mounds by
the side of the road. They are two fair-haired Germans named Thilvos and Otto,
and a pair of merchants bound for Venice, along with their three hired men.
Thilvos asks her, “Have you ever seen termites before?”
She answers, “No.”
Otto goes to poke the mound. “Do you really want me to
take a look at this? Can we just leave instead?” We leave it instead.
 |
| We are all adults. |
The caravan is headed all the way back to Venice to sell
their inventory of dried fruits, as the market here has apparently dried up,
what with the impending violence.
We arrive at the village of Lohr without further ado.
It’s a large town, about the same size as Karlstadt. It’s known for its witch
hunters’ fervor. There are people hung up on trees as we enter the town; they
wear signs around their necks that say “WITCHES.” The folks here are very loyal
to the Holy Roman Empire, and the city is full-up with soldiers. A couple
hundred, easily. Not enough to handle 30,000 Swedes, but it’s a sizeable effort
all the same.
Thilvos asks a soldier about the current situation,
trying to gauge where all of us should go next. “Are you heading up to Neuendorf?
Isn’t there a large army coming from the north? Supposedly the Swedes are
coming from the north, and they’ll be here in days!”
Given that advice, we head south, down the river to
Neustadt am Main, and somewhere along the way, we see a group of twenty unarmed
people running panicked along the road. They came from the west. And they’re
being chased by six ants the size of ponies.
“I hear ants are good eatin’!” Hildigard says, unslinging
her bow and nocking an arrow.
 |
| https://sketcharound.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/attack-of-the-giant-ant/ |
Hildigard shoots at it with her bow and rolls a 1.
Thilvos fires his bow and strikes one in the leg. The guards take aim with
their muskets. People stream past us, screaming and begging that the end has
come, so on and so forth. The ants close the gap – they’re quickly within
thirty feet of us!
Hildigard fires again and misses. Thilvos rolls a 13 and
it’s no good – it bounces off the ants’ chitin without effect! Otto grabs his
mancatcher, wrings his hands, and waits. The guards open fire with their
muskets. They connect and deal a bit of damage, but nothing lethal. Egads!
The ants crash into our wagon and begin to bite at us and
harass our horses. Hildigard stabs one pretty good, and it’s almost dead, but
not quite; she gets locked into a deadly shoving match with the beast. Thilvos
kills in a deft attack, then charges in and slays another (12 damage on a
charge! Woo!) One of the guards follows suit. The combat transforms into a
deadly shoving match.
Then, an opening! Otto beheads one of the ants with a perfect
strike from his broadsword (Nat 20 for max damage). He took a little bite (2
damage) but he’s otherwise unscathed.
The frightened townsfolk witness our act of bravery. They
cheer us on, and inform us that their village was destroyed by these selfsame giant
ants, and that their friends and family members were carried off. Off to where?
Nowhere good, that’s where!
We decide to book it to Neustadt post-haste.
At the inn, Hildigard remarks of the giant ant leg she’s
roasting, “They taste like what you get if you cross a pig with a lemon.”
An internet expert added: “It’s the formic acid. Gives
‘em that citrus tang.”
A grizzled, prophetic old woodcutter tells us some rumors over a flagon of ale:
“Water dragons out east, in the swamp. Ate my dog. I liked that dog. Giant insects claimed the village, and we started running. Most of the people weren’t killed. Poor wretches. They were headed to some place else… The Mound. An old pagan site of worship. I don’t know what’s out there. I don’t want to know.”
Thilvos has a map, and he’s really curious about a few
places on it. He wants to see The Infinite Tower before the Swedes sack it.
Hildigard, who has a copper piece and a bent spear to her name, is really
curious about the abandoned village that the frightened townsfolk left behind.
Surely, in their haste, they left behind some gold coins?
The prophetic old woodcutter says, “Swamps are a horrible
place. Terrible, awful places, swamps. Not recommended.” Naturally, the
abandoned village full of giant ants is in the swamp.
We try to convince the merchants to let us borrow their
hired men for a little expedition, but they’re not really excited about the
idea. Bavaria sucks. They want out as fast as their legs can carry them, and
honestly, if we weren’t pathetically broke and psychologically unbalanced
people, we would definitely be doing the same thing. They tell us they’ll be in
Venice for about six months, once they get there, and after that they’re going
home to Turkey. They let us know we’re all welcome to visit if we ever make it
out of this godforsaken wilderness.
 |
| Hildigard's first-level character sheet http://character.totalpartykill.ca/lotfp/ |
No comments:
Post a Comment