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cked into capsizing a cargo ship full of lamp oil and first distillate brandy then bombed by invisible flying magic users dropping fireballs on it while being shot at by as many ballistae as we could find damn those things are tough one aspect of the situation still requires attention namely the improbably large amount of gold the dwarves were promised for their help which we don t actually have hearts of stone 30 beer elemental posted 22 november 2017 in hearts of stone tags 13th age savage worlds 0 only soreth and the fox turned up to this session that sort of thing happens sometimes in a drop in game at the end of episode 29 when all players were teleported home soreth found herself in her cave north of drakkenhall while the fox woke up in his old bedroom at castle stormwatcher just outside glitterhaegen in the intervening period soreth s magic sword spiterazor advanced the theory that a it was created to slay dark elves b it its experience you find dark elves fighting dwarves c there are lots of dwarves in anvil and therefore d they should go to anvil kill dark elves and take their stuff since neither of them has the brains god gave a rabbit off they go meanwhile the fox s henchwoman ladra had learned that a dwarven goldsmith in anvil was making a golden statue of a fox spirit went to investigate and was imprisoned for trying to steal it so the fox makes his way north to get her out of jail on meeting up at anvil the group learns that the local dwarven clans pride themselves on the quality of their beer making good beer requires a plentiful source of pure water and by sifting through ancient records one dwarf brewmaster has learned of the existence and approximate location of a spring of surpassing purity the musty tomes tell him that the spring has been corrupted and must be cleansed using a barrel of an unspecified but powerful potion clearly the brewmaster thinks this must be a reference to brimison s 8x winter ale the party are hired to convey a barrel of this most puissant beer to the spring dispose of any unwanted tenants and empty the barrel into the spring we gloss over the trek to the caves wherein lies the spring with soreth carrying a barrel of 8x winter ale inside they find an unwholesome mixture of goblins orcs ogres and dire wolves but between soreth s breath weapon and the fox s flashing swords these don t last long even though soreth is distracted by fossicking through their quarters for loot and only two cowardly goblins escape with their lives locating the spring they meet a water elemental who had taken up residence in the spring for its purity only to find herself trapped there for generations while the orcs dumped well best not to think about it really into the pool when they dump the winter ale into said pool its power purifies the spring and creates the first beer elemental in history like a water elemental but permanently tipsy luckily for them the beer elemental is a friendly drunk and professes undying love for the fox this is unlikely to have a permanent effect as she will forget him at midnight the fox lets her down gently and he and soreth return to anvil to collect their reward gm notes hearts of stone has now morphed into a series of picaresque one sheet adventures with the overall story arc set to one side for the foreseeable future i had planned to use gold glory to generate a dungeon for this session but work and domestic affairs meant no time to do that so i grabbed one of the old crooked staff freebie dungeon complexes a bunch of monsters from the sw core book which are stated to cooperate and a mission plot from warhammer quest took about an hour to set up and most of that was spent choosing a map arion 021 3401 an invitation to dinner posted 18 november 2017 in dark nebula tags savage worlds solo traveller 0 the dinner table is often the terrain of critical conversations for it is there one has the better of one s interlocutor there is no escape without scandal there is no turning aside without self betrayal to invite a person to dinner is to place them under observation every dining room is a temporary prison where politeness chains the guests to the laden board maurice renard the hands of orlac 1412 ria d768534 7 ag ni gg the ship s boat from the dromedary deposits arion at ria starport and he walks out into the muggy heat with the clothes on his back great archive surveyor coveralls indifferently laundered aboard ship and a spacesuit neither the ship s boat nor the laser turrets are standard fittings on a subsidised liner fresh out of the yards so arion surmises that the dromedary is intended to trade with backwater planets in hostile space ria seems to tick both boxes looking at solo p 53 i need to make a world encounter roll p 58 which will lead me to other rolls as appropriate i roll 3 2 and learn that the local community is either not what it seems or very welcoming the starport is about as basic as you can get and still be an actual functioning starport a decrepit set of landing pads and a few buildings arion needs to find passage back to mizah or at least hasara where an archive ship will eventually turn up and suspects he ll need money for that lots of it before making any decisions he needs more information and the best place to get that is at the starport office a mouldy looking edifice with a couple of soldiers armed with what look like simple chemical slugthrowers and a man in a suit loitering outside all three have luxuriant moustaches which arion will shortly learn are the local fashion the suited man waves at arion to attract his attention then walks briskly up to him with the soldiers ambling along behind as if their presence were more for show than because of any real threat senor metaxas i heard from traffic control that you were arriving i am luis gonzález pleased to meet you gonzález is speaking accented english the lingua franca of spacers across the sector likewise i m sure yes i m metaxas how can i help you we don t often see anyone from outside this system especially not a surveyor from the great archive king adriano talamantes invites you to dine with him tonight and bring him news of the outside galaxy arion thinks for a moment covering his indecision by lowering his heavy spacesuit to the ground he s not likely to get a better offer than this and while he is wary of local despots the soldiers can likely shoot him if he runs or overpower him if he doesn t might as well go without the handcuffs then and eat a fine dinner instead of prison slops since arion knows archive ships don t normally go as far as ria and individual free traders haven t got the range for this run the king must be getting all his external information from the combine and the implication of the invitation is that he doesn t entirely trust them arion may be able to turn that to his advantage i would be delighted to accept your kind offer senor gonzález he says when am i expected and what is the best way to the palace don t worry smiles gonzález we will take you there right away o0o a few hours later arion finds himself clean shaven except for the beginnings of a local style moustache may as well fit in showered dressed in borrowed finery rather than a tatty surveyor s coverall and at table with luis gonzález king adriano talamantes queen delfina and princess isabella the ten year old heir to the throne waiters bustle in and out with various courses and discreet guards in dress uniforms stand behind the king to either side of him by the time they get to what passes for coffee locally the ice has been broken and the five of them have moved past the polite small talk including arion s descriptions of life across the handful of worlds in the fastnesses and the family s explanations of local history geography and crops i must tell you senor metaxas the king begins gesturing with his coffee cup that captain anderson tells me we should fear the archive that it is dominated by people with a liberal socialist agenda hostile to our way of life here arion frowns considering his next words carefully the prison cell is still a possibility there is rivalry between the combine and the archive he says and a wise ruler wouldn t take anything either of us says at face value captain anderson has given you the combine view of things allow me to present the archive s you know of course that before the interregnum a great human empire controlled this region of space with its capital on mother earth before that empire fell it established centres of learning on major worlds to ensure colonists had access to a basic knowledge of technology culture and history one of these was the forerunner of the great archive on mizah after the empire fell it worked with the planetary government to save as many people as it could and rebuild captain anderson tells me that the archive has taken over the government of mizah from within like some kind of parasitic wasp he says whatever a wasp is it s true that the archive and the government have worked closely together for centuries what anderson may not have told you is that the combine was once a faction within the archive we are essentially a quasi religious academic organisation focused on humanitarian aid and research sharing our knowledge freely with other worlds some time ago a group of the archive s adepts started saying that we should sell our tools and knowledge rather than giving them away and that since what other worlds most wanted to buy was weapons we should sell those that led to a schism between the academic and commercial interests in the archive with the commercial elements leaving to form the combine i see captain anderson argues that what people are freely given they do not value and that the archive imposes its will on other worlds over generations by insinuating its ideas into the minds of the young the archive s eventual goal is to uplift every system in this region to the old empire s level of technology thus eliminating hunger disease and oppression we hope this will lead to harmony to a voluntary association of free worlds with crystal spires and togas for all no doubt the rebels in the swamps say i oppress them captain anderson says that emissaries of the archive are spreading sedition and firearms among them then why invite me here why not just arrest me because all i know about the archive about the whole galaxy since the empire fell is what captain anderson has told me asking him if it is true gains me nothing but you the king waggles a finger and smiles you do not know what he has told me so where both of you agree i can take that as the truth where you disagree one of you is lying so i hope you will accept my invitation to stay for a while and understand that the guard outside your room is there for your protection arion considers his options and comes to the conclusion that he doesn t really have any how could i refuse such a kind offer i can think of no better place to stay during my time here gm notes this week i ll talk a bit about how the worlds of the nebula are being created i start with the number of jump routes it has and use those for a first cut of the starport one route is class e two routes d and so on and population level inhospitable secondary systems have a population level of the number of routes plus one habitable primary systems add another two to that i override that in two cases tertiary systems always have a world profile of e000000 0 and the two homeworlds kuzu and maadin have starport type a and population 9 so ria begins with starport d and population 5 then i use google translate and other sources to find out what the name means and in which language ria is interesting as it means a number of different things a drowned river valley in english river in a number of romance languages a corn drying kiln in swedish a moustache in vietnamese or blood in woi spoken in indonesia i muse on that for a while and imagine the kind of world that would be an appropriate name for the goal here is that if the players in a group game ever figure it out they ll say ohhh of course it would be called that would t it i chose this approach because i m not very good at doing it the other way round figuring out a relevant name for a world based on the stats and tend to drift into analysis paralysis it also has the benefit that it tells me which culture or cultures originally settled the place giving me a ready source of names traditional menus and customs and so on in the case of ria the image that comes to mind is a rural agricultural planet primarily focussed on growing corn along a river valley with one major town just upstream of a tropical river delta split politically between a spanish speaking ruling class and a mixed bag of farm labourers from other cultures and a group of flatboat mounted guerillas hiding in the delta s marshes and seeking to overthrow the rulers possibly the first thing a visitor notices are the impressive mustachios sported by all adult males then i assigned the rest of the profile to fit that picture note that the boardgame implies all primary and secondary worlds have antiship defences laser and missile turrets and by extension either a tech level of 7 or some sort of arrangement with another planet which armed them bases i assign by looking at the map and placing them where i think it makes sense and fits with the profile there s no reason for ria to have any bases so it doesn t as we explore the subsectors further you ll see the region was largely colonised by turkey indonesia and the proposed east african union arion 014 3401 dromedary posted 11 november 2017 in dark nebula tags savage worlds solo traveller 0 how canst thou say i am not polluted i have not gone after baalim see thy way in the valley know what thou hast done thou art a swift dromedary traversing her ways king james bible jeremiah 2 23 aboard the dromedary i roll for in game reactions solo pp 19 20 and an onboard event solo p 56 there s only one active pc yet arion who rolls a 6 and therefore fails to avoid a bad reaction a further roll of 4 shows that a choice is made and he doesn t like it the onboard event is 43 a power failure the captain s day cabin is spacious by shipboard standards and captain anderson sits at a small desk interviewing arion who is dressed in an ill fitting pair of combine overalls and perched awkwardly on a folding chair the scene is dimly lit by emergency lights and the air conditioning is off our sensors confirm there s wreckage from an archive surveyor and the origin of your trajectory matches where it would have been when you left so your story checks out but tell me why would pirates blow your ship up first they re breaking no laws by being here second there s no one to enforce them if they were third a ship with an archive transponder has nothing worth stealing no offence and fourth the archive is too powerful to upset for no reason none taken i saw too much i saw who they were meeting out here hierate sc...