Tales from the Old Land transcript

[Yaztromo]

Feanor holds up his hands to the rampaging knight. "Your horse awaits in yonder chamber, Sir Knight!" he says, pointing back to where they came from.


Storm will attack the knight if he is attacked.


The Green Knight doesn't seem to understand what Feanor said and attacks. Storm is the first to step in and fight with both his swords, but neither of them connect with the knight. He is instead hit twice! Storm looks badly shaken!


Storm retreats slowly.


The Green Knight prepares to attack again! What do you do?


Roger Lillard, very worried by the situation, takes out a rod and brakes it on his knee.
"Go back into the Abyss! Rest in peace and don't bother the living anymore!"


When the rod brakes, a magic wind fills the room and engulfs the Green Knight before he can strike again Storm.
The Green Knight spins around and slowly turns into dust. The dust is finally carried by the same magic wind in the hole in the floor and disappears downstairs.

Roger Lillard sighs, as the two pieces of the broken rod turn into burnt twigs and the ashes fall to the floor: "I don't have another Sacred Rod of Banishing, unfortunately."


"You are definitely full of surprises," Jan says in awe, "but keep your wits about yourselves as he had at least two companions. Storm, how are you?? You took quite a blow there."

He asked readying another arrow.


"I am also worried as the smoke didn't disperse as usually, but went straight down..." He shakes his head.


"Drawn back to its source, it's tomb perhaps?? Then let us not delay to allow it to regain its strength!! If we find where it's power lies. Follow the smoke??" Jan says, determined.

He steps to the hole where the rope leads down into the darkness. Only when the others were ready (and had healed Storm, if that was necessary) would he climb down.


Roger nods and goes besides Jan.


"I need to rest awhile and catch my breath,"Storm says.

"Thank you for saving me, Storm says.


"You can catch your breath, but we do need to move quickly." Jan explains.

"We font know if it will take the knight minutes, hours or days to reform. And if we wait too long he - IT - could be ready and waiting for us."

He shot Feanor a hopeful look, that he had a trick up his sleeve.


"Have some food, Storm." Roger says.
"Maybe Jan and Feanor can go down first, while I stay with you. We will catch up soon."


Jan nodded, "I'll go first then," and slung his bow. Using the rope he lowered himself to the floor below, and the darkness therein.


Storm thanks Roger, eats the food and rest before catching up with his companions.


Jan and Feanor go down to the lower level and they find a room with the walls scored in black, smelling burnt. On the floor there are scattered burnt bones. On one end of the room there is a kind of niche in the wall, on the other end another archway leading to the next room.


Drawing his sword rather than his bow, preferred in the darkness. He indicated to Feanor to check the niche while he covered the archway.


Feanor nods an approaches the niche from the side. He murmurs some words and his hand begins to glow, holding it out to brighten the area in and around the niche for Feanor to inspect it.

[Yaztromo]

The niche is completely blackened and the burnt smell is particularly strong, here.


Feanor looks back to Jan and points at the blackened niche. "Be awfully careful when you move up ahead, Jan. I have a concern about this blackened spot and this corridor," he says, moving away from the main part of the corridor himself.


"Something exploded or was burned, which released the knight..??" Jan said keeping watch through the archway.


"Perhaps, but there are stories about black spots at the ends of corridors," he says, gesturing Jan to move ahead. "I will be here if you need help," he adds.


Storm rests until he's ready to find his friends


A curious look crosses Jan's face, but now is not the time for detailed conversation. He continues cautiously forward, keeping to the shadows and investigating what lies beyond.


Jan progresses along the tunnel. In this part of the dungeon, the roots of the giant oak have pressed the stones out of the wall, and its underground branches have grown into the tunnel. The wet earth intensifies the smell of mould.


Jan pauses, allowing his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom and listened for sounds in the quiet darkness.


You get used to the surrounding environment, its darkness, the mouldy smell and you notice nothing threatening around yourself.


Jan creeps forward again, wondering why his nerves were so tight.


At this point, Storm has quickly eaten his meal and can join you.

Jan enters a rectangular room. He enters at the center of the long side of the rectangle and he can see the exit on front of him.
In the center of the room there are four chests. On the western side of the room (Jan's right side) there are two stone statues. on the eastern side of the room (Jan's left side) there are two metal boxes.


Storm suggests checking the area and boxes for traps.


His mind quickly assesses the situation and he stepped over to the statues. In his paranoid state he wanted to make sure they were statues, that nothing was hiding in the shadows and that the green knight wasn't about to leap out at him.


Roger looks with interest at the roots in the tunnel and he falls a bit behind.
Jan, that moved ahead of the group, goes to the side of the room with the two statues of human size. They represent two armored guards with shield and swords in their hands, their eyes glowing red in the dark.
Feanor followed Jan and is now looking around in the middle of the room, suspecting some kind of trap.
Storm looks at the chests in the middle of the room, suspicious.
From the side of the room with the two metal boxes, you suddenly hear a loud noise: two bestial, inhuman things with wild hair coming out from under extremely rusty helmets, insane eyes and clawed fingers and toes, still dressed in their rotting, green livery, flipped the lids open and jumped out of the boxes!


"Well that's not good!" Feanor mutters as he moves to put Storm in between himself and the hairy beasts.


Storm draws his twin blades


The two horrible creatures attack you in melee!


Feanor keeps out of reach of the creatures and sends a fire bolt into one.


Jan waits for a moment to appraise the situation, then rushes forward to attack the foil beasts from the flank.


Feanor's spell hits one of the two creatures, that gets disintegrated in a cloud of dust!
The other creature, instead, attacks Jan... and hits!
Storm attacks the creature as well, but his twin blades do not connect!


Damn, these things were fast!! He'd attacked from behind and it had still caught him. Thankfully his armour bore the brunt and the creature's claws only sliced a flesh wound.

Undeterred, he swung the sword again, cursing his folly at closing in when he could have shot at it from safety.

Using the momentum from the creature's blow, Jan pulls his own blade upwards in an arc, hoping to skewer the creature in two.


Feanor launches another fire bolt at the remaining creature, hoping to prevent it from injuring Jan again.

[Yaztromo]

Feanor's spell this time causes just minor damage.
Jan misses his target, but the creature doesn't miss and hits Jan again!
However, Storm from one side and Roger from the other side manage to hit, and the creature disintegrates as well in a cloud of dust!


Once the two creatures have been dealt with, Feanor cautiously moves over to look inside the boxes.


Between the two boxes the two creatures came from (coffins, not much different from the one where the skeleton horse was, apart that they are smaller) lies the desiccated and headless corpse of a goblin. Inside the coffins you find only some badly corroded manacles, broken into pieces.


Feanor takes a good look around the coffins, inside and out, to see if there's any secret doors or compartments.


Jan took the full force of the blow, the claws raking deep across his chest, drawing blood. He staggered, ensuring the enemy were vanquished.

"I don't feel so great." he said, pressing his hand against the deepest flowing wound. "Those things... they don't have poison, do they??"


"You never know... As soon as we get out of here, better we take you straight away to a temple..." says Roger, as he walks towards the chests.


Feanor takes a good look around the coffins, inside and out, to see if there's any secret doors or compartments, and he doesn't find any.


Feanor moves over and places his hand on Jan and closes his eyes, reciting a prayer to Fronaus.


Jan feels much better.


Roger Lillard opens one chest: "This lock was previously picked... what's this? Gold!" he examines carefully a coin picked from the chest "This was minted by Robert of Geneva, King of Thonia! These coins are about one thousand years old! This King from far away led the Human conquest of most Blackmoor from the Elves, long, long time ago, long before Blackmoor conquered its independence..."


"Thank you. The wound was not too deep, thankfully, but it held some malignancy, a taint or infection." Jan thanked Feanor.

"Gold from before Blackmoor was recognised as an independent country??" he answered Roger. "Makes sense, sort of. The goblins are claiming land rights from before Blackmoor was a nation, using ancient standards. Here rests a knight, undying, from a similar time. A connection??"


Storm also joins in the search, wondering if anything of interst can be found, especially in the way of weaponry or armour.
False bottoms, walls etc


Re-energised from Feanor's healing magic, Jan moved to help the others to lookmthrough the chests, and examine the hold that Roger found.


Storms doesn't find anything that he was looking for.


Roger opened the only chest that was previously forced open. There are three more chests, but they are locked.


Jan tries to move the chests, to see how heavy they are - and therefore gauge whether they are worth smashing open, carrying or leaving and returning to later. "Anyone got a crowbar??" he asks hopefully.


Of the three closed chests, two are heavy and one is light.


"Not I. And I have no magic that can help here. I will try to keep an eye on things if you want to try and open them," Feanor says.


Storm looks around for something that can be used to smash the chest.

[Yaztromo]

Roger says: "I don't have a crowbar, but Feanor has a warhammer. Maybe we can use it. Otherwise we carry the chests out once we are done and we open them there."


"Before we loot this place. Where did the green knight go??" Jan asks. "The mist cane down here, so I'm expecting another tomb where he.. it is lying. Wouldn't want to loot this place only for the knight to come looking for its missing gold!!"


"So maybe we can carry on and take the chests on our way out..." Says Roger.


"Look around and come back for them," Jan replies. "We need to make sure."


"Let us try to open them lest someone lotts them when we cme bak," Storm says


"If you can pick the locks or have a chisel or something more precise to open them, otherwise smashing with a hammer could damage the very container that we need to carry the contents in.

But you're welcome to do it. My only thought is, how far do we need to go once we're out of here, and can we do that carrying heavy chests and being chased by goblins?? Especially if the chests are damaged." Jan explains.


You are right. Still we can hope t carry the lot in our packs. Perhaps we can try."

Storm tries to lift the chest to test the weighs.


"Go for it." Jan said.

He hoped that it wasn't just gems or gold in there, since they weighed a lot. He'd rather it was the objects associated with the green knight in life - sword, shield, armour... But then, in his experience those belongings were sacrificed with the body as an offering, so the dead could takebthem to the afterlife.


Storm can walk forward with his backpack, his weapons and carrying the open chest using both his hands, but he's really struggling to walk at a decent pace.


Storm asks his friend if he could borrow his hammer to break open the locked chests. If there are magic items, it will be good to equip them befre proceeding.


Feanor hands the warhammer over to Storm.


Storm uses the hammer to smash the chest.


Which chest do you want to smash? There is one light and two heavy.


"If you're going to do it, you.may as well smash all of them open!!" Jan said. He was conscious that time was running away from them, and the element of surprise was gone.


Storm takes his time and smashes the three closed chests: two are full of gold coins and one contains several parchments.
Roger Lillard seems interested in the parchments.


Jan takes an interest in the parchments too, though he doesn't expect to be able to read an ancient language... Gold would be heavy to carry, but parchment??


It takes a while to Roger Lillard to understand at least some of the ancient, brittle parchments, but finally he shares with you the little that he understood:
This grave was built for someone else than the person actually buried in it.
Whoever was left here was not meant to rest eternally, but to be punished.
The Green Knight was born in Synobia, raised to be an enemy of King Robert of Geneva, until he was defeated in battle and then befriended to Thonia’s first king. The Green Knight later became the guardian of King Robert’s sons.

In total, the gold that you found is about 400 gold coins!


Storm is disappointed that there is no magic. Perhaps they can take the gold.


They could split the gold between them. That would make it easier to carry. But the writings made Jan uneasy.

"So what or who released him from his torment?? And why did he go from being guardian to the king's children to enraged powermonger??"

[Yaztromo]

Jan collects 200 gold and as many parchments as he could carry, dropping them into his pack. He figured if he needed the space he could always drop some of the gold later.


Storm takes 150 gold and parchments and moves along.


Roger Lillard collects the last 50 gold coins and suggest you all give him the parchments, so they are all kept in one place.


The door to the next room has been smashed open –from the inside. The broken remains of a polished iron seal lie in front of the door.


"Don't mind you carrying them, if that's what you want," Jan says handing the parchments he had over. "If the door is smashed open from the inside, I'd say we're on the right track here."


Storm enters ad carefully checks the area


In the middle of this bleak and cold room you just entered, lies a stone sarcophagus. The cover of the sarcophagus is broken, and the pieces of the stone lie around as if sundered apart through an explosion from inside the big coffin.
There is another exit on the opposite side of the room.


You look into the sarcophagus and find that the inner walls show thousands of scratches, the lining that was once present inside has long since rotted away. On the bottom of the sarcophagus there is a thick, swirling mist.


Jan looks at the mist, "Is that it?? Can we trap it in a jar or something?? Repair the coffin??"

He was disappointed that the mist hadn't taken a humanoid form already.


"Strange to see a mist at a location," he says to his friends.


"The knight turned to a green mist and it poured down here." Jan says. "At a guess this is the green knight in gaseous form. Somehow he/it escaped from its prison here, and after Roger hurt it with the rod of dismissal it's returned here. Like a vampire tonite coffin at night.

So, can we seal it in something to prevent it from reforming??"

Jan looks inside the sarcophagus to see what originally held the knight at bay.


Originally the sarcophagus had a very heavy stone cover keeping it close, but that is now shattered, on the floor.


Jan turns his attention to the stone, looking for runes, arcane symbols or anything that marked the stone as magical.

[Yaztromo]

Storm walks to Jan and tries to revive him using his water from his water bottle.


Jan seems confused and weak, but he's alive and, after catching his breath, he will be able to walk.


Roger breaths deeply: "Looks like this job is done... A sad story, but it is over. Now let's collect everything that we can down here and let's go back under the sunshine. I'm sure that Jan will feel better as well."


Jan took a few moments to recognise the purpose of the water bottle bring offered, before guzzling the choking on the water. Coughing and spluttering, he handed handed the bottle back.

"That was... powerful." he said, slowly, unsteadily rising to stand. He took a few deep breaths to steady himself.

"I saw his entire life in an instant. Felt what he felt. The anger, the rage. But there was love there too. For his family, his sons. He wasn't the evil man he was portrayed to be, no. He was passionate, violent, prone to bursts of rage. A powerful warrior, man and father.

Let's go. I'd like to get out of here and breathe some fresh air."


Roger nods and helps you back on your feet and on your way out.


Let us loot the place.


You find on the floor the last earthly possessions of the Green Knight: a defaced (black) shield, a shattered sword, a breastplate.


"We took everything from the chests. There is nothing else to take, other than the Green Knight's belongings. Do with them what you will, I have no interest in them." Jan said, his head still swimming and his pulse racing.


You can pick up the last relics of the Knight, that is everything you haven't already picked up in the tomb and get back to the surface.
Roger Lillard still needs to make some priestly visit a bit further north, but it's a good time to share your loot before you escort him on.


Storm searches the green knight's belongings.


After his experiences, Jan just wanted out of the darkness of this place. Fresh air on his face.

He impatiently stepped back towards the entrance to wait there while the others sorted themselves out.


Does the breastplate have any markings on it or just a standard breastplate we could sell?


The breastplate is very ancient and oxidised. The shape is of course obsolete. You can sell it, of course.


"Don't waste your time looking at that," Jan said with a sigh without looking back"It's all antiquated junk. No heraldry, damaged. Won't be worth much to anyone except a collector. And even then, only perhaps."


Feanor nods. "If it's ruined it won't sell for much. And, I'm not overly keen to be carrying it, so let's leave it," he says.


Roger Lillard is looking forward to do his religious visits and duties in the Northern Downs. Do you want to move on with him?


Yes, Jan signed up to escort Roger - he'll see that through to completion. Especially if it gets them out if this dark hole!!


"Let us go forth," Storm says


You count the gold coins that you took out of the Tomb of the Green Knight and you find out that they are 400. You already split the load, but you have to decide how to share the loot once you go back to Blackmoor City.


You leave the tomb and follow Roger Lillard on his religious mission on the Northern Downs, but there are no more adventures on your path.
On the way back, Roger stops again at the Bukton Farm and you find the Bukton kids rebuilding their burnt barn. You feel inspired by the grim determination that you see in their eyes: the presence of civilisation and Humankind will resist the pressure of the Goblins for long time, around here, if all the people are all courageous like these two kinds!


Once you are back to Blackmoor, the Priests of Odir give you a special blessing, as part of a thanksgiving ritual, in front of quite a crowd and you are seen as strong and pious adventurers.



Tales of the Old Land

is an adventure by Rafael

[Yaztromo]

So this was the transcript!

I can say that the players enjoyed it, but I'm not sure they got all the background story about the Green Knight and Mak the Sheep Stealer & Co, with all detail. They also disliked quite a lot the bard at the beginning of the story while I guess I should have played it better as a rascal that can be of use.

Personally, I can say that the scripted adventure is not doing a continuous hand-holding of the Game Master, but this adventure comes after the MMRPG was very established, so probably it wasn't necessary.
There is a minor continuity mistake in the script, as at some point it says that the sword of the Green Knight was shattered before entombing him alive, but then the Green Knight attacks the character with a sword without any extra detail. I solved the issue by making him wielding a shattered sword with an eldritch blade that caused also burn damage.
I personally don't like much characters like Roger Lillard, that are there mainly to walk along the characters and give them some kind of guidance and information. In practice this makes them a proxy of the Game Master to facilitate the railroading. Classic Advanced Fighting Fantasy adventures often have this kind of characters, but they aren't much of my liking: the characters should be able to progress in the game even without a "guide" parachuted in their group. My bad that, at some point, I dropped the ball and I forgot to keep puppet mastering Roger Lillard in the adventure :oops: !

After above comments about very minor detail, my main comment about this adventure is that it is probably too long to be reliably played in one session. I can't say it for sure, because I run it on a play by post site, but having a look at the number of post and comparing them with the other MMRPG adventures run there, I think that in a face to face game it would take more than one session.
The adventure is great, as it links the ancient story of Blackmoor with a group of adventurers of the era of Uther Andahar and there are some epic tones that resonate very well, but perhaps the initial scenes, before reaching the tab, could have been streamlined a little bit, perhaps flagging that this adventure is an horror investigation more than anything else.

[Yaztromo]

PS: now you know why I don't post the transcripts of all adventures that I run as part of the Living Blackmoor campaign: it would take way too much time and effort!

[Rafael]

Hey, Yaz!

Thank you for posting the transcript, and thank you for giving me some DM-to-DM feedback! I certainly had the time of my life writing this one, and I had the time of my life advising you on your own version of the story for your own “Blackmoor Living World”! I’ve already copied this thread, and I’ll print it and add it to my personal copy of „Tales“. Extremely happy that you did this, given that this is the very first in-detail report I’ve been getting in thirteen years. (Not complaining, just saying…)

To address the points you criticize, I mostly agree with you:

The bard at the beginning of the adventure is an encounter I would probably not use today; to me, it really only makes sense if the character is already known to the party. - In my very first version of the script, as a possible sequel to my PBP, “The Grim Winter”, this bard was a character called Mant, as you probably remember, who at that point had a long history with the party for who I wrote the first scenario. As a companion, the character mainly makes sense if you can use him within existing dynamics, or, as a DM, are willing to get into this kind of spiel a whole lot. As a “generic” NPC I think he might easily become a distraction.

With the cleric of Odir, it's a similar situation, as that character is basically a narrative tool: Since the adventure might only be solvable with a cleric around, and since the adventure was also initially stated out for 1st-level characters – basically, D&D debutants -, they might need some extra help along the way. Not in the sense of “railroading”, but to make sure that the adventure is “gettable” to the group, and that they get the right kind of background info, say, related to the backstory of the Green Knight, or to the nature of undead in D&D. But for a more experienced party, this character in particular can easily be overkill, for sure. In my own game, this, too, would likely have been a character the party already knows. (I don’t remember how I did it, frankly.)

That said, the scope of the adventure seemed to fit pretty well for a one-shot, and that’s also the general feedback I got, back in the day: The times that I’ve run the adventure, both my own version, and the published one, we ended at approximately three-and-a-half hours of game time. - And I’m one of those slower, distracted, more improvisational DMs, so I always figured more focused DMs than myself would take even less time.

It’s the epic plot that has kept me returning to the adventure, over the years:

First, the story, even though more than a little bit inspired by R. A. Salvatore’s „Demon Wars“ series, and by Sean Connery’s „The Sword of the Valiant“, still works for me with most groups, and gives them a nice intro into the world of Blackmoor, outside of the castle and the dungeon. Like, you get to detail the world, and you get to play a bit on things like the Thonian-High Thonian relations, you get to explain what Maus is, or how the elves are connected to things outside of their immediate presence in Blackmoor. That was always quite useful to me.

Second, the Green Knight can be played basically as Karloff’s (or Vosloo’s!) “The Mummy”. Basically, he’s a “stranger in a strange land”, and his struggle with adapting to the new circumstances could make for a number of interesting follow-up scenarios, if he escapes the adventure, or is somehow revived later on. - The reason I’ve never gone there and done it is mainly that I’m not sure whether these concepts are as nice to play out as they are nice to write. Like, how much of the inner struggle of the Green Knight could be made accessible to the players.

I still treasure the memory of getting to work with Tad and Dawn on this at least for a little bit. While I’m pretty sure I won’t do anything with the adventure, ever again, this will always be in my bookshelf. - I got to write something for Blackmoor! Yay! That’s something to tell my kids about, some day!

Now, Tad Kilgore deserves way more credit than he has been getting for the finished adventure – my notes, I found them again a year ago. They are nice and fine, but they do not meet publication standards, of any sort. It’s due to Tad that the adventure got finished, and it’s due to Tad that it’s remotely playable and readable. My excuse is that I was still a youngster, back then, and didn’t know better, but I would totally have understood, especially now, in retrospect, if they had returned the manuscript and sent me to the library to meditate over my errors.

That Tad was so exceptionally generous with his time, and with his efforts for me, back then, is something I certainly have not forgotten, and that I’ve certainly used as a “guiding light” through all my years in the hobby since then: He wouldn’t have needed to do that, he likely got no personal profit from it - and he did it anyway.

So, overall, the idea that this has even turned out to become "a minor classic" within our little niche of the hobby is pretty nice. Hopefully, folks had the same great fun running it as I had writing it! - Especially looking back now, my experience couldn't have been better, being that I was such a noob, and really bare knew what I was doing. Yet so, everyone was exceptionally understanding and supportive with me. - Wish every job would be as beautiful as that.

Cheers,

Rafe

[Yaztromo]

It’s the epic plot that has kept me returning to the adventure, over the years

This! Absolutely this! 8)

Said that, nothing forbids you from writing more adventures... :wink: