So King Ganymedes army is on the march.
Gen­eral Tumamos will be leav­ing the main force with about 1400 strong force, mostly Valk cav­alry, to do a sneak attack in the cap­i­tal Kharga­mum.
The idea being that Sir Kent of Cil, rat­tled his war sticks and kicked up a ruckus to make the cities army march out and deal with him.
The main army of King G, is going to sur­prise this force.
And hope­fully while the city is weak­ened, Gen T. will attack and take it in the Kings name.

So Gen T’s force approach the city as fast as they can. Which is fast as the bulk are Valk.
So he gets lit­tle time to scout.
The bat­tle lines as drawn, with the defend­ers form­ing up in front of the gates. They have lit­tle chance of defend­ing the long walls, so put up an hon­ourable defence in open bat­tle. They are out num­bered two to one.

Sir Ridik is on the right flank. As they approach the defend­ers a sur­prise force of slingers and infantry sup­port appear out of the river scrub on the right flank. SIr Ridik uses his new acquired skill of Sol­dier­ing to guide and attack this force.

Then the next sur­prise is the city gates are opened and out stride a squadron of 5 war ele­phants.
They go for the left flank and then zip­per right down the mid­dle of the Gen­er­als bat­tle line. The Valk are not keen to engage. Dur­ing this con­fu­sion, the defend­ers make a valiant move to attack.

But Sir Ridik has his own prob­lems, as the Ele­phant charge has been un stopped and they are now mov­ing into the right flank.
He makes an amaz­ing move to jump onto the lead bulls har­ness and pull him­self up its flank to the rump. All the time under furi­ous attack from the infantry in the tower.
He even­tu­ally deals with the human crew and turns his atten­tion to the beast, which he even­tu­ally brings down. The remain­ing Ele­phants are demor­al­ized and leave the bat­tle field.

The enemy defend­ers have been defeated in the mean time. Terms are reached to open the gates at dawn and the vic­tors will not rape and pil­lage. It will be an orderly take over. These are fel­low coun­try men and the Valk have been schooled to tow the line.
That night Sharisa divulges more of her plan about a cer­tain group of Spe­cial Jail­ers and there hoarded riches.
Ridik recruits Sir Keiradd and brother to help out. Plans are drawn to gain entry to the house in the burbs and deal with its foul inhab­i­tants and loot the place!!!

The Stran­glers are a group of Psionic mas­ters, who have long for­got­ten the rea­son for there exis­tence.
Many hun­dreds of years ago a war was fought between humans and a race of avians called the Haak, pro­nounced Hawk. Silver/​blue metal­lic skined race, very ancient. This was the time of the Cutz War, a war fought by many pow­er­ful mages in this area. The bread­ing of half men etc.
The Haak were opposed to this wild and uncon­trolled use of magic. Ref; this is now going to lead into Aarons recent PA change to inves­ti­gate more of Oshalla. I will have the Haak, bring this God/​Demon of the Over­wold in to try and con­tain the ram­pant abuse of Mag­i­cal power among humans. Only rough thoughts so far. Not sue what sort of power a Over­world crea­ture can pass on to wor­ship­pers and I will have to look into the game mechan­ics of wor­ship. Sort of like Nehwon and how that worked.

The Haak king was cap­tured in bat­tle, and instead of being released with a peace bond, was mag­i­cally placed in sta­sis in a build­ing guarded by this group of jail­ers. This broke the power of the Haak and they trou­bled the world of man no more.
They were backed by the crown and occa­sion­ally asked to hold other impor­tant pris­on­ers. As they had Psi pow­ers to sub­due and con­tain peo­ple. But the sil­ver statue of a strange crea­ture in the base­ment was for­got­ten, except to be guared by traps and there skill.
Ref; this is get­ting a bit long winded, other details were designed but I will leave it there.

Sharisa was one of these, and after con­vinc­ing one of the lead­ers (Jilar) to take her into the base­ment and see the sil­ver statue. It was odd that the statue was shack­led to the wall. But while she was there her pow­ers picked up some­thing com­ing from the statue, vague dreams or thoughts.
She researched what it could be and learned about the ori­gins of the Stran­glers and the spell to break the wards. She hat­ted her life with these peo­ple. She had been taken by them when young and many ‘recruits’, were the same.
She had to flee, as the man Jilar was press­ing his affec­tion for her all the time.

But now she is back and she wants to break the power of the Stran­glers and res­cue the crea­ture and take her revenge on Jilar. So she told a white lie, to Sir Ridik. That there was a man’s weight in sil­ver in the base­ment.

At dawn they enter the city…

Allan

I have been instructed that I have inad­ver­tently miss named this thread;
Appar­ently it should have been;
The Chron­i­cles of Ridik

or with feel­ing;

THE CHRON­I­CLES OF RIDIK…
(pound the war drums, blast the horns)

my bad
Allan

Sharisa has sup­plied a map of the inte­rior, they have worked out a plan of attack.
All goes as planned, until they encounter Jilar.
Sharisa flies into a rage and lunges with dag­ger at the same time Jilar attacks her. Ridik is on the ground with a pound­ing headache from a Psi Blast and can’t help.
Unfor­tu­nately Sharisa takes the blow to the chest and using the rules I wanted to see if she could as least try to get a swing in, but the pain is to much and she falls to the floor spurt­ing blood.
Ridik gets him­self up and dis­patches Jilar and them attempts to save Sharisa’s life but it is flow­ing out to fast.
Sounds of fur­ther con­flict stop him from mourn­ing and the bat­tle is joined to the end.

Later they have a vague idea where to look for the secret door to the cel­lar and the key to open it.
They then descend down a num­ber of lev­els, step­ping on a cou­ple of traps, until nearly at the bot­tom, Ridik takes 3 cross­bow bolts in the back.
Ref; using a traps book for inspi­ra­tion called Grim­tooths Traps.

Badly wounded but shrug­ging of the pain, they find the Sil­ver Man at the bot­tom.
After some debate, as to the merits/​danger of break­ing the shack­les of a statue, they pro­ceed.
Even­tu­ally after some strange feel­ings of chill, they free the statue, which slowly comes to life.

He is Kiran, King of the Haakora and was impris­oned here.
He wants his free­dom.
Reward is men­tioned.
They make there way back to the sur­face.

To encounter a group of Valk includ­ing Kumal the smil­ing and a female Shaman. She intro­duces her­self as Maab and wishes to talk to Ridik.
Ref; my plans went a bit hay­wire here, as i had orig­i­nally planned to have the group have to fight there way out, but with Ridiks wounds, it would have turned into a NPC fight, so I went for the dia­logue instead.
She lets some infor­ma­tion go about the Red Right Hand and the proph­esy. Ridiks ‘seed’ is required. And she tells him that the Valk are going to make a new world.

At this point, I have Ridik see my failed play­ers Char­ac­ter hang­ing around in the back­ground with a group of ne’er-do-wells. Also Maab informs him that they came here to recruit some of these Stran­glers for the same proph­esy as they have the required blood.
She then shows him Sharisa in some sort of glass cof­fin, with lit­tle can­dle lights wink­ing. She tries to entice him with cou­pling with his lover. She is not dead and they will revive her.
Ref; her Psi pow­ers of heal­ing have kept her alive when Ridik thought she was dead.

Sir Ridik refuses the offer and Kumal is keen to fight. But Maab offers a meet­ing on the plain out­side the city by the Mam­moths dead body.
They retreat out of the build­ing, get­ting a cloak for Kiran, but not before the Valk have seen him.

Well, dear reader, you are up to date.
Now Ridik and co. has to hide out in the city.
The King Ganymede is going to return with his vic­to­ri­ous army, and a great feast and games will be held.
The King will demand the pres­ence of Sir Ridik after his deeds on the bat­tle­field.
He is unlikely to go the meet­ing with Maab and so will be hunted by them.
I have a few other sur­prises in store.

KIng Kiran will want to be returned to his home­land, once he is strong enough to travel. Which is not far away. I just am not sure about hav­ing Kier­add and his brother hang­ing around all this time. He went into the house for trea­sure to reclaim his lost lands, but now its all going to take to long. Or Aaron could decide that he does not wish to help Kiran and recieve reward and leave the NPC’s to do the job. He does not have a PA of gain­ing loot, but ‘Find his way home’, has expenses.

I am work­ing to have Kiran have some con­nec­tion to Oshalla, as per Aarons new PA.
But this required me to delve more into how magic works.
Also the S&S norm of lit­tle or no con­tact, boons, mir­a­cles etc from the Gods, if they even exist. I have my work cut out for me to find a suit­able answer to what a god/​demon/​overworld entity could pass on to mankind. I am sort of look­ing at; most human mages work of indi­vid­ual power and might makes right. The Haakora fol­low the idea of learn­ing given only to those who pos­sess the abil­ity to con­trol there darker instincts. So for­mal schools etc. Oshalla via the Haakora wanted to con­trol the ram­pant spread of knowl­ede (back 400 – 500 yrs ago), which they could see was lead­ing down a dan­ger­ous road and did even­tu­ally end in the Cutz War of Mages and Witches about 300yrs ago, when Kiran was cap­tured.

I am cur­rently think­ing along the lines of Ars Mag­ica with its Rego, so not exactly other planes that the Demons and oth­ers come from, but sub­tle changes from the mun­dane. This gen­er­ates the Over­world and the Under­world. Also works with Jack Vances Vio­let Cusps.

Any­way enough ram­bling.

Allan

Just a quick note; the failed player char­ac­ter pop­ing up as a NPC was my short lived D&D player.
He is a native of the city and has returned here.
In his time with the group, when they stayed with the Apothe­cary Crone at Green Meadow, this per­son spent some time chat­ting up the girls who worked with the crone. One of who was Sharisa. He picked up enough info from her to work out that she was prob­a­bly a mem­ber of that secret cult in the city called the Stran­glers.

So aflter the city fell, and the Valk were ask­ing around about this cult, he helped guide them there.
I want to set him and the peo­ple he hangs with as a rival group.
Going with the idea of a trav­el­ling troupe of enter­tain­ers.

Look I ram­ble more…

Allan

Yah the Chron­i­cles of Ridik continue…

So we are 3 ses­sions into part 2, with a 2^nd player. This week will see the grand con­clu­sion to part 1. All the old enemy’s have resur­faced in a epic fight in a ruined town on top of a hill. The enemy have sur­prised the play­ers by turn­ing up in front of them. Gloat­ing how they are going to destroy the Tem­ple of Oshalla. Add some other bits and it should be a nail biter. I warned them to bring there A game.
Not sure what destroy­ing a tem­ple means yet, any ideas Bladers?
Allan

Should be an inter­est­ing fight tonight
They have got them­selves into the city on top of the hill, after the new player hav­ing to climb across a chain to oper­ate the mechan­ics that ‘raise’ a draw bridge over a chasm.
They are return­ing the lost King of the city who was caught by there ene­mies 300 yrs ago in a war and held as hostage in sta­sis. He is a race of de-​evolving fly­ing bird men, who can now only glide. Once in the city he men­tions that there is a ser­vant tun­nel inside the hill from ground to top but he did not remem­ber where to find the open­ing. Grones from play­ers after the ardu­ous climb and attack by giant Hawks, that were his people’s mes­sen­gers and recon, but have for­got­ten the old mas­ters.
Then they hear sounds of fight­ing and the enemy who was chas­ing them, they have help from off­spring of the orig­i­nal humans who were part of the Haak king­dom and knew the ser­vant tun­nel entrance. They are in front of the pc’s and fight­ing a lone Haak man. The Haak king­dom has a mag­i­cal device that tells them the state of health of there ruler, men­tal and phys­i­cal, it still showed that the King was alive. they aban­doned the city when the war was lost but still kept a rotat­ing sen­tinel watch as the device told them that the King as still alive. Any­way prob­a­bly to much info, as there is other back­story stuff going on.

So I have set up some set scenes
The first is the enter­ance plaza, where the enemy have just cap­tured Kodor the Haak man sen­tinel. Vil­lian does the speech, they have troops and a witch who is going to desecrate/​destroy the Tem­ple of Oshalla.
The pc’s have 2 NPC humans with them and the King who is in poor health. The King is des­per­ate to find out what hap­pened to his peo­ple and res­cue Kodor. The main vil­lian group move into the city leav­ing a rear guard to kill/​delay the pc’s. I have mapped the plaza ruins with some inter­est­ing Haak archi­tec­ture and rub­ble. Assum­ing it works out the pc’s drive of the rear guard and go in pur­suit.
Next scene is another rear guard choke point, but I am going to have one of the human guides of the vil­lains stum­ble in the open and he comes from the same vil­lage as the humans on the pc’s side, so they recog­nise him. The Valk shoot arrows at him and wound him, then before he can be killed or res­cued the other guide on the vil­lains side rebels, so they should end up with 2 more allies.
At this point the King says ‘screw this I think I know a short cut to the tem­ple hill in the city’. So the NPC will con­tinue to chase the enemy and the pc’s go in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, I then have 3 more set piece encounter loca­tions, each with dif­fer­ent archi­tec­ture and ene­mies.
Sorry for the poor Eng­lish, I am writ­ing on my phone and try­ing to not be too wordy

We just fin­ished another 3 ses­sion adven­ture in the Chron­i­cles of Ridik. He has recov­ered the Evil Sword and now has to destroy it. I have not read through any back posts so not sure if this makes sence. But it was great to be back to Blade. Now I have to design up the destruc­tion adven­ture. My player did not want any other pla­nar loca­tion, so I think I am going with a ele­men­tal spirit, wor­shiped by a cult in the city of Yaatana — Xoth. Feed the blade to the spirit in the heart of the tem­ple.
If it does not make sence there will be some other thread, about destroy­ing the sword.
Side note, the Play­ers guide to Xoth on the design­ers web­page has dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tion fig­ures to what is in the rules book. Yaatana has 14000 v’s 100000. Pre­fer the former.