Karma Kingdom Beta 1.0 b213

 Karma Kingdom  Beta 1.0 b213

 This is the June / July update.

Tamsen says: Good news! Our lands have become much more bountiful and plains are overgrown with Hay - so harvest as much as you can!

Tamsen says: I have heard that copper coins have started appearing in the Dungeon more frequently! Brush up on your Dungeoneering skill.

UPDATES

- Added Spell - Hallowed Island (from random MTG card - 'Island Sanctuary'). It doesn't do anything yet, but the plan is it will create some land and you can make pegesi on it.
- FIXED BUG #336 - gathering hay from plains needs looked at. There are no ways to get plains any longer! And even if there was , the gathers are by the acre. This is geared towards when there was one that was 3000sq feet a click. Note there are meadows now
- FIXED BUG #339 - Watery Peachy Potion of Bless - still in items list at 0
- FIXED BUG #342 - neck items still need to be done - wear / remove
- IDEA #437 - Dungeoneering skill needs to do something. Like additional coins per room etc
- IDEA #601 - have vit potion spell tell you how many you get
- IDEA #602 - distribute food needs coloured in 

 xxxxx

 

Want to do something to help the planet?
Really keen to help out with everything going wrong in the world, but don't know where to start?

Well, you do a little to help the planet and other great causes right now, completely free by playing the game Karma Kingdom!

How it works:

When you play the game you gather resources for your kingdom by navigating to other charity click sites and pressing their 'click to donate' buttons.

With these resources you can then build your kingdom. As it grows the kingdom comes to represent your contribution too good causes all over the world, not just the climate, but refugees, animals, breast cancer, autism, veterans and many more.

The list of charities are regularly updated.

Karma Kingdom also keep a track of the estimated value of your clicks and how much CO2 you have helped remove from the atmosphere.

Start Playing here:

http://roztov.epizy.com/stw/generate.html

 

 

 

(G564 29/06/2024 via Roll20 - JF(GM), KT, AL) YI27

 (G564 29/06/2024 via Roll20 - JF(GM), KT, AL) YI27

[Corhim Sparkledingle the gnome wizard, Fenrir the human warlock, Dak the half-orc barbarian and Levmeia the cleric are on Bone Island doing battle with the vampires  of the Dementor.]

DAY 635 (28th Uktar) (November) cont ...

They decided to start with the villa to the west and set off at about nine in the morning. Reinward and Fenrir discussed what to do with the vampires when they finally got their hands on them. Reinward was all for keeping them.

When they got there, Fenrir flew up into the sky, while invisible, to check it out. When he was at about 60 ft he noticed that above him, at about 100 ft the air had a faint greenish tint to it. He mentioned this to Sparkledingle who flew up to take a look. They agreed that it looked like poison.

Dak was getting impatient and went directly to the front door of this small but pleasant looking villa.

'Ho! Is there anyone there?' he called out as he knocked.

After a while he heard a frail voice on the other side. 'Who iz eet?'

'Uh, can I borrow a cup of brown sugar?'

'I've no sugar! Please go away!'

'Uh, in that case, we are an Island Security Team come to check if all your doors and windows are secure - you can't be too careful these days!'

'Oh,' said the small voice. 'My son deals with that sort of thing. He'll be back soon!'

Dak listened, pressing his ear against the door. 'I can hear whispering! How many of you are back there?'

'Yes, there are sonny. Hey, ahh, Vanessa come here and talk to the young man.'

'Hello?' said a little old lady voice.

By this time Dak was convinced it was just a bunch of vampires playing tricks on him so he went and smashed in a window. He saw dark figures inside and averted his eyes just in time (for they were indeed vampires!) as they tried to dominate them.

'It's vampires!' he called out and Fenrir immediately set fire to the villa's roof.

Dak then charged inside in a full-on rage.

He rampaged from room to room, smashing windows and shouting. He saw a big dinosaur skeleton in the main hall. It was encrusted in gems, but he ignored them, simply charging from room to room smashing things up as the house filled with smoke.

Fenrir joined him inside, but they could find no coffins on the ground or first floor. They headed into the cellar and found a grand total of 13 coffins. They were all empty though. They searched for secret doors, but the cellar was getting too full of smoke, so they had to leave the building entirely.

They stuffed two empty coffins into a Bag of Holding before exiting the cellar.

Corhim had been outside and he could see that a group of people were watching the burning villa from the brow a hill about a mile away. When the other's got back, they tried teleporting to the group, but the curse of Bone Island seemed to prevent this.

'Ah bugger it,' said Fenrir. 'Try skrying Baroness Partick. See if we got her.'

Corhim did so, but all he saw was the lady calmly eating her breakfast. 'She must be at the other villa,' he reported.

Around noon they arrived at the eastern villa. The "one with the lions". It was a lot bigger  than all the others they had visited so far and it did indeed have stone lions at the gate. It was also in a village. People gave them cheerful waves as they entered.

Corhim decided to try a new spell - Prying Eyes. He summoned lots of little eyes to watch

all around the villa with these instructions:

"

Every odd eye inform immediately of people exiting building. Every even eye follow exiters and report  after 20 mins. Keep in range

"

Fenrir then had an invisible flap all around the building. It was a very big place, it looked like it had once been an inn. (Note added by Rollo here: It had once been a very expensive spa retreat for the wealthy merchants from Calisham!)

After that, they burst into the building front and back. Fenrir blasted through a window although there was a perfectly good door nearby.

He saw a vampire and blasted it into vapour and then Levmeia destroyed it utterly with her cleric magic. The next vampire they encountered looked like a cleric, but he too was blasted into mist. He then wafted back to his coffin.

Corhim cast Glitterdust down a corridor. This turned out to not be a good way to detect undead so Levmeia cast Detect Undead and they proceeded to hunt through the rooms looking for other vampires. Corhim went outside to 'provide overwatch'.

After a while as they explored into the villa, Levmeia detected something and pointed out the heading. Dak then went wildly from room to room smashing down every door he could find. He soon lost his bearings and ended up in an abandoned wing of the villa. He smashed up some more of the doors in this area out of frustration.

Meanwhile Fenrir had found a coffin with the cleric vampire in it. He stuffed it into a bag of holding.

They found more coffins, but they were empty. Dak returned to the others and defenestrated the coffins. 

Why? You may ask. But then, why does he do anything? I've found since knowing him that he is handy in a fight and will usually do what you tell him, but when he doesn't understand what is going on he will always a) smash down doors and b) throw things out of windows.

After a lot of rooting around Levmeia found that the vampires were hiding in the latrines! The cunning monsters were in gaseous form and lurking at the bottom of the poop holes. These were on the first floor though so the holes could be no more than three feet deep. How they were emptied could not be guessed at but they were certainly full to the top with relatively fresh human dung.

'There is a vampire down each hole,' said Levmeia as her Detection spell homed in on the undead.

Fenrir went into the toilets and eyed up the two cubicles. Dak shouted advice from the other side of the door. Fenrir shrugged and fired off an Eldritch Cone. This destroyed the wooden barriers and doors that surrounded the latrines.

Fenrir went to a bedroom and took a sheet from the bed, then with that covering him he went back to the toilets and gave them another blast. This destroyed the latrine seats and showered the area in poop. He got some on his hand. He tried again, and then again, with much the same effect. Poop was thrown everywhere, all over the walls and ceiling and all over Fenrir's hands and boots.

Holding his nose, Dak came in to curse and issue dire threats to the vampires. The undead remained where they were. After some time though Fenrir decided to go downstairs and attack the problem from below. They trooped down the stairs and located a sauna room that they thought was directly below the toilets and started blasting. Eventually the beams gave way and the floor caved in, toilets, poop, vampires and all. The vampires were quickly blasted to mist and retreated to their coffins.

These two coffins were soon discovered upstairs and were stuffed into a back of holding along with the other one. That was all the main, most powerful vampires now dealt with. 

A messy job, but a job well done!

(G563 22/06/2024 via Roll20 - JF, KT, AP(GM), AD) YI-B7

 
(G563 22/06/2024 via Roll20 - JF, KT, AP(GM), AD) YI-B7

[Myself (your humble narrator, Rollo the Druid), Reinward the Chosen One and Fangornio the  Barbarian find ourselves on a quest to save the village of Hartsvale from a very naughty  dragon. We are now in some caves having just biffed up a bunch of goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears.]

DAY 622 (15th Uktar) (November) cont ...

This lad Fangornio. Either he has a death wish or he lacks the basic understanding of tactics in a dungeon environment and is incapable of learning them.

Reinward had lapsed back into being reasonable and went to the door to the west of the chamber to start checking for traps and that sort of thing. Fang just sauntered right past him, as if he was walking along the main street in Waterdeep.

One day, that boy will come a cropper. Not today though. The next chamber we came to was a jail of sorts. There were six unarmed goblins in here (I recognised two of them from the bridge). I didn't attack them and they cowered in the corner. Reinward came in and started searching the place. Meanwhile Fang wandered off down a corridor to the south - once again pushing his luck.

We left him to it and I had a look in the cells. All I saw was the corpse of a dwarf in shackles. I then questioned the goblins about the dragon, but they didn't tell me much of any use.

We then went south and met Fang in (what we guessed to be) the bugbear sleeping quarters. It was pretty smelly and nasty although Reinward did search it. He didn't find much.

From there we explored some other chambers to the east. These were laid out much the same. The quarters of monsters we had already slain. Finally we came to a room with a ramp.
As we went up it some weird rats began to circle us, almost as if ushering us on. Most strange. They appeared to be normal rats (not a summoned swarm) but under the domination of some unknown power.

Up we went, anyway and found ourselves outside. Ahead of us we saw a tower and a temple. The temple had been desecrated, the stained glass windows broken and the statues pushed over. We approached and Valturnax came out to meet us. He seemed to want to talk;

"
It has taken you long enough. I have been waiting for you. I have heard the sounds of the slaughter below. I can smell your foul odour on the wind. And I know you covet my treasure.
"

That seemed a bit presumptuous of him I thought, but he went on:

"
If it’s a battle you want, I will provide it – but I hope to parlay. If you value your lives,  you should hear me out. I come carrying, as the human custom goes, the white banner of peace.  Step into my lair as guests and no harm shall come to you.
"

I was doubtful, but followed him in. The other two hung back and hid at the temple entrance. The dragon continued to talk:

"
Let us put aside our weapons. To be welcomed into a lair of a dragon is a trust and honour no dragon  dare go against! I am issuing the old draconic guest rite. It is an ancient custom between host  and guest, one that has evidently passed to some human cultures. May Tiamat strike those that  defy this rite down!
"

An old draconic guest rite? thinks I. Is that a thing?
He went on:

"
As part of my role as host, my full name is Valturnax the Wise, though my half-sister calls me  Valturnax the Wise-ass. Tell me, heroes, what are your names?"

I gave my name, being the only hero present at that time. He continued:

"
The truth, adventurers, is that this fight is more evenly matched than I prefer.  Now, don’t get me wrong! I would surely destroy you. But while I was wounded from this fight,  licking my wounds, I would be a prime target for my half-sister’s attack. I may be inclined  to be evil, by your standards, but I’m not stupid. I would much prefer fights I can overwhelmingly win.
"

'Well, be that as it may', I replied. 'But I'm here to stop you destroying Hartsvale.'

"
The town of Hartsvale? Of course, I asked them to become my vassals. I killed several of their guards.  But did they tell you the rest of the story? That they sent two adventuring parties to attack me before  I finally retaliated? Had they attacked an elven forest, or a dwarven stronghold, or a human kingdom,  would your peoples have been as merciful as I have been, demanding fealty rather than destroying them, root and branch? Their motives are no purer than mine, their hands no cleaner than my own.
"

That sounded like nonsense to me, but before I could speak he seemed to get annoyed at the rats, which had now made an appearance at the windows. He got mad at them and flew from perch to perch on the walls looking for spies.

After that he called me to him and I went up for a whispered conversation. I have to admit this had not been what I had been expecting and I was enjoying being a confidant of this odd dragon. In hushed tones he asked me to go and slay his half-sister (who was doing his nut in by the look of it) in return for some magic items.

I admit I was taken in. The dragon perched on a high ledge and I called the others in.
'He says we can take a magic item each and two handfuls of loot from his treasure chest now, as long as we kill his sister.'

So we all went up to the chest to start scooping and at that moment the dragon said something along the lines of 'aha! I do love it when my dinner all stands bunched together for easier roasting!' and attacked us. What a cheeky dragon!

It started with a poison breath, which I am thankfully immune to. Fang wasn't and the first thing I had to do was heal him. He then snarled and had a good chop at Valturnax. The dragon preoccupied itself with fighting back against the barbarian, but it should have been watching for Reinward. The wily rogue had worked his way around it and attacked with some of his lethal throwing daggers.

Valturnax went mental and battered down the central columns of the temple and slithered out the main doors. He was trying to flee, but I managed to pin him down with an opportune Sudden Stalagmite spell. Fang roared in rage and threw an axe at it. This was the final blow that killed the dragon.
As the temple collapsed we went outside and checked out our handy work.

He was a lying git, but he was a handsome fellow for a green dragon. So I chopped off his head, took the skin off him and collected as many dragon bits as I could fit into my Bag of Holding.

After that I used a few Earth Elementals to pull aside the debris so we could get at the dragon's treasure.

The rats had gone, as had the goblins when we checked. It seemed to be time to go.
'What about his sister?' I asked. 'He said she was 30 miles deep into the jungle. Behind a waterfall.'
'How would you find her?' the others said. 'There must be a lot of waterfalls about here.'
'Yeah, it was probably bullshit anyway,' I mused.
It was all lies, I should think, although I liked the idea of an "old draconic guest rite".

Well, once all was done with, we went back to Hartsvale and were pronounced heroes by all. We were even given 300 gold by the mayor. We spent a portion of it on a big feast.

DAY 623 (16th Uktar) (November)

Oh dear! My head does rather hurt this morning. I've been given a room in the inn and I think I'll order down for some fresh fruit and plain bread.

While I remember, I think I saw Reinward with quite a nice looking young lady later on in the night. Fang went off with some horse-faced horror, but that was his business. I got drunk with some of the locals, but after they broke out the mango scrumpy everything becomes a blur.

DAY 624 (17th Uktar) (November)

It's been a long day so I will write down only a few lines before retiring. Hartsvale is in a terrible mess, so I helped all day with the rebuilding effort and healing more of the  injured people.

Reinward and Fang seem quite happy to stick around as they currently have their pick of the wenches.

DAY 625 (18th Uktar) (November)

More people came in from the jungle today. They had gone to hide after the dragon attack. Most of them had picked up some nasty jungle diseases so I spent most of the day being  a healer.

After that I went a nice walk.

I've just got word back from Sylvia via a Sending spell that Lavinia is doing fine and I can take as long as I like.

Well - I hope I'm not that long as I want to be there for the birth of my first child!

DAY 626 (19th Uktar) (November)

Today a herd of cattle was brought in from the jungle and I helped heal the lame and injured ones. After that I went a nice long walk in the jungle.

Reinward and Fang appear to have a new set of girlfriends today.

DAY 627 (20th Uktar) (November)

Another group of people came back to Hartsvale today. This included a young adept called Raym Phera. She's really nice, and keen to help, but if she's going to become a proper healer then I need to train her up a bit.

She's good company. We had a very nice conversation over a meal this evening.

DAY 628 (21st Uktar) (November)

I took Raym into the jungle today, to show her some of the herbs that may be useful to her and to show the use of some of the magic that adepts share with druids.

We've set up camp near a pleasant waterfall. Tomorrow there are some caves we plan to explore.

DAY 629 (22nd Uktar) (November)

We've set up camp in a pleasant glade in the jungle, having spent all day exploring the local area. I've been training Raym in divine magic and a little of the driudic arts.

This has been a very pleasant little holiday, but I should get back, so tomorrow we will head back to Hartsvale.

DAY 630 (23rd Uktar) (November)

We arrived at Hartsvale in the morning. Yet more people had arrived that needed healing. Raym and I spent most of the day tending to the sick and injured.

Through Sylvia I let Lavinia know I'd be back in a couple of days.


DAY 631 (24th Uktar) (November)

Today has been my last day in Hartsvale. Today was relaxing, there wasn't much more for me to do. I've been mainly helping Raym in her garden.

I really enjoyed cultivating her flower beds. However, her lower areas were quite bushy,  but once I'd trimmed it all back, I could see she had a really nice fertile patch.

All good things come to an end, so I'm packing up tonight for a teleport back in the morning. Reinward and Fang have outstayed their welcome I think. Most likely they drank all the really good beer and humped as many wenches as they could get their hands on. Fair play though, they earned it!

(G562 01/06/2024 via Roll20 - JF(GM), KT, AL) YI26

 (G562 01/06/2024 via Roll20 - JF(GM), KT, AL) YI26

[Corhim Sparkledingle the gnome wizard, Fenrir the human warlock, Dak the half-orc barbarian and Levmeia the cleric are on Bone Island doing battle with the vampires of the Dementor.]

DAY 634 (27th Uktar) (November) cont ...

The villa where the vampires had been roosting in was now properly on fire. Flames were licking out through the roof tiles and smoke billowing out of the open doors.

Dak went back in and retrieved four more unconscious dominated people. They were laid out with the others in the courtyard. Even Corhim and Lev helped with the rescues.

Fenrir had made his way to the bedrooms in the east wing, which was not currently on fire, but was full of smoke. He found some coffins and passed one out of the window.
It was empty, so whatever half-baked plan he had ended there and with a shrug he set fire to the room he had just come from.

Dak had gone back in through the main door and was confronted by a vampire, a handsome
fellow that put his hands up in surrender. 'Can we talk?' it asked.
The answer was apparently "no" though and Dak destroyed the creature with a single blow
of his enchanted blade.

He then went into a smoke-filled bedroom and looked out the window. He saw that there was a ladder on the inside of the villa's outer wall. He jumped over the wall and searched the forest, but could not find who had fled that way.

Meanwhile, Fenrir found Dame Veroni hiding under a table in a burning room. She was scared and offered no threat, but he blasted her out of the window into the sunlight where she too was destroyed.

Fenrir flew outside, but if there were any vampires going about as mist, then they were lost in the smoke. I'm not sure, but I don't think vampires in mist form can survive in daylight anyway.

Dak shouted up at him, 'what about all these dominated people?'

They had collected quite a few now, some awake and some not. They tied them all up and talked to the non-dominated ones. No one was sure if they would go back to being dominated after Corhim's spells wore off.

There was a female human cleric in the group and she was the most willing to be helpful but she didn't know much. Dak and Corhim started acting tough, asking how they could have been so easily defeated by vampires when Dak and company had made such short work of them.
'Fuck you!' said one of their captives. 'We lost a lot of our friends trying to take these undead out.'

Dak lost interest in the talk and went to throw all the guard corpses into the burning building.

They all then stood over the coffin they had recovered from the house and argued about what to do with it. First a body was put in it, then taken out again, then it was put in a Bag of Holding and then taken out again. Then it was put on a cart - and then taken off again. I will just leave it at that and let the reader imagine what sort of nonsense was talked throughout the whole farce.

It was late in the afternoon now though, so they eventually put the cart to good use and bunged all the sleeping people on the back of it and trundled down the hill to the villa they had first come to.

When they got there Dak went to the body that was lying in the day room and chopped it into chunks and threw it outside. He then went to the water pump and cleaned himself up.

After checking all the windows and doors were secure on the ground and first floors they went down into the cellar.

One of their captives was a fighter, and he was no longer dominated. He was happy to have been rescued and talked freely.

He told them:
''
From what we saw when we first got here, the curse works like this; the islanders are like normal people during the day, but turn into ghosts at night. We had a hell of a time the first night, but after a while we learned that if you hide somewhere quiet then the chances are you'll be ok. They will seek out the living if they are nearby. I don't think its noise that attracts them. Life force maybe.
''

They had nine others with them, all were asleep, under the influence of Painful Slumber. It seemed reasonably safe down in the cellar, but they didn't want to take any chances. Corhim cast Rope Trick twice and everyone was divided up into two groups. The sleepers were bundled up the rope too.

Fenrir and Corhim talked for ages about setting up Flying Eyes and Alarm spells and all sorts of other stuff, but in the end they were missing too many of the components.

Corhim did eventually cast Mage’s Private Sanctum in the cellar.

Once they were all safely tucked up in the Rope dimension Fenrir and Lev played Gnome Cards for several hours before bed.


DAY 635 (28th Uktar) (November)

At three in the morning they all came down their ropes and Corhim recast the spell.

During the night a ghost wandered into the cellar, looked confused and left. Then later it came back with the ghost of the corpse Dak had dismembered.

Nothing else happened and dawn broke. They piled down the ropes and went to have breakfast in the villa's kitchen.

After that they left the fighter to look after the nine sleepers and went to check out the third villa. It was deserted and in disrepair. It looked like no one had lived there in years. The villa where they had burned out the vampires still smoked, a black cloud blotting the sky above the hill.

They went to check it out and Fenrir could Detect Magic in the rubble, but it was all still too hot and messy for them to be bothered digging for treasure.

In the end they went back to base and asked the advice of the fighter. His name was Lesent and he was a goodly sort of chap. He didn't even show his surprise at their lack of preparation and was happy to share his knowledge on vampires.

''
Well, you must remember that some of them are hundreds of years old. The stupid ones all get killed off young, so the older ones, you know they must be the cunning as foxes. They always have a plan, and a backup plan, and a backup for the backup. A lot of them, most of them probably, will have escaped the fire. It is my understanding that a vampire in Gaseous Form, when exposed to sunlight, turns into a Vampiric Mist. These are different entities from vampires. If vampires are injured and in Gaseous Form they need to get to their coffin in about two hours. Clever vampires have backup coffins, and means of travel - such as being placed inside Bags of Holding - between them during the daylight hours.
''

Hearing all this, Corhim and Fenrir thought that vampires were very unsporting fellows. How can you kill a vampire when they have so many options for evading you? That was precisely Lesent's point. He and his friends had scouted the villa for days and had formulated a clever plan - but had not had the might to carry it out. Corhim and company had the might, but not the plan.
To defeat ancient clever vampires then, dear reader, one must have both a plan and the might to carry it out!

Corhim never lacked for plans, but usually they were not for the situation at hand, and Fenrir, I sometimes thing was so used to the chaos of being a Warlock that coming up with a plan made him feel rather dirty. Dak, who I've known for a while now after hunting all those pirates with him, is not as dumb as he looks, but he had really taken to Corhim now and went along with whatever the wee gnome came up with.

Anyway, with all that said, at around ten in the morning Corhim attempted to skrye Baroness Partick. He saw her in a darkened room, lit by candles, as she talked to some of the vampires. They were talking about Corhim and his friends, and how to get off the island.

Next he skryed First Mate Mullmaster and saw his dead body in the forest. Possibly picked off by ghosts in the night. Then he skryed Midshipman Alise. He was moving coffins around in a cellar.

Dak went on a 'patrol' with Lesent to get him out the house while Corhim cast Magic Circle of Protection from Evil so they could questions the others.

The first person they woke up was Lord Baleforth who screamed in agony as the "Painful" bit of the Painful Slumber of Ages hit him.

He cried, and as tears poured down his face he looked at Corhim and said, 'you and your friends deserted us!'

They didn't get much else out of him so they woke up Mrs Baleforth. She was still dominated so they could only talk to her while the Magic circle was in effect.

She could remember being at another house. It had lions (or was it eagles? she asked herself) on the gate posts. When they woke up the rogue, he remembered more and even drew them a map showing this place a few miles east of where they were.

Next they woke the cleric, and she too remembered another vampire safe house. This one was to the west and she could give them directions.

Would they continued to blunder about on Bone Island or come up with a plan cunning enough to catch the vampires now that they had (possibly) gone off in two different directions? I think you may know the answer to that already dear reader!

(G561 25/05/2024 via Roll20 - JF, KT, AP(GM), AD) YI-B6

 (G561 25/05/2024 via Roll20 - JF, KT, AP(GM), AD) YI-B6

[Still not fully sober, myself (your humble narrator, Rollo the Druid), Reinward the Chosen One and Fangornio the Barbarian find ourselves on a quest to save the village of Hartsvale from a very naughty dragon. We have just made our way though some kobold caverns.]

DAY 622 (15th Uktar) (November) cont ...

As we stepped out into the cold mountain air, we saw before us a rope bridge  over a 50 foot drop. This was the only way forward. Around us were several trees, a large clump of bushes, and the stairs back down to the kobold tunnels. In the distance across the ravine, we heard deep, frenzied bellows echoing off the mountain walls.

On the other side of the gorge, across the 30 foot gap, two goblins had just finished cutting the ropes to the rope bridge as they laughed like maniacs.
They then turned and fled, giggling the whole time.

Reinward and Fang started having a quick-fire argument about whether they could jump over the chasm ("Jump the Chasm!") or not. It took me a while to get a word in and let them know I could turn into a Giant Owl and carry them across one at a time.

So anyway, on the other side of the gorge was a deep gully, which we walked along. In a wider area of the canyon we came across some hungry giants, chained to the ground.
The canyon ended at a cave entrance.

A goblin further back called out and the giants broke loose. Reinward started Blinking and I began summoning critters. The two hill giants came in at the canter and Fang received a good biff with a club, which he repaid with some axe blows. Reinward then finished it off with some of his deadly daggers.

The second giant came at the wily rogue, but its swings missed. Meanwhile I summoned some delicious looking (I hoped!) dire boars. I instructed them to try and look appetising rather than attacking.

It all got a bit tangled up after that with Reinward tumbling about, Fang trying to subdue the second giant rather than kill it and my boars running around all over the place.
It couldn't hold out long against us, although Fang was injured and required healing.

Just as we were wondering what to do next, there was a thump and three even bigger giants appeared at the other end of the canyon.

Reinward attack the nearest one and killed it with his deadly throwing daggers. Meanwhile I had remembered that we'd been told the dragon liked to use illusions and be invisible so I pulled on my Goggles of See Invisibility and took a look around. I was expecting to see a dragon but instead I saw a wee goblin wizard behind the giants.

The goblin hit us with a fireball and one of the giants attacked one of my boars. The boar was injured so the giants were not illusions after all - possibly!

I shot back at the goblin using a Hypothermia spell. Fire was met with Ice. The goblin then cast Cone of Cold and ran away. These bigger giants had bigger clubs and one managed to get me on the shoulder, which was very painful.

Reinward was still throwing daggers everywhere and my boars were still in the fray so I took a moment to heal myself. One of the giants picked up a boar and bit it! And seemed to be nourished by it somehow even though the boar was a summoned ally.

The boars were doing their job as a distraction very well and so Fang was able to kill one of the giants and Reinward was able to stab the last one to death.

All three of them had crashed to the ground like felled oaks. Their bodies did not vanish, so they were not summoned. They were as real as the first to giants apparently.

I looked over the bodies. The first two were what I would have considered regular hill giants.
The other three were larger and more brutal. I chopped off the thumbs of the dead ones for later study.

Reinward was amazed at my actions and declared, 'Well, I'm chopping off their balls!'

I gestured for him to proceed. Who was I to stand in the way of science? Only one of them was lying the right way up so Reinward got between its legs and with a dagger in  his teeth lifted up its loincloth.

Whatever he saw (or smelled) in there made him suddenly reconsider his actions. He gagged and then lowered the cloth and retreated.

After that, he saw that Fang was injured and offered him a potion. He came forward but then cheekily wiped his hill-giant-ball-sweat-fingers on Fang's armour.
Fang leapt back and shouted, 'Stick your stinky potions up your arse!'
Reinward wiped his hands on the grass. 'Look, clean!'

As they continued to argue I looked over the giant we had kept alive. Having had enough fun annoying Fang, Reinward came over to annoy me.

'Why are you dicking around with these giants?' he inquired. 'Let's cut the thumbs off this one  as well! Then really knock it out and get it later.' He advanced on it with a knife.
'Step away from my giant, you interfering imbecile!' I cried.

Anyway, so firstly I healed Fang, then I created a feast of food and drink from the Provision Box and healed the giant. I offered it the food and spoke to it soothingly in the Giant language.

It was willing to answer questions, but it didn't know much. The goblin wizard was the one known as "Boyag-boyag-boyag" and it lived in the cave at the end of the gully.

Reinward was impatient, tapping his foot, making a show of it. I knew he wasn't in a hurry, he just wanted to annoy me. So I in turn took my time talking to the giant. I actually enjoyed speaking Giant again, after learning it so many years ago at school it was nice to dust it down and remember all that unusual syntax.

He told me he had been captured by the goblins and had been chained up 'for ages'. He certainly was thin for a giant. He also told me he had lived in these mountains before the dragon had turned up.

We moved on, leaving the giant to its feast. We entered the goblin tunnels and soon came to a large cavern. There were vents in its floor from which green gas was coming. There were scorch marks around the vents. Reinward threw an alchemist fire at some of the gas and it ignited in a flash and was burnt off. I was interested in the decor, wondering if this was perhaps an old dwarven hall, but my eyes were suddenly drawn to the shadowy corners - there were all sorts of nasties lurking back there!

I pointed them out, then when they knew their cover was blown they attacked. Goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears, a mixed assortment of about a dozen villainous creatures. They attacked bravely but were no match for us. Reinward stabbed them, Fang chopped them and I froze them. Soon they were all dead and we were looting their corpses.

We found a scroll of Dimension door and a carved ivory symbol inlaid with silver - a holy icon of the Hobgoblin God Nomog-Geaya, featuring a longsword crossed with a handaxe.

(G560 18/05/2024 via Roll20 - JF(GM), KT, AL) YI25

 

(G560 18/05/2024 via Roll20 - JF(GM), KT, AL) YI25

[Corhim Sparkledingle the gnome wizard, Fenrir the human warlock, Dak the half-orc barbarian and Levmeia the cleric are on Bone Island trying to track down the vampires of the Dementor.]

DAY 634 (27th Uktar) (November) cont ...

Our heroes were somewhat at a loss. Questioning old men at the dockside did not appear to immediately lead to them saying something like "the vampires went a-that-away!".

Corhim was using Detect Thoughts and the only useful clue he got from one of the old fellows were some scattered images of a small boat at one of the quays.

The first boat they looked at was just a fishing vessel, but the other one had evidently been hired by a group of adventurers. Amongst the gear inside the cabin was a letter that gave some useful information - the vampires were three miles inland to the south near a place called Cap Siso.

Some locals were watching them go in and out of other peoples boats. Fenrir gave them a wave. When he went over, they went back to their own business.

The locals were of no further use to them so they headed off, walking out of the east gate. A few dozen steps further though and they changed their minds and went back to look around the shops.

The only shop that was of the vaguest use to them was a general store. Fenrir asked for a map, but they did not sell any. Instead he paid a gold for directions to Cap Siso.

'Just follow the road to El Gio, then south and Cap Siso is on your left,' he was told.

They set off again, strolling through the pleasant countryside to El Gio. It was not far. The weather was warm, but the sun filtered through a high covering of mist, giving the landscape a strange muted golden tone.

As they walked through El Gio, the local shut their doors and windows and hid. They kept walking and the path went into a forest of low trees and forked. Fenrir took to the air to have a look and saw three villas from where they were. One to the left and two to the right. One of the ones to the right was on a forest covered hill.

They decided to try the one down the left road first. The gate was locked so Fenrir opened it with his ring of Knock. Once at the house door he knocked (with his hand this time) but there was no answer. Looking through the window he saw a dead body inside. It looked like one of the locals. Corhim opened the door and the stench of death assaulted his nostrils.

Dak leaned over the body to try and figure out the cause of death, but couldn't. The others looked and since there were two puncture marks on the man's neck it seemed most likely he was the victim of a vampire bite.

They looked about and found a small basement, but it was just a wine cellar. There was nothing else of any interest.

It was three in the afternoon now so they decided to try looking at the house on the forested hill. Fenrir flew up, invisible, while the others waited at the gate.

It was a nice big villa, but all the doors and windows were closed and shuttered up.

He returned and together our heroes entered the villa's courtyard and started by looking in the stable block. There were no horses here, but there were a dozen guards. They were just standing in a sort of daze, but when they saw the intruders they attacked.

A pitched battle commenced as more guards came through the doors of other outbuildings. They were no match for Fenrir's blasts and Dak's blade and before long there were twenty-four dead bodies in the courtyard. 

Stepping over the piles of corpses they entered the villa through the kitchen entrance. They first met Mr and Mrs Baleforth who appeared to be dominated, so Fenrir put them to sleep with a Painful Slumber of Ages. There were other dominated people in the servants quarters and they were dealt with in the same way.

Moving into the main portions of the villa they met the bulk of the vampire contingent. They also spied out Baroness Partick, Midshipman Alise and First Mate Mullmaster.

There were lots of vampires. As far as I can make out after researching this interesting battle they were:

Lord Sharrow - a four hundred year old nobleman and head of the family

Lady Brinker - his wife

Reverend Yarhammer - their priest

Sir Panek - a former paladin from Baldur's Gate

Dame Veroni - a young lady, quite pleasant natured for a vampire apparently

There were also another ten or so minor family members and about a dozen vampire spawn attendants. Basically the house was stuffed full of vampires!

Seeing he had a horde to deal with Fenrir started laying down Walls of Fire to hold them back a bit. It was a chaotic battle in the main corridor as more (sometimes on fire!) vampires leapt out at them. Levmeia cast Disrupting Weapon on Dak's weapon which meant that he could slay the vampires with ease. Much better than any other method as this resulted in them turning into mist and wafting away. It was impossible to see them after that in all the smoke.

The heroes had to flee the burning building back through the kitchens and the vampires too fled back further into the villa. To the heroes credit they took all the dominated people they could get their hands on with them. Corhim had been casting spells to temporarily block the effect.

They stood back and watched the villa burn for a few moments. Considering they had gone in with no plan prepared at all, the outcome of their first battle with the vampires of the Dementor had gone about as well as you might expect.

Sepa Island

 

 

Sepa Island.

by Graham Foss

 

Back in the summer of 2019, our holiday was a real adventure. Planned out meticulously by Ida, my wife, we spent two days in Dubai before heading to Indonesia, where the highlights of our stay there were a visit to the Thousand Islands and later a train trip to Jogjakarta. We really blew the budget in 2019. Little did we know we wouldn’t be back until 2022.

This story will focus on our trip to Sepa Island.

 

The Thousand Islands (known locally as “Kepulauan Seribu”) are a group of islands just north of Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, situated on the populous island of Java. If you care to look it up, you will discover that there are actually only 342 islands and only 11 of them are given over to tourism.

That was where we had decided we were going to spend the next few days. I should point out at this stage that my wife is Indonesian, our three children are mixed Indonesian / Scottish and in this year, they were aged 11, 10 and 6. This was our golden age for travelling with kids, where everything was at children’s prices, and their combined cuteness was at its zenith.

We were destined for the Sepa Island Resort. Google it if you dare, it is still doing business at the time of writing and still looks incredible, a vision of paradise that brings back happy memories as I write this on a storm wracked December night in the Galloway hills five years later.

Our journey began in Ciputat, a district in southern Jakarta. Our driver, whom I lovingly referred to as “Deathwish Ricky” picked us up in the morning and drove us at breakneck speed along the toll way to where we would ultimately get on the boat. I sat in the front, Ida was in the back seat with the younger ones so she could keep an eye on them, and my eldest was in the rearmost seat with his grandmother (or eyang).

We arrived in plenty of time, and everyone except me had breakfast at the pleasant dockside cafe. I had a notion that the boat ride would be at least an hour and did not trust my innards on a vessel that likely didn’t have a toilet onboard. While we waited, the kids played with some friendly stray cats that they named Wacky Blacky and Turtle-top. There are stray cats in every street in Indonesia, semi-feral fellows that are tolerated by the locals. At Eyang’s house back in Ciputat the street is full of them. Each house has a concrete bin outside it and each bin has a cat associated with it. Most of the cats are shy of humans though and I could never get close enough to pet any of them, but these dockside moggies were friendlier, perhaps being used to tourists.

Eventually the boat arrived. It looked like a seagoing version of a tourist riverboat. The trip was about an hour and a half and quite up-and-down in places. I am a salty old sea dog, but even my stomach felt a bit wobbly after a while. It was hot and cramped inside the boat with the other tourists and there were only small sliding windows that could be opened a few inches. Not a good place for anyone with claustrophobia.

Wendy, my little daughter, was the one to watch, being prone to travel sickness. Bless her, she held it in until nearly the end, but then was violently, explosively sick all over herself and the seat. We were well used to dealing with the contents of Wendy’s stomach though and the clean-up crew leapt swiftly into action, and everything was cleaned up and bagged quickly and efficiently.

And then we were there! The boat drew alongside the wooden pier, and we disembarked.

We walked along the sun-bleached planks and down onto the scorching sand, an area of tame-looking jungle directly in front of us. Through the trees I could see the buildings of the resort. This was it, I thought, I have set foot on my first ever tropical island. And yet, now that I was finally here, in my sun hat and flipflops, there was a slight tinge of disappointment.

Did you ever look at a tropical island somewhere remote and wish you were there? A travel show presenter strolling down a pristine white sandy beach next to an azure sea. An air-brushed perfect view of paradise. We see a colour-saturated high-definition version of reality.

I think - if you’ve flown across the world, spent the money, taken the mad car journey and the vomity boat ride - when you finally arrive, well the reality is never going to live up to the image of a paradise island you have held in your head all your life.

You forget that although it looks like in the travel documentaries you’ve watched, it still has the bins, the other people, and the unpleasant smells that are all associated with any touristy place in Indonesia. It’s still not quite perfect. Was there something wrong with me that I was not totally happy when presented with an island paradise? Perhaps part of it was that at that moment I was tired and hungry and in need of a lie down in a cool, dark room. It wasn’t to be, at least not yet and we toddled off to our beach house and unpacked, then headed to the restaurant.

It was a self-service buffet and I loaded up my plate. Basic food, not great. The restaurant had shaded wooden tables outside, down by the beach, a great place to hang out and take in the sight, sounds and smells of the sea. We ate, drank cold Cokes and Fantas, and relaxed. The children were too excited to sit for long though, so we set off to explore the island.

We started along the beach, but in less than fifty steps it was all blocked off by rocks. There was an enticing looking path going off into the jungle, and although I was aware it led to the staff areas that it would be impolite to go into, I wanted to at least feel a sort of jungle adventure sensation for a moment and delved into the leafy shadows. The children were scared and called out, that I might get accosted by snakes and spiders or something, so I turned back after no more than a few metres.

After going along the beach in the other direction I realised that the island was tiny, barely three hundred metres from side to side. I’d not be having any long walks here. The kids were having the time of their life though. Ida rented a kayak, and I took them out into the ocean. We looked down through the crystal-clear water at the spikey anemones below us.

In the evening, we had dinner, and located Eyang who has been talking to two young Indonesian girls in bikinis. The seemed to adore Eyang and when they saw Wendy, they are captivated by her and went to the island shop to buy her treats. Wendy received these gifts like a queen receiving her tribute.

The next day Ida had us all awake at seven in the morning to be picked up by a small boat by eight. We were taken a good distance north of Sepa Island to a remoter part of the archipelago. Today, the boys and I would be snorkelling while Ida, Wendy and Eyang remained on the boat. Wendy was to catch a fish for the boatman’s tea.

We were miles away from Sepa, in a shallow area of sea between some other small uninhabited islands. We swam through the rocks and reefs, the guide leading the way, while the boys, both excellent swimmers, followed along, taking in everything. I brought up the rear, watching the boys having fun as much as I watched the fish. Enjoying their enjoyment as much as my own.

It was a wonderful experience, but again, it’s not the high-definition, or slow motion and carefully curated experience that my mind expected from watching so many wildlife documentaries. It is murky when you dive down, the fish, those amazing fish, are all there, but their colours are muted, dulled by the tinted glass of my facemask. In other ways though the experience is, of course, beyond anything a television could give you. The warm water on our bodies, the taste of the sea, the tightness of our lungs as we dive down into the rocks to take a closer look at the coral and the colourful fish that lived there. We follow a turtle as it swam leisurely along the sandy sea bottom, gliding between the rocks, and then, on the way back to the boat after a good two hours in the sea we come across a sunfish (or a Mola Mola), and watched it in awe as its huge square body cruised slowly past.

When we get back to the boat, I saw that Wendy had caught a small fish on her line and was dipping it in and out of the water as the boatman laughed and encouraged her. Fly, fishy, fly, she was saying gleefully. I begged them to let the poor thing off the hook and put it back in the water. Ida told me that it was fish number ten that had suffered the same fate!

With the snorkelling finished, the small boat putt-putted its way further north, weaving between small distant islands until the water was so shallow, we could hop out and walk. We were in an area between two islands where the sea was barely knee deep. It felt as warm as bathwater and although the sun was hot, there was a light breeze as we walked through the shallows, the children running and splashing while we adults follow, taking photos and marvelling at where we have managed to find ourselves.

Apart from us and the boat there were no other signs of civilisation other than something off in the hazy distance that looked like a fishing jetty. I watched as our boat cruised slowly past the jetty and I felt a connection to this place, a sense of belonging, if only through my family, of times gone by when these seas were travelled by djongs and junks, of traders from the west arriving on these shores and explorers heading out further east in outriggers in search of the unknown.

I was finally getting it, that tropical paradise feeling that I had been hoping for. We walked between the islands, through half a mile of shallow sea, out to a sandbar surrounded by waters on all sides. The hazy air muted the distant green colours of the islands and accentuated the blueness of the sea and sky. The sand was white and pure, and so hot on the toes it was better to stay in the water. The children loved the beach, any beach and this was endless beach in all directions. The perfect beach, and they were at the perfect age to appreciate it the most as they raced, swam, and splashed through this world of half sea, half sand. Eyang walked behind them, her ankle length black robe billowing behind her as she glid through the water. Ida was somewhere behind us taking photos, recording this wonderful day in pictures that will never do it justice and I suddenly felt sad in the knowledge that this day will never come again. We could come back here some other time years from now, but not with our young family in this golden moment of perfect childhood. The feeling passed and I got back to enjoying the rest of the day, wading, and walking from sea to sandbar and back to sea. 

But wait, what’s that in the sand? A bloody food wrapper! I picked it up and read the bright orange packet. Malkist – Krim – Keju Manis. (Sweet Cream Cheese Crackers) This sudden intruder from the modern world was unwanted and I discreetly folded it up and put it in the pocket of my shorts.

The boat had been following us all this time at a distance, in deeper waters and once everyone had had enough it came in to pick us up and take us back to Sepa. Back on the island my stomach was not happy, probably due to the restaurant food, so the next day I mainly lay in the shade on a large wooden sun lounger, sometimes reading but mainly dozing, watching the children play in the sea through the smallest of cracks between my eyelashes. I listened to Ida and Eyang talking in Bahasa, exchanging gossip while they ate and drank. When they go silent, I know they are on their phones.

This is one of my most cherished memories and if I ever have trouble sleeping, which is rarely, I imagine I am here again, dozing on that lounger, feeling the warm air on my skin, listening to the gentle lapping of the waves and the sounds of distant laughing children.

Graham Foss