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Home About Old Campaigns Search for: General / Shadowdark / The Borderlands Shadowdark: The Borderlands Session 8 Posted on February 12, 2024 by daHeadRat / 0 Comment Our last session was a bit short due to two players missing from the start and one needing to bow out early. The party returned from their exploration of the ruins of Valvur Abbey and Goblin Gully. There was a good bit of activity in Bridgeford with many more soldiers than when the party had been here previously. They got to speak to Commander Varos of the King’s Corps…something Aja had wanted to do since arriving in the area. The Commander had a job for the group and would do all he could to help Aja avoid arrest due to her being wanted by the king if they completed the job. The earthquake from a couple of nights prior had created a new canyon, flooded with water, a relatively short distance from the town…perhaps a mile or two away. A tower stood at the lip of the canyon, situated at the end closest to Bridgeford. The job was to explore this tower/canyon, determine why/how these things appeared, and determine any threats to the town and kingdom. The party accepted and were assigned to Captain Jasmin. There was shopping, travel the next day to the King’s Corps camp a quarter mile away from the tower, and approach to the tower. We pick up with the continued exploration below. Jen and Savannah were both missing. Alex had not yet completed some penance for a critical failure previously so she remained behind at the camp to do so via prayer and ritual. RJ played Aja. I don’t believe there are spoilers for any published adventure this session, but portions were inspired/influenced by the old dungeon of Zenopus from B/X, things others have done to expand it (e.g., Zenopus Archives ), and various Dyson Logos maps (such a valuable resource regardless of edition or version of D&D you might be playing). Continue reading → General / Shadowdark / The Borderlands Shadowdark: The Borderlands Session 7 Posted on February 5, 2024 by daHeadRat / 0 Comment During the last session, the party completed their explorations of the complex beneath the ruins of Valvur Abbey. They encountered a mostly friendly ghost, a zombie, and found some new items–including a magic mace and some mundane equipment–and new information regarding what had happened here at the abbey as well as a map and some notes to another potential adventure site found on the corpses of adventurers. There was one door found which the party could not open. It is magically warded and Denton determined that they would need more powerful magics than currently available to them in order to remove the ward. With that, the party returned to the surface, head into the woods a bit, and settled down to camp. During Denton’s watch, he heard a twig snap…and that’s where we stopped…mostly. Jen and Savannah were both missing this session and we had to stop early when one of the other players had a family medical issue come up. So we pick up with the twig snap…wait, did I say mostly? That’s right, I did. I asked what the party planned on doing outside of returning to Bridgeford and there wasn’t really any response. Nothing about maybe checking out the map found on the dead adventurers, seeing if they could acquire anything in town that might let them bypass the warded door, try to learn more about the black sword which Norfek has been lugging around for a few days now, try to find out the identity of the woman in the red dress that the bandits had been dragging through the woods, the identity of the man taken prisoner by the bandits and killed, tracking down the remaining bandits, or even to pursue any of the other dozen or so adventure hooks already seeded throughout the Borderlands. There are multiple things for an adventurer to do or see already out there. The players just need to remember that they need to pick from them or tell me that they want to do something different. We pick up with the next session below. Continue reading → General / Shadowdark / The Borderlands Shadowdark: The Borderlands Session 6 Posted on January 29, 2024 by daHeadRat / 0 Comment The exploration of the chambers and passageways beneath the ruins of Valvur Abbey continued in out last session. I believe that this was their fourth or fifth foray down after returning to the surface to rest and recover. Two new characters joined the party, Alex and Denton, and the Creepy Flesh Idol continues to put to good use…now with two characters who can attempt to active and use it. When we ended our prior session, the creepy eye, which is rather red and bloodshot while it is being used, had been stopped by a ghostly monk figure who emerged from another door. Rachel was missing this session and Savannah had to bow out early. Rachel is our resident note taker and I often base these recaps on her notes. I don’t have those this time so I may be missing things; hopefully, the other players will jump in the comments if I did miss anything critical. Most of this session use a somewhat modified version of the adventure, The Shattered Fist Monastery, from Delver #1 by James Floyd Kelly. There may be spoilers. Continue reading → General / Shadowdark / The Borderlands Shadowdark: The Borderlands Session 5 Posted on January 25, 2024 by daHeadRat / 0 Comment Previously, our intrepid party had spent some time tracking down some scrablings and brigands and exploring the locations within which each had taken up residence respectively. Most recently, they had made another foray into the ruins beneath Valvur Abbey and fought more of the brigands. In the process though, the party had taken a good deal of damage…much of it self-inflicted” when one of the party’s magic items exploded. Retreating back to the surface, they recovered and then came back down only to find that the brigands had left. We had to take a week off due to other commitments for folks and so it had been two weeks since the last session. Savannah had to miss this session, but Jen was back and so she got to introduce her new character. We are also joined by a new player, Todd, is also a former player in many FRG campaigns. Jen is playing Alexandria (Alex for short), a human priest, and Todd is playing Denton, a human wizard. Alex, a priest of the Shining Lords of Law…specifically venerating St. Alora, the patron saint of truth…had a vision about a relic residing in some ruins falling into the wrong hands. She and her companion, Denton of course, traveled to the ruins and began their explorations. You might have already guessed that those ruins are the same ones that the existing PCs are already exploring. Parts of this session use a somewhat modified version of the adventure, The Shattered Fist Monastery, from Delver #1 by James Floyd Kelly. There may be spoilers. We pick up with the party both continuing their explorations of the apparently empty chambers beneath the ruins of Valvur Abbey and nearly doubling in size. Continue reading → General / Shadowdark / The Borderlands Shadowdark: Monsters of the Borderlands – Sokur Posted on January 14, 2024 by daHeadRat / 0 Comment Where the Grall are ferocious and violent, the Sokur are calm and disciplined. This makes them so much more dangerous than their bestial cousins. They expertly coordinate their actions to accomplish their goals without any obvious communication. Bands composed solely of Sokur may be encountered, but they are more likely to be found with groups of other Chaoskin. Often a pair or a small group will act as the leaders, extending their cunning and their insightful tactics to allies. The Sokur rarely fail due to being outmaneuvered in battle. Like most of the other more common Chaoskin, Sokur are humanoid. They resemble a muscular human in stature and build with a wolf-like head and are, of course, completely hairless. Their eyes are nearly twice the size that they should be and are a solid deep, dark red in color. Despite lacking any feature to indicate such, it feels as if you...