Waiting in a cave
As only a few people on this journal know, I've been playing D&D with TJ, Phil, a guy named Seth, and John (on and off, mostly off).
TJ, Phil, and Seth played back during 2nd ed. They're quite used to a whole menagerie of old rules some of which include critical failures and lots of house ruling. TJ, Phil, and John have done their share of studying medieval warfare and combat, and they have an excellent and deep understanding of it. This leads to combat scenarios that would be far too easy before now becoming a challenge. 4 orcs behind trees and brush with arrows become a serious threat fast due to their superior positioning on top of a hill. Every combat becomes one hell of a fight.
They will shoot you in the face.
TJ also has a very interesting world that only he knows about. It's essentially a D&Dized England, D&ngland. There's a Scottish city in the north (Glasgow?), a rather average fantasy city in the middle (Waypoint), and a more British city further south (Stratford). Those three cities are the only civilization that I know of, and there doesn't seem to be many small towns at all. Some parts are even controlled by orcs and other monstrous races which adds to the wild frontier factor.
Magic is also banned from the world. The island was once ruled by a tyrannical wizard named Calafour and all the other magic users of any power were nobles. Ever since Calafour was overthrown, all magic has been named after him and declared irredeemably evil. As such, we're all restricted to either martial or divine classes. Our party even prides itself on hunting Calafour-users and bringing them to justice (killing them).
Calafour himself.
The party is a group of rag-tag mercenaries employed by Mastersen, a head of his own mercenary business. This gives us freedom to take plenty of jobs as long as we're hired for them.
Over the last few adventures, we've been trying to find an acolyte of the church of Pelor, Rueben, who went missing. In the process, we've pissed off the thief's guild enough that my Crusader (Arden) and Eron's rogue (Liz, funny story behind that) got killed. The remainder of the party, Pius the Paladin and Beetle McNallyspout(?) booked for Glasgow up north to evade the guild and find the Calafour user who runs it.
Enter Van Sorel. The party needed a rogue and someone sociable to deal with the situation. Of course, he just got tossed in and still has no idea what's going on (I really didn't come up with a good reason besides "needs work" for him to be there).
The party has been pretty much Seth, Phil, and I with John and Eron floating in and out. This last adventure, it was Seth, Phil, John, and I making our way up to Glasgow.
We've already been on the road, traveling up little by slow.
John was fiddling making a ranger, and thankfully we were waiting for one (Zanfree, one of TJ's many NPCs that always seem perfect for the scenario). So after another uneventful day of traveling, we camped again.
During our camp-out, we got attacked by a freaking werepanther. We learned earlier that he can only be harmed by obsidian weapons, and Pius had both our obsidian short sword and dagger. He didn't trust Van yet (ok).
Van got the obsidian dagger passed off to him and got in flanking position. Then was denied sneak attack damage since the werepanther was aware (what, you don't have a strength bonus?!). Insert old D&D 2nd ed rule that would've changed my build here. After a few good stabs, however, he ran off and found Zanfree and his apprentice (John/Randall). There was a hill in between us, so we couldn't see the fight, but heard it and got ourselves closer.
I didn't stop hiding until I got up as close as I could. Then finally got my sneak attack since he wasn't aware dag-nab-it!
It took a few more rounds of stabbing, but we finally got him.
Then we got led to a cave and told by Zanfree that he will investigate Glasgow since 2/4 of us are wanted men. Van offered to go with him so he could sneak and talk through a few things. Gotta put bluff to good use. Zanfree, of course, tells me no. I never knew that rangers were better than rogues in making city connections.
City slicker.
So we waited in a cave for 4 days.
On day two, we got attacked by some orcs while Phil the Gnome and Randall were on guard. The fight was uneventful but for a young halfling that we found in a sac. We found out his parents were killed in an attack from the orcs and they took the kid to eat. After talking with the kid, we got concerned enough to check the caravan for any survivors.
TJ kept reminding us we were waiting for Zanfree. We still had a day or two to kill, though, and we thought it would be the right thing to do (the only neutral party member is Phil the Gnome, but even he wanted to do it). We went back and forth, asking the kid how far the caravan was, making a suggestion to head back, and TJ trying to push us from it.
It got to the point where Phil said to TJ, "Metagame for a moment. If you really don't want us to look for the caravan we won't go." We finally got to look for it, but found it tipped over a canyon and dashed over some rocks. Some heroic victory.
During this time, Phil the Gnome stayed behind with the kid and an orc that we didn't kill but bound up. Now we have a kid and a still alive orc that we have to do something with. He ended up offering the orc work and some pay. Three chickens a week and all the sheep he could carry.
Now we have a halfling 10 year old and an orc hireling that I have no idea what we'll do with.
Then Zanfree came back, city slicker that he is, with Ken Kent, brother of James Kent, part of the family that owns the Kent Brewing Company. The Kent Brewing Company is a major company in D&ngland. As you can probably guess, they sell booze. Ken knows that James in involved with the thief's guild in Glasgow which is connected to the one in Waypoint (shock and horror) and hates what his brother has done. That's about all I got from the conversation. Oh, and there was this chick there too that didn't seem to really care or know what was going on. Next time, we'll finally get into Glasgow and maybe do something.