[FGDaze] Descent into Toreurkal: Training Day
Hi there folks, I am going to grind through character creation using my work in progress classless hack, and run an evening of application through dungeon crawling for folks interested in being my second group in Descent into Toreurkral to be run via Fantasy Grounds. This will occur after my 1st group that will be running from noon to 5 PM earlier in the day during the FG-Daze June 25th event. The intent is to have you folks get together and build characters to be ready to test out my Training Day scenario during the evening of the FG-Daze event. I'll run this until I just can't do it anymore, so I have no clue how long this will go, but with a 12-5 prior game, likely another 4-5 hours tops unless you invigorate me. I will plan to start at 7 pm Eastern, giving me time to take a break, get food and get setup after my first session.
What does this entail for you?
You make a character, one I approve and get yourself setup for us to hit the ground running on the 25th. You will experience my Training Day scenario, which is a hard mode setup of what happens in the event your party gets cut off, surrounded and pounced upon by one of my army divisions of undead. This is not the norm within my dungeon, but a replication of a series of bad decisions or poor luck snowballing until the party is piled upon by a large contingent due to failing basic tactics and being reckless.
Why would I do this?
I cut through the lead up, to swiftly give folks an idea of some of the worst they can expect to stress test applicants and see how they handle the challenges. Players get to play, and experience the difficulty they could face. Get an idea of what they will be up against, see how their initial thought process and character they put together fares. I gather an immense amount of information on the player and their interactions with me, and the other applicants during this process. From here I get to know you, you get to know me, and I get to pick out folks who fit into a time slot together who will work together as a team well using this data.
What comes of this?
From this event on the 25th, I will set a time slot that works best for folks and then screen players. We will then, as a group build characters together that have good synergy which can work together as a Dwarven Seal Team Six type team going forward. We will run sessions in my Descent into Toreurkral campaign, and you will be my 2nd live group. Essentially, the 25th is your audition to earn a slot and see if you'll enjoy the game before committing to long term sessions.
You just found out last minute and want to join but don't have time for a character?
I will put together a few characters in my software which can be selected for those who want to stop by and throw their hat in the ring with a pre-gen. It's a free for all day, and who knows, folks might just see me last minute. I get that, I'll put some together before the event which will be pre-approved and ready to snag.
What do you need: A character, using my creation rules, Teamspeak to connect to the FG teamspeak server, and any version of FG to connect to my Ultimate License.
Character Creation: I'd love to post it for you hear, but the forum has eating 5 previous attempts to post and wasted 4 hours of mine tonight, and I keep hitting the word limit. O.o Maybe it will let me in a second post?
Background: The kingdom you live in is called Toreurkral and is set in a time thousands of years prior to current events in my game world. It is a massive kingdom which, if on the surface would dominate the continent. However, it is below ground and stretches across a massive mountain chain going East to West for nearly a thousand miles before it stretches south across rolling plains and a huge forest kingdom. Your people have mined and dug for more than a thousand years in this area. Grown families, expanded and the children who have grown in overcrowded caves have headed off to expand the empire. Forming new clans loyal to the King, branching out and setting up new areas within the mountains and tunnels. The area you live in was dug into the bedrock under the expansive forest which is inhabited by the elves above you. Hundreds of miles of crude tunnels, hand carved halls and mines.
However, one of your kin, in his greed, branched off on his own and dug too deep. Obsessed with finding a new vein of adamantine all for himself, the dwarf dug deep down into the earth and fell into a cavern. Finding shining, precious gems and metals lining a vault, he started to take them with wild abandon. Hacking and tearing them out of the vault, the dwarf cracked the stone casing on the vault open. The stone gave way to silver, which with careful work, he pried loose as well. The silver giving way to adamantine, the dwarf gave pause. After much deliberation and thought, he decided it was worth the effort to cut through so much of the material and cart away. For weeks he worked in this cavern, slowly cutting through one of the sides of this blocky frame set on the ground in the middle of the cavern until his feeble steel tools managed to cut through and allow him to start taking apart the adamantine frame. In his greed, he didn't stop to think what layer upon layer of material here might be doing, and was lost on the strange feel of the room.
After the adamantine, a layer of raw iron, hammered roughly into the shape of a plate, thick and dark and untouched by flame in the working process the dwarf took in. Cold iron, not often used by Dwarves, hard to work, needing pure brute force to hammer it into shape with no heat to ease the material into a malleable state. After destroying most of his tools getting through the stone, silver and especially the adamantine, the dwarf was in no position to cut through a 2 foot thick plate of iron. Not to mention, who would pay for the lumpy mess after he'd taken it apart? He had weeks worth of work to haul the silver and adamantine back by foot to his clan with just his own two legs anyhow. So that he did, wrapping the material in his pack and carrying it away. During these trips, each taking several days walking back to his house, then several back to where he had his stash of materials something happened.
Not noticing at first, due to the noise of dragging and packing the silver and adamantine, a noise came through the thick plate of iron. On his fifth trip back to the cavern the dwarf noticed it. A deep, low rumble that shook the floor greeted him when he climbed down into the room. The plate buckled, straining upwards, and the noises came up through the floor. Alarmed, the dwarf scurried to grab as much of the adamantine he could before running back the way he came. After a day of hurrying as best he could with several hundred pounds of metal dragging behind him on a sled through rough stone passages the dwarf realized he wasn't being followed by some mysterious creature and slowed down. Shaking off his dark thoughts, he told himself the noises must have been pressure from below, a steam vent twisting the plate or something. Packing away his newest take, he grabbed a weeks worth of dried mushrooms and water and headed out again to get the last of the silver down below. Planning for the future, what he would make with the materials he had taken left him lost in thought for days. He trotted into the room bubbling with optimism the events of the last time he was in the room firmly put to the side and forgotten.
However, upon entering the room, he realized he was terribly wrong. His gaze slid past what dominated the center of it to the plate in the center of the floor. Torn and bent upwards in sharp strips of two foot thick iron, something had broken through and ripped apart the iron. Stunned upon seeing that, and wondering what could have done such a thing, the dwarf barely noticed the dark shape using a sharp claw to carve runes into the stone in the corner. His attention fixed on the floor, the dwarf didn't notice the figure turn, nor move towards him either. The dwarf didn't notice the creature turn less solid and into a mist which floated towards him, nor float in towards his ear. Too wrapped up in his own horror, realizing he should have let his clan know of what he had found and the danger that might be coming for them. Lost in his despair and self recriminations at what he had unleashed upon his clan, the dwarf was kneeling on the floor when the creature entered his body and took over.
What came next, the dwarf could only witness with horror from the recesses of his own mind as he was powerless to control his own movements. Seeing what came forth from the torn plate in the floor and moving down the same passageway he entered from, and riding within his own mind as his body trotted behind the dark shapes through that tunnel.
