Topic: A Red & Pleasant Land campaign play reports
WE START A NEW CAMPAIGN... two players, "Chet" and "Harley".
"Chet" plays an anointed skeleton, intelligent and innately loyal to Vecna. Vecna however is nowhere to be found and his undead army is in civil war.
"Harley" plays an Alice named "Alice" from "a red and pleasant land".
The setting: the unled army of Vecna has recently been freed from The Land of the Dead by the draining of the Dead Sea. They are now invading the continent south of the Sea, which appears to be the Once Palace, a strange ornate endless city spread across a lattice of rivers like a checkerboard.
Chet, a member of the undead army, is assigned to find a lost artifact in the checkerboard territory of the Once Palace. He meets and joins forces with Harley; they decide to abandon the mission and go "hunt vampries".
They quickly find a vampire in a nearby square. Alice willingly submits and is quickly turned into a Red Pawn. The vampire commands Alice to kill the skeleton!
A short combat ensues and Chet dives out a window into a nearby river; he escapes. A vampire search ensues; the skeleton escapes to an Orb Loc, a hidden village of humans. --a friendly deer led him there.
Meanwhile, Alice sells at market some now-useless supplies, like rations, and hunts and drains a random human victim.
Chet is recruited by some human villagers to go on an adventure; apparently a valuable artifact is nearby. A curious talking kitten joins the party en route. They arrive at the site but are confronted by Alice, who has tracked Chet. Alice proposes that Chet help her kill the humans and use their skin to fashion a disguise for the skeleton. Chet agrees; Alice rolls a double 20 and cuts off one of the villager's heads.
The 2 other villagers run away and the PCs disguise Chet with some skin strips. In the basement of this building, another cat is found, and there's some cat drama. Ignoring the cat fight, the PCs find a shiny rock, which turns out to be an animated skull.
The animated skull is Vecna's skull! It commands Chet to kill Alice! Another combat ensues... Alice runs away with the skull.
Alice, threatening the skull with destruction, cuts a deal; if she gives the skull to Chet, the skull will call Chet off. The deal is made and the party's reunited. However, the skull has plans... Vecna's body will be reunited!
notes on play: lotfp once again excelled in producing short, decisive combats. players managed to survive and run away in legit ways. it seems like there's a series of power hierachies, both PCs at this point are answerable to different authorities; Vecna's skull and Alice's vampire master.
Running AR&PL geography was best done by eliding over almost all details of travel; I did explain that vampires cant cross open water, they use weird shortcuts through the strange architecture instead, or tunnels. Chet was blown along by the current for a while, washed up on some strange rocks, was taken by a deer to an orb loc.