I recently finished running another year-long RPG campaign. Set in the fantasy world that I always run D&D or similar stuff in, this game was about fantasy pirates in the Boundless Isles, a section of the world full of corsairs, trading companies, cultists, and weird monsters. About a third of the way through, it turned into a piratical hunt for the Seven Swords of ancient legend, because the players accidentally found one of them and decided that they wanted to collect them all.
Our crew:
Peter as Dormand, an exiled clanless dwarf who has a burning desire to become a legendary pirate captain;
Josh as Owen, another clanless dwarven exile, of a more technical bent;
Kevin as Charlotte, a beautiful woman with a mysterious past and a pocket full of knives;
Brett as Tristan Lockheart, a former Merdallan man-at-arms turned smuggler turned pirate;
Nick as Wynne, a frost elf cook who is, despite his unassuming appearance, also a master swordsman and wizard;
And Spencer as Doc Canard, who was run out of the Kingdom of Merdallan for aggressive malpractice.
Together, they sailed the Boundless Isles in search of treasure, magic swords, a little light vengeance, and a good story to tell in years to come.
SESSION 1: FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS
(The players all started the game chained in the hold of a ship, being transported out to the Isles for hard labor after their debts were sold to the Rotheschild Labor Company.)
GM: You would have noticed Owen’s axe on the way in, because it’s the only one that is also a gun.
Doc Canard: “I’m sorry, what?”
GM: It’s not a slaver ship, technically.
Doc Canard: “Who’s getting paid for our labor again? Because I’m pretty sure it’s not us.”
GM: He might not be a kid, he could just be a very youthful-looking dwarf. The only dwarf to ever shave.
Owen: “That’s not a dwarf.”
Dormand: “We call those gnomes.”
Doc Canard, trying to steal a weapon: What about Quick Draw?
Dormand: …I think you have to own a weapon first. You cannot Quick Draw someone else’s weapon.
GM: Your helmet liner is in there. It looks like someone was taking apart the helmet to see if you had, like, hidden money in there.
Tristan: “Damn. So they got the money.”
Tristan: “I don’t know if bowling’s a sport in this world…”
Owen: “Don’t worry, it’s not a sport in this world either.”
(For context, Owen’s player used to be on a bowling team and is the only one of us to own his own ball)
GM: They go down like ninepins.
Tristan: “At least someone on this crew knows how to bowl.”
Dormand: “To be fair, bowling is really easy when you walk up and knock all the pins over.”
Dormand: “We’ll get you a new surgical knife at port.”
Doc Canard: “Yeah, that’s fine. That one was rusty anyways.”
Owen: “…And you were using it for surgery?!”
SESSION 2: THE NATIVES ARE RESTLESS
Dormand, to Charlotte: “I’ve seen the rest of this crew at least pull a knife from under their coat. I have to ask, are you armed?”
Doc Canard: “I count at least two, so…”
Dormand: “So you’ve got Tristan tied down, right?”
Owen: “Oh, absolutely.”
Canard: “And I’ve got my ritual knife.”
Dormand: “Excellent. We’re all set, then.”
Canard: “This one’s pretty rusty, I don’t get to use it that often.”
Dormand: “Well, I was already planning on leaving an elf behind on this island, I could absolutely make it another one…”
Delight (elf NPC): “What?”
Dormand: “What?”
Delight: “No, seriously, what?”
Dormand: “What? Owen, did you hear anything?”
Owen: “Not a word, captain.”
Dormand: “That’s what I thought.”
SESSION 3: STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
Tristan: “The leader of that mutinous faction is that Silas guy.”
Dormand: “What do we know about Silas?”
Charlotte: “That he’s going overboard?”
Doc Canard: “I gave him some of that cocaine water from the shore, mixed with some alcohol, and some crushed up garlic, or something.”
Owen: “Did you just make him a Four Loko?”
Dormand: “I don’t want a cargo ship. Cargo ships are easy targets. We sail out in that, we’re going to look like prey.”
Owen: “So the loot comes to us.”
Jacks, the Bartender: “He’s called the King in Iron, but he doesn’t really run the place. People just listen to him because he’s got a lot of guns.”
Tristan: “I guess that’s the way of things.”
Jacks: “Also he can’t be killed by conventional weapons.”
Tristan: “I…guess that’s also the way of things?”
Doc Canard: “Wait, you have the Spy career?”
Dormand: “Yeah, I’m a Tinker/Sailor/Soldier/Spy.”
SESSION 4: HARVEST SEASON
Dormand: “I just woke up. What did I miss?”
Owen: “We were talking about making a flesh golem crew.”
Dormand: “Do we need, like…magic for that?”
Tristan: “Nah, you just put the lightning in the corpses and it makes them walk. It’s science.”
(The crew makes a deal to go on a raid with O’Shally, a pirate who they absolutely, 100% do not trust)
Tristan: “After we’re done talking to her, we’re going to need to put together a plan to deal with those towers.”
Dormand: “If they exist.”
Charlotte: “We’re also going to need to put together a plan to deal with her.”
Doc Canard: “If she exists.”
Owen: “So basically it comes down to ‘how greedy do we want to be?'”
Doc Canard: “Pirates. Is that an answer?”
*in which Owen and Tristan cut down an entire guard patrol by spinning in a circle with swords*
Doc Canard: “Think I should shoot at [the creepy necromancer]?”
Owen, channeling Shadowrun: “Geek the mage.”
Charlotte: “Be a pirate.”
Owen: “Yeah, I guess I shoot the bureaucrat.”
Doc Canard: “Fuck bureaucracy!”
Dormand: “Get them doing work. I want them tying knots and sweeping things, as sailors do.”
SESSION 5: MAIDEN VOYAGE 2
GM: Nothing happens on the voyage back to Port Noir.
Tristan: Aww, man. I had this Pokemon random encounter music cued up and everything.
Charlotte: “We’ll just buy lots of horses.”
GM: And keep them on the ship?
Dormand: “I keep my horses in the back, actually.”
NPC: “Do you have a name for this ship?”
Tristan: Well, there goes the rest of the session.
Dormand: In character, yes, and we tell him. Out of character, we’ll argue about it for the rest of the week.
(Eventually they decide to name the ship the Hangman’s Tide.)
GM: On the map of that island, someone has written “True Cinnamon?”
Dormand: “Is there, like…a cinnamon equivalent to dream sugar? Dream cinnamon?”
Tristan: “It’s true cinnamon, man. You’ve never had cinnamon before – that was false cinnamon.”
Dormand, approaching a bird-man pirate: “This is quite a haul you’ve got here.”
Twoclaws the Bird Pirate: “SCRAW!”
Dormand, to himself: “Damn, I don’t speak bird.”
Dormand: “Is this report coming from Charlotte? Or a lookout I care about?”
GM: I’m going to need a moment to process that burn.
Dormand: “We pile onto a rowboat to head to the island. I hand pick a team that happens to consist of Tristan, Owen, and Charlotte.”
Tristan: “And…T-Pain.”
Charlotte: “So we wait for the one ship to leave, then do what we do best.”
Dormand: “Which we’ve never actually done before.”
SESSION 6: THE CINNAMON GAMBIT
GM: There are a lot of pirate superstitions about what sorcerers can do. Ride the Black Road and destroy your enemies. See through the eyes of birds. Steal people’s souls through their mouths.
Tristan: “I thought that’s what Charlotte does.”
Charlotte: “Hey. Don’t give my secrets away.”
Dormand: “Any other opinions? This ship’s a democracy, except I’m first.”
Wynne: “I’m on board.”
Dormand: “Wait. With which plan?”
Wynne: “The boat. I’m physically on board.”
Dormand: “I think you should get aboard the escort ship before they leave.”
GM: Here’s a question. Are you planning to seize the escort, or sink the escort?
Tristan: “Actually that is a very important thing to know before I get on.”
GM: It’s possible for you to roll low enough to not sink the ship this round.
Dormand: Rolls a 1 and a 2
GM: Holy shit, you managed to do it.
Charlotte: “Should our new resident wizard try to foresee the outcome of this battle?”
Doc Canard: “I foresee victory. But I’m not a wizard.”
Dormand: “We’ll get a more unified crew culture soon.”
Tristan: “What we need is a mission statement.”
Dormand: “Does Port Noir have a PR agent?”
Dante: “Villains! You shall not take this ship so long as I, Dante Julio Ricardo Vos Riaz de la Voulptaire, stand ready to defend her!”
Tristan: “Oh nice, a duel!”
Owen: “I shoot him.”
SESSION 7: NO HONOR AMONG PIRATES
GM: It seems the sailing master of your captured ship wasn’t going to take going to Port Noir lying down.
Tristan: “Well, now he’s going there lying down.”
NPC: “Just back from the far isles? A journey long and dangerous, no doubt.”
Dormand: “Actually, the journey there was surprisingly quick. Then the way back was longer. Was weird.”
(The GM realized on the way back that he’d misread the scale on his own maps on the way there)
NPC: “I heard over at the governor’s estate there’s a giant rat fight going on, if you wanna check that out.”
Dormand: “Is the fight giant, or are the rats giant?”
(Someone cuts a hole in the side of the Hangman’s Tide and steals a bunch of stuff that the players had stolen. They go into town to hunt down the thieves.)
GM: You kick in the door and march up to him.
Dormand: “I don’t know if we really need to kick in the door.”
Tristan: “Yeah. We open the door, then we kick him.”
NPC: “You want to know about magic knives? I don’t know anything about that.”
Wynne: “Well, he’s convinced me.”
Owen: I aim my gun at him.
NPC: “Woah! Woah woah woah! Woahwoahwoahwoahwoahwoah. Woah woah-“
Owen: I shoot him.
Charlotte: “I’m looking for DeShamps.”
DeShamps’ Mom: “I don’t recognize you. Are you one of his friends from…”
Charlotte, interrupting: “Yes.”
SESSION 8: HOIST THE BLACK FLAG
Dormand: “Gonna be honest with you; any two painted elves could tell me they’re twins and I’d probably believe them.”
GM: They tried to warn you. They even named it Noire.
Tristan, sarcastically: “Oh right. That must be Old Zancharian for ‘They’ll Rob You In Port.'”
GM: The skeleton is wearing different clothes from the last time you saw one.
Tristan: “Skeletons probably can’t change their clothes, so it must be a different one.”
GM: You’ve only met one skeleton so far. But you’ve met a lot of people, which are skeletons in a way. They just were wearing meat.
Wynne: “Really, we’re the skeletons who can’t change their clothes.”
Doc Canard: “If we build a fleet, we gotta get a ship of skeletons. Then we can name it something spooky.”
Wynne: “It’s gotta be the Hangman’s Wake.”
(Eventually, the crew gets a second ship and does indeed call it the Hangman’s Wake)
GM: And you have a dream. To sit in the parliament of the Kastos Freeport.
Dormand: “I…don’t know if we really want to do that.”
Tristan: “Let’s call that a side-dream.”
GM: Did you just label that entire ocean “1 mile?” That is… very inaccurate.
Dormand: “Yeah. Obviously it should be measured in knots.”
Owen: “We’ll fire cannons into the storm to slow it down.”
Charlotte: “I feel like the best way to use the whole party in ship combat is to rotate gunners and just burn through our Fortune Points.”
Dormand: “Do you feel like you’re out of luck? All right, next!”
Charlotte: “I can’t wait to see how the chef participates in this ship combat.”
Doc Canard: “He’s cooking up some trouble!”
SESSION 9: SUDDENLY, CULTISTS
GM: How to sow discord in a pirate town – release a dragon in the streets.
Owen: “Not in the streets. We just want to give it to someone who will probably release a dragon in the streets. Our hands are clean.”
GM: He pulls another guy out of a nearby alley.
Dormand: “How is there an alley on this dock?”
GM: This city is not well constructed.
Dormand: “Maybe we can convince O’Shally to attack the fort ahead of us. We’ll be right behind her.”
Dormand: “Last time we were on a strange island, he was helpful.”
Tristan, dubiously: “And all strange islands are the same.”
Dormand: “Yeah. It’s one to one.”
GM: The cultist points to the gun-axe, and says “All man-made creations will fall.”
Owen: I say, “It’s dwarven-made,” and shoot him.
SESSION 10: FLESH AND STEEL
Dormand: “I think that was the last guy, but the dice say I kill four more pawns.”
Owen: “The ones in the next room have aneurysms.”
Dormand: “If she ain’t speakin’ Dwyr [the dwarven language], I don’t wanna hear.”
Charlotte: “I just got back – did we already make terror checks?”
GM: I forgot that was a thing in this system.
Tristan: “Gee, thanks Kevin!”
Wynne: “I don’t have a good idea, so I’m just gonna shoot.”
Dormand: “Shooting is allowed.”
Wynne: rolls a 4
Dormand: “No, shooting AT it.”
GM: That actually takes him down.
Wynne: “Huh. My trick shot tricked him.”
Tristan: “To death.”
GM: It’s not badly made, but it’s not dwarven-made.
Owen: “You just said the same thing.”
Tristan: “I assume the position and charge.”
GM, noticing that Tristan didn’t define “the position”: All right. Tristan gets down on all fours, shield strapped to his face, and rushes in.
Tristan: “That’s Merdallan style.”
Dormand: “Are these guys pawns or retainers or what?”
GM: I did mention that they had weird tattoos.
Tristan: “And pawns can’t have tattoos.”
Owen: “They don’t have the lifeblood for it. They’d die.”
SESSION 11: NERDS OF THE HIGH SEAS
GM: I’m going to give Charlotte the “in a tavern” bonus for rolls on the isle of Baruna.
Tristan: This entire island is a tiki bar.
GM: Pretty much.
(The crew docks at the legendary mobile metropolis known as Nomad, the City Under Sail)
Nomad Dockmaster: “Are you in need of assistance?”
Dormand: “Yeah, we’ve got all this rum and only so many mouths.”
Hogarth, a scholar that the players meet in Nomad: “There is nothing more practical in this world than knowledge.”
Owen: “Fuckin’ nerd.”
GM: He sells reusable grenades.
Charlotte: “Can we just buy the regular grenades?”
GM: If you hate the environment, sure.
Dormand: “I didn’t realize I was buying into a scam. They just sold me a bird subscription.”
SESSION 12: OF SWORDS AND STONES
Dormand: “Remember, swimming is impossible in heavy armor.”
Owen: “I’ll just make him a diving bell.”
Tristan: “…Am I just going to carry it around? Whenever I’m wearing armor? Which is all the time?”
GM: He’s got tattoos that you recognize as meaning that this guy has killed three people.
Owen: “Three? Those are rookie numbers.”
Dormand: “I’m gonna let Tristan be the matador here. Let it charge you, you confuse it, and then we shoot it in the back. That’s how matadors work, right?”
Doc Canard, joining the session mid-damage roll: “Who needs healing?”
Dormand: “No one, all the damage is on their side.”
Doc Canard: “Ah. Need me to heal any of them so you can hit them again?”
GM: Let me find an explosion sound.
Doc Canard: “Pew.”
Tristan: “Wow, did you guys hear that explosion?”
Owen: “I put silencers on the charges.”
GM: You feel the sword pulling you into position.
Charlotte: “Oh look, the magic sword is helping now.”
Tristan: “And I’m sure it wants nothing in return.”
Dormand: “Absolutely no downsides!”
GM: It’s probably not 24 karat gold. There’s some other alloys mixed in here.
Dormand: “Ah. They added regular carrots.”
SESSION 13: PROFANE, AND PROFANE ACCESSORIES
Suspected slaver: “Lot of people settled out on the islands where there aren’t so many rules about the crazy things they wanted to get up to.”
Dormand: “Crazy things like ‘personal freedom.'”
Owen, leaving the tavern to go blow up a ship: “We walk out, 20 barrels between us.”
Doc Canard: “Explosives? Or beer?”
Owen: “Yes.”
Doc Canard: “Explosive beer, got it.”
Dormand: I don’t know why I pressed my Push To Talk button to give a thumbs up on my camera.
GM: I’ve read about people muffling their oars, but I don’t actually know how that works.
Tristan: You gotta hold a bucket behind the oar, then it catches the wake so nobody sees you.
GM: So Brett doesn’t know how either.
Tristan: Sailor 0, baby.
GM: The ship has the regulation number of gun ports.
Owen: “Let’s add one more.”
Doc Canard: “Right on the bottom.”
GM: Merdallan knights are basically Space Marines.
Tristan: “We’ve done a lot of sea combat, and we did make a ton of money off of selling that cinnamon. So we are the true Spice Marines.”
GM: Tristan dies.
Charlotte: “I know we were joking about attacking this village because we think it’s being run by a cult, but are we actually doing it?”
Tristan: “Not before we find a smoking gun. But come on, there’s gotta be a smoking gun around here somewhere.”
Charlotte: “I think there’s about to be a lot of smoking guns around here!”
Charlotte: “Is there a tavern anywhere on this island?”
Villager: “No, we don’t drink alcohol here.”
Tristan: “See? Cult! There’s our smoking gun!”
SESSION 14: CULTBUSTERS
GM: How big is your ship?
Tristan: 3.
GM: Very helpful. You’re like, a frigate? The other ship here looks to be…roughly a third of your size.
Charlotte: So a 1.
GM: …Fine. Yes.
Owen: “It’s a party? I break out the dwarven ecstasy.”
Dormand: “That’s one way to kill all these humans.”
Owen: “They won’t know what hit them.”
Owen, discussing the ratfolk crew member: “Jira’s gonna be so fucked up, he won’t know where he is.”
Dormand: “That’s when Jira does his best work. There’s a Ballmer Peak for assassinating people.”
Tristan, to the cultist elders: “I just want to know why. And what, and how. I guess there are actually a few things I want to know.”
GM: So you’re shooting…everyone in the town? I just want to be clear.
SESSION 15: UNBOXING
Tristan: “I’m hoping that some of the townsfolk haven’t completely drank the…cooold ale.”
Dormand: “That’s what you’re going with, huh?”
Tristan: “It’s a Merdallan saying. Very common.”
Owen: “As a keen dwarven craftsman, I figure out how best to bar the door.”
Dormand: “We were always barring doors back in the mountains. Really takes me back.”
Doc Canard: “That would probably go against the whole ‘do no harm’ thing. Though admittedly I think I’ve killed five or six people by now. So I guess we’re good.”
(The crew finds a box with bloodstains that seem to magically never dry out. Doc Canard has some…unsettling ideas about what to do with it.)
Owen: “That has to be the least efficient way to run a blood bank I’ve ever heard of. And I’ve seen Fury Road, Doc Canard.”
GM: Soon, the whole crew is in ship shape. Which means they’re in good enough shape to be on a ship.
Tristan: “What else would that mean?”
Doc Canard: “They’re shaped like ships.”
Dormand: “What have you done to the crew?!”
SESSION 16: PARLEY HARD
(Encountering an anchored ship)
Dormand: “This would be…incredibly easy to sink or steal.”
Owen: “Third ship!”
Doc Canard: Should I make a medicine roll?
GM: No, there isn’t a point – pretty sure you can’t fail. You have a +7 to medicine rolls, right?
Doc Canard: No.
GM: Oh, well then-
Doc Canard: I have a +8.
(We have established, at first jokingly but then seriously, that dwarves can visually communicate across long distances using “beardsign”)
Tristan: I attempt to mimic beardsign to tell Dormand “2,000 gold.”
Dormand: “He says…50,000 pounds…hairless mice? I don’t know.”
GM: The ichor appears to be some kind of insect blood, or whatever they have instead of blood.
Owen: “Hemolymphs?”
Dormand: “If it hemolymphs, we can kill it.”
Dante: “Villains! Once again you face I, Dante Julio Ricardo Vos Riaz de la Voulptaire! Tremble, for your vile machinations shall surely be undone by my blade and steady hand!”
Dormand: “This fucking guy.”
Doc Canard: “I thought you guys killed him?”
Owen: “He’s got too long a name to only die once.”
Dormand: “Let’s just bring ten no-names from the crew.”
Tristan: “These guys are definitely on red shirt duty.”
Dormand: I specifically tell them, “Don’t you dare tell me your name!”
Doc Canard: “I could give Jira the poison to help him kill Dante if he has to.”
Charlotte: “Great doctor.”
Dormand: “‘Do no harm,’ huh?”
Doc Canard: “He’s not my patient!”
Doc Canard, examining a body: “So the stinger that injected the venom was about the size of a short sword-“
Owen: “Nope.”
Doc Canard: “I’m just telling you, this is my medical diagnosis-“
Owen: “Nope.”
Dormand: “So…to recap what we know thus far, someone fell out of the sky, the island is covered in scorpion people…”
Owen: “There’s megalodons in the water…”
Dormand: “Right…megalodons in the water, Dante is crazy, Lorenzo has the sword we’re after, and we have the only working ship off the island.”
Doc Canard: “Also, if we try to kill Dante again, we might piss off a mermaid princess?”
Dormand: “Honestly I have no idea.”
Dormand: “Not tasty! I taste like rock!”
Scorpionfolk: “Some rocks are tasty! Salt’s a rock, and I put that motherfucker on everything.”
Dormand: “…Shit, he’s not wrong.”
SESSION 17: MELEE A TROIS
GM, sarcastically: I so appreciate that you’re all conspiring to get really good at shooting specifically named NPCs.
Scorpionfolk Elder: “He’s charging in one against six, heavily outnumbered, with a magic sword. He’ll likely kill you all.”
Wynne: “The story structure demands it.”
GM: All seven of these swords have names.
Charlotte: “I hope that means we get to use them.”
Dormand: “I hope one of them is a gun.”
Dormand: “If we all fight him at once, or he’ll get more powerful. One at a time.”
Wynne: “You’re going to give him a tournament story arc? We’re screwed!”
(Dante escapes from the brig offscreen.)
Dante: “Did you truly think a righteous man could be held by chains?!”
Dormand: “Yes.”
Owen: “Yes!”
Charlotte: “Yeah that’s a yes.”
Dormand: “I’ve got enough guns to hold them in a Mexican standoff.”
Doc Canard: “A Merdallan standoff.”
Lorenzo Esteban Gonzolaz Dom de la Villalobos, rising from death to continue the fight: “Halt, villain!”
Doc Canard: “Halt, zombie!”
Dormand: “Ha! Still wasting time reloading your weapons?” I shout, having missed all 4 shots I’ve taken.
GM: Owen is dwarfsplaining to Jira how to be a better rat man.
SESSION 18: HIVEMINDS AND YOU/US
Dormand: “The real treasure was the friends we made along the way. Can we sell that at port?”
Dante: “Mark my words, I will return for that blade!”
Dormand: “If you come back with money, I’ll sell it back to you. If you come back to fight me, I’ll stab you with it. Either way you’ll get your sword back.”
Cassiopeia Gabriela Abril Ivanna Von de la Tibrious, disembarking from the Hangman’s Tide after the crew somewhat unwillingly took her on as a passenger: “This is really Nomad? There’s no way…this whole place is held together with wood and nails?”
Owen: “Get off our ship and go find out.”
Tristan, deadpan: “Your adventure continues. What wonders await! Goodbye.”
Owen: “Why are these waters so full of cults?”
Dormand: “We haven’t seen this cult until like a week ago.”
Owen: “Not just this one. Cults in general.”
GM: The hivemind is printing out pamphlets to get people to join.
Wynne: “Make your last free choice!”
GM: Two clanless dwarves agree that clanless dwarves would be the best choice to hold onto this super magic sword.
Tristan: “What better weapon to fight a hivemind than a sword that acts as the psychic embodiment of individual exceptionalism.”
GM: There’s a reason you haven’t heard any voices whispering in the back of your head yet.
Tristan: “Because that seat is already taken.”
SESSION 19: SNAKES ON THE BRAIN
GM: He can breathe fire, but it’s just a parlor trick.
Tristan: “But he’s a pirate, so it’s a parley trick.”
Wynne: “Why did I show up for this…”
Tristan: “Well, four out of five of us are safe from mind control. Good luck, Wynne!”
Dormand: “He’s magical. Just magic up your brain. They can’t mind control mages, probably.”
GM: You hear clanging, and feel something in the back of your head.
Dormand: “It’s a knife. You’re dying.”
Tristan: “They’re missile golems. ICBGs.”
GM: They’re probably not inter-continental.
Tristan: “They’re intra-continental.”
Dormand: “Lots of things are intra-continental. It works, it’s just not impressive.”
Dormand: “I’m gonna approach from the direction that doesn’t get us shot with cannons.”
Tristan: “That kind of bold decision making is why you’re the captain.”
Owen: “I really don’t know how we’d get by without your leadership.”
GM: You saved two companies of DEEC soldiers, and also sank one of their ships. But if none of them remember it, did it really happen?
SESSION 20: EXPEDITIONS IN EXPOSITION
Dormand: “Remind me, do corporations favor honor or profits?”
Dormand: “If someone tries to pick a fight with us, we already have three of the Seven Swords. What are they gonna do?”
Charlotte and Doc Canard, simultaneously: “Pull out the other four magic swords?”
Raja, retired pirate and scholar the crew is consulting with: “And, at the end of all things…Brand.”
Entire group: “…Did you just say ‘Brad?'”
Charlotte: “The world isn’t flat?”
GM: No, but when you go off the map to the east, you come back up from the south.
Tristan: “The world is a perfectly normal sphere, the map projections used by the cartographers here are just wacky.”
Dormand: “Wear a mask to hide your face.”
Charlotte: “Because they definitely won’t recognize our custom ten-barreled muskets and legendary magic swords.”
GM: All right, so Doc Canard is standing behind the counter. The orc knight walks into the pigeon palace – where’s everybody hiding?
Doc Canard, panicked: “Wait, what?! How does he know?”
Lord Roger Garrow, who is also looking for the Seven Swords: “You’re not the usual pigeon master.”
Doc Canard, actively impersonating someone else: “He caught the pigeon pox.”
Dormand: “And I’m just a pigeon patron, here in the pigeon palace.”
Owen: “I’m just gonna shoot him in the leg.”
Charlotte, sarcastically: “That’s not gonna draw attention.”
Dormand: “After you shoot, I’ll shout, ‘Oh god, one of the pigeons backfired!'”
SESSION 21: THE ONLY MOSTLY DEAD CONTINENT
Doc Canard: “It’s three dwarves in a suit isn’t it?”
Dormand: “Oh god it’s the Stacking Clan!”
Sailing to Ollam, the only living city off the coast of the aptly-named Dead Continent.
Tristan: “There’s a ship over there made of bone.”
Doc Canard: “How would that even float?”
Tristan: “They replace all the marrow with helium.”
Doc Canard: “Did you say that the Lord Regent has four arms? I mean, I have forearms, but not like that.”
GM: You might have forearms, but he has four forearms.
Tristan, studying a map of Ollam: “Really this sword could be almost anywhere in this city. Though probably not in Doors.”
Doc Canard: “But it could be indoors!”
Dormand: “We’ll teach the crew about the buddy system. If anyone’s gonna get disappeared…”
Tristan: “…It’ll be two at a time.”
SESSION 22: THE QUEST FOR MORE SWORDS
Wynne: “I can use magic to just conjure any sword I can picture.”
Tristan: “The only reagent is the sword you wish to summon.”
Dormand: “But then you can use magic to transfer it from one hand to the other!”
Tristan: “A great and powerful ritual.”
Wynne: “It’s the classic feint. First you pretend you’re left handed, then you reveal that you’re a wizard.”
GM: That would require getting very, very lucky.
Tristan: Let me tell you about Fortune Points.
GM: …
Wynne: I think we got him.
GM: This system makes heist planning really simple, doesn’t it?
Dormand: To be fair, you’re the one who added the magic doors that go anywhere.
Dormand: “Charlotte, if you can go make a distraction, we’ll probably be able to get through here. You’d probably die though. So maybe not a great plan.”
Charlotte: “So you want me to…”
Dormand: “Yeah, as I talked that one out, I started deciding against it.”
GM: You hear a voice yelling, “It wasn’t me! I didn’t do anything!”
Charlotte: “Do we know for sure that that’s not the sword we’re looking for?”
Dormand: “As the party member who showed up and doesn’t already have a sword, this one’s basically yours, Wynne.”
Wynne: “Take that, Doc!”
Charlotte: “The agents disappeared, they were illusions.”
Dormand: “I had that thought, but didn’t want to say it in case they were real and stabbed us.”
SESSION 23: WARD CRIMES
GM: Sneaking would be Savvy, like every other skill in this system. But I’m gonna make you roll Might just to change things up.
Tristan: They might not see you!
Tristan: “Did it look like they did anything to trigger the teleport?”
GM: They walked into the teleportation circle, cocked their guns dramatically, and disappeared.
Tristan: “Damn, I don’t have a gun. I can’t teleport.”
Dormand: “I hand out a pistol to everyone in the party.”
Wynne: “What did you need me for?”
Charlotte: “They put a curtain over the door out, and-“
Wynne, interrupting: “That doesn’t sound like you need a wizard.”
Ollam-born NPC: “You’re not from the city?”
Dormand: “Do we look dead?”
NPC: “I mean, not everyone in the city is-“
Dormand: “No, dead inside.”
Doc Canard: “We have diplomatic immunity! We’re leaving!”
GM: “I beg to differ,” he says, handcuffing your ship.
Charlotte: “Are we sure the white ship is bad?”
Wynne: “I’m pretty sure bone ships are never up to anything good.”
GM: As you pass the sinking bone ship, you see that it was apparently manned by a bunch of skeletons.
Tristan: “Not many casualties, then. It was a skeleton crew.”
GM: This other ship also appears to be mostly skeletons.
Owen: “Well, soon they’ll be all skeletons.”
SESSION 24: DANTE’S RETURNO
Tristan: “I just need 2,000 gold pieces to make it to the afterlife, but once I get there I will repay you with boons tenfold.”
Dormand: “Imagine that system, but not a scam.”
GM: That’s actually pretty close to old-school, pre-Reformation Christian theurgy.
Dormand: “I said not a scam.”
Charlotte: “I’m also going to try to throw a dagger to Staple him.”
Tristan: “Dante’s about to learn the No Capes rule.”
Owen: “We’re also going to build turbines on the sides of the ship, just to catch people with capes.”
Dormand, after selling Dante his family heirloom sword back: “I’m gonna need a new weapon to hang over my bed.”
GM: Why not just hang the gold?
Dormand: “No, I’m gonna need that gold.”
Charlotte: “Not to pay the crew!”
Dormand: “Yeah, we’ve got seven magical swords, and then there’s that guy who uses a magic axe we stole from Vikings.”
GM: They’re all sporting the same square-styled beards.
Charlotte: “Squares.”
GM: Yeah, like, trimmed to rectangular sort of-
Charlotte: “No, I was calling them squares.”
SESSION 25: SHOOT THE MESSENGER
Dormand: “Of course the dwarves play rock music.”
(The crew goes hunting for a Darrigan East Exports Company convoy, hoping to intercept messages to confirm rumors they’ve been hearing about the Company’s plans.)
GM: You’re 300m from the corvette.
Owen: “We’re closing the distance.”
Tristan: “We’re going for speed.”
Dormand: “The cargo ship’s all alone (all alone!) all alone in its time of need.”
Dormand: “This is where those ten barrels come in handy. Pretty good odds that one of those shots hits the captain.”
Owen: “I’m only gonna fire five barrels at first. In case there’s a first mate.”
GM: Dormand does have some very nice pistols, if I do say so myself.
Tristan: You did say so yourself, a couple sessions ago.
Dormand: You are, in fact, the arbiter of how nice these pistols are.
GM: Where were we? The other ship just repelled boarders, right?
Owen: Yeah, we’re waiting for them to die of old age while Dormand catches the cargo ship.
NPC Sailor, in the brig of a captured ship: “We used to be with the marines, but well, some things got out of hand.”
Dormand: “So was it the captain’s wife, captain’s daughter, captain’s sister…”
Sailor: “Oh no, no. There was an incident with the locals.”
Dormand: “So was it the chieftain’s wife, chieftain’s daughter, chieftain’s sister…”
SESSION 26: ERROR 404, MAGE NOT FOUND
Dormand: “It’s herpes.”
Wynne: “I thought I couldn’t get that. I’m an elf.”
Dormand: “Elf herpes.”
Wynne: “Shit. That’s what did us in the first time, you know.”
GM: “How did we get it here? My friend, we are wizards.” The mages clink their glasses together.
Owen: aims.
Dormand: “Quick, light me on fire so I can go be the distraction.”
Wynne: “I thought you’d never ask.”
Mechanical Serpent: ANTI-FREEZE COMPOUNDS DETECTED.
Owen: “There’s anti-freeze in this world?”
Tristan: “That’s what frost elves have instead of blood.”
Owen: “Knowing this, we could make some more efficient engines. We’re going to need a lot of frost elves.”
Wynne: “Your blood is made of spiders? Prove it.”
Wizard: “No way. I know how this voodoo shit works.”
Wynne: “You can’t do voodoo on spiders.”
Wizard: “Yes, you can. How do you think they got in there in the first place?”
Owen: “More blood spiders, please.”
Tristan: “This is the most critical distraction I’ve ever seen.”
Dormand: “I ask the Silver Mage if he ever surfs.”
Silver Mage: “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Tristan: “Do you consider your golems to be serfs?”
Silver Mage: “No. It’s completely different.”
Dormand: “So we’re calling this guy the Silver Surfer from now on.”
SESSION 27: DEFENDERS OF FREEPORT
Dormand: “How are we hiding our fleet from their airship, Wynne?”
Wynne: “Clouds.”
Dormand: “The classic.”
Tristan: “Hang on. We need to make sure we can get enough cloud cover at the precise angle that the airship will be at.”
Wynne: “One-inch clouds, my favorite.”
GM: The fleet is organized like this. The three man-o-wars are in the center, with a wedge of corvettes coming in first…please don’t draw a smiley face.
Dormand: “They’re hitting us with the Susan Formation!”
Charlotte: “Wynne, do you have any way of throwing Tristan up onto the airship so he can duel them?”
Wynne: “Uh…that depends. Does it matter if I miss?”
SESSION 28: THE BATTLE FOR THE SHARKSPINE
Owen: “Could I convert the harpax to a crew launcher?”
Tristan: “I almost asked for a parachute, but there’s just water under us, so I’d be fine.”
GM: It might just be a Player Character launcher. I don’t think the crew have Fortune Points they can use to survive falls.
Tristan: “Sneaking into a sinking ship might make the infiltration more dicey. By which I mean I’ll have to roll more dice.”
Owen: “If that airship is full of napalm, we probably don’t want it going down anywhere near the port.”
Dormand: “Are you kidding? First we get points for Destroying it, then we get points for the Rescue Operation.”
GM: A magical effect is convincing the universe that the airship is more buoyant than it should be.
Owen: “So we just gotta shout arguments at it and convince the universe otherwise.”
Charlotte: “Social combat it is!”
(Owen shoots a bomb, failing to detonate it)
Charlotte: “All right, time for Plan B. I draw my sword.”
GM: Plan B – stabbing the bomb.
Charlotte: “No!”
(Charlotte tries some tricks with the magic sword she acquired from the scorpionfolk island)
Charlotte: “I want to make Vindictus float around menacingly in front of the soldiers.”
Owen: “Can it make ghost noises too? Or is that out of its wheelhouse?”
GM: A lot of people in the city are celebrating your victory, but there are also a lot of wounded who need attention.
Doc Canard: “Yeah, I’m seeing to them. But I can be drinking while I do it.”
SESSION 29: A PIRATE OF THE PEOPLE
GM: Tristan’s old criminal friend Mable acquires a tavern, after the former owner leaves town suddenly and the nearest competitor mysteriously burns down.
Tristan: “That’s how you run an effective business. A bunch of fortunate coincidences happen that absolutely can’t be traced back to you.”
(Dormand wins an election to the Parliament of Rogues in the Kastos Freeport, and meets some of the locals.)
Dormand: “Ah, long time Freeport resident ‘The Strangler.’ It is good to see you here, as I have done many times in the past.”
Owen: “Famed family man and stalwart member of the community.”
GM: The Strangler is actually the other Docks and Seafarer’s rep in Parliament, so you’ll probably be seeing him again.
GM: In Chadrais they get drunk on wine and have sword fights. But in a noble, chivalrous way, not a white trash way.
Owen: You just said the same thing.
GM: They’re getting smashed on good wine. That’s the difference.
Dormand: “Is our crew just going around bragging, ‘I’m with Captain Dormand. My captain can beat up your captain?'”
Owen: “You gotta know that’s exactly what’s happening.”
Owen: “I don’t think we’re gonna be pushing a ballista all the way through these miles of abandoned tunnels.”
Tristan: “It might come in handy if we run into a balrog.”
GM: You shall not pass! Ka-chunk.
Owen: “I leave all the advanced stuff behind and just tell the crew not to touch any of it.”
GM: They do have a lot of alcohol and they’ve seen the harpax used as a crew launcher, so I make no promises.
GM: You kind of stand out on the streets of Chadrais. For one thing, Dormand is still wearing his pirate captain hat.
Dormand: “It’s just a hat, man. It’s sunny out.”
GM: There’s a golden skull on it.
Dormand: “I’m fashionable.”
(The crew visits an exotic restaurant called XIII Spices in the city of Chadrais, where a former adventurer has hung one of the Seven Swords above the bar.)
Owen: “I don’t think I want minotaur cheese.”
Dormand: “Yeah, I have…concerns about that. Sapience concerns.”
Owen: “Do they…do they have minotaur steaks?”
Waiter: “No, we don’t have those anymore.”
Owen: “Oh, good.”
Waiter: “The minotaurs complained.”
Owen: “…I go get the black powder.”
SESSION 30: THE THREE-COURSE STEAL
(Wynne’s player figures out some of the connections between this campaign and other games I’ve run.)
Wynne: “I’m stealing my own sword from the campaign you ran in high school?”
GM: Your character didn’t have a sword in that game. You were the monk.
Wynne: “But that’s my team’s sword.”
Tristan: “And now it’s our team’s sword.”
Bartender: “What can I get you?”
Tristan: “Whiskey. I’ll take the Rye Of The Beholder.”
GM: …I can’t even be mad, that’s exactly the kind of shit that would be on their menu.
GM: Frost elf cuisine is entirely martini-based.
Wynne: “I come in with all my finest chef tools. Which are mostly knives.”
Tristan: “Those martinis have to be very finely diced.”
GM: Frost elves don’t have crushed ice, they slice the cubes by hand.
Dormand: “How precisely you can cut ice cubes represents your worth as a chef. They have to remain cubes the entire time they’re melting.”
Dishwasher: “Them rumors about frost elf food are true? Even the one about the blood mead?”
Tristan: “Especially that one. But I don’t think Wynne is making that tonight.”
Dishwasher: “That’s probably good. I don’t think we’ve got any virgins on the staff.”
Tristan: “Oh, Wynne usually supplies his own.”
Dishwasher: “Ah, is that your job?”
Charlotte: “I’m thinking we skip the seduction plan and jump to Plan D, break in and fight our way out.”
Wynne: “I thought Plan D was the seduction plan.”
GM: The shopkeeper is not an elf but a human, wearing an outfit that imitates the style of painted elves.
Wynne: “I’m picturing a semi-offensive Halloween costume.”
Tristan: “This is definitely cultural appropriation.”
SESSION 31: DINE & DASH
Doc Canard: “That buried guy isn’t, like, the Saint of Cement, right?”
Tristan: “Apparently there were saints of Chains, Tyrants, Plenty, Blood, and Hope. And none of that sounds like cement.”
Wynne: “When you’ve only got five slots, cement’s kinda hard to justify.”
Doc Canard: “Unless it’s the Saint of Plenty of Cement.”
Doc Canard: “So all we have to do to escape is sprint for several days.”
Owen: “Automatons get tired, right?”
GM: Dormand, you peer into the fog. Then you feel something lick your hand.
Tristan: “Sorry.”
Dormand, simultaneously making the same joke: “Tristan, this isn’t the time!”
Owen: “My magic sword hasn’t said shit. I don’t know what you guys are talking about.”
Charlotte: “Huh. He must not be a believer.”
Dormand: “Well if I can’t see it, I’m just going to assume it’s not there. That served me well with the displacer beasts.”
Retired adventurer, hunting whoever stole his magic sword: “If you’re innocent, you won’t mind waiting here for my healer to come treat your wounds.”
Doc Canard: “No way, that’s my job. I gotta treat his wounds or I don’t get paid.”
Dormand: “My ship is a gig economy.”
Wynne: “Fuck off and chase a different ambulance.”
SESSION 32: THE SALTPETER PRICE
GM: You’re being hunted by Dormand’s clan, who you remember is known for their prowess with firearms.
Doc Canard: “Why couldn’t you be from a friendly clan known for giving out flowers?”
Dormand: “If they just gave stuff away, then I wouldn’t have had to steal it, Doc.”
Doc Canard: “All right Doc, I know this isn’t really your specialty but I need to you tell me where to shoot to start a fire.”
Doc Canard: “We’re…cauterizing the ground.”
Tristan: “Ask your doctor if this target is right for you.”
GM: Two more grenades are thrown into the tunnel as you fall back, exploding behind you.
Charlotte, clearly bored: “Oh no! Ow! They got me!”
Doc Canard: “Ah! My…leg!”
GM: They aren’t fooled by your sarcastic shouting.
Charlotte: “I heard dwarves like grenades.”
Owen: “Oh, dwarves love grenades. It’s like crows and shiny objects. You just have to light one and throw it, and half of them will sprint after it.”
GM: You shoot him, and he drops without a sound.
Doc Canard: “Wow Owen, this silencer you put on my ten-barrel rifle really did the trick.”
Owen: “It’s just one giant suppressor over all ten barrels.”
Adam: The dwarven commandos each hit some sort of button on their carbines, and foot-long blades deploy from the barrels.
Dormand: “All this tells me is that they’re done shooting. And we’re much safer in a melee.”
beat
Dormand: “I’m gonna eat my words when they shoot the bayonets at us.”
SESSION 33: A LOUDER WEAPON FOR A LESS CIVILIZED AGE
Charlotte: “The question is if the sword can scream.”
Tristan: “If a sword screams, and only Owen can hear it…”
Owen: “…Were there any witnesses?”
Dormand: “I’m not too keen on blood sacrifices. We don’t have captives, and I’m not sacrificing the crew.”
Owen: “Not even Jira?”
Dormand: “Not much blood. Too wiry.”
NPC: “I have strangled men with these very hands.”
Dormand: “There’s a guy in Freeport you should meet.”
SESSION 34: NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENS TO THE ZANCHARIANS
(The crew gets a lead on one of the Seven Swords deep in Zanchar, the Dead Continent. They team up with a mysterious and somewhat sinister artifact hunter named Karnassus to go find it.)
Karnassus: “We haven’t built a palisade or anything, but this camp should be secure.”
Owen: I’m building a palisade in the background.
Karnassus: “Jesus Christ, that’s unsettling.” He doesn’t actually say Jesus – insert something from this fantasy pantheon.
GM: You approach the ruined manor.
Dormand: “What MANNER of treasures shall we find? I’ll be here all week, probably.”
Tristan: “How many Fortune Points does it take to skip this whole adventure? Just find exactly what we’re looking for by luck.”
GM: I’m gonna give that a resounding no.
Wynne: “No fortune points?”
Dormand: “Wow, what a deal!”
SESSION 35: MY SKELETON GOD CAN BEAT UP YOUR SKELETON GOD
After a long discussion of whether Doc Canard needs to perform a cavity search on a body for a key:
The NPC who killed them: “You know, he didn’t have a key on him when we crucified him.”
Dormand: “Well you could have brought that up earlier!”
Karnassus: “What do you mean, where have I been? I’ve been up there inspecting the door.”
Tristan, knowing that to be a lie: “Karnassus sus.”
Dormand, going into Among Us mode: “Is the emergency meeting button in the bedroom?”
Tristan: “I just walked past there and didn’t see him doing tasks.”
(The crew unexpectedly runs into Hogarth, the scholar that they met in Nomad a long time ago, in the middle of Zanchar. He asks for their help getting the hell out of Zanchar.)
Hogarth: “A learned man such as yourself would know that-“
Doc Canard: “Who ever said I was learned?”
Hogarth: “…I may have made some assumptions, doc.”
Hogarth: “Could you perhaps detonate those explosives in a way that preserves the engraving on the door?”
Owen: I look back at the door and squint at it for a while. Then turn back and say, “No.”
Doc Canard: “Do you have any idea what this [necromancy-powered ritual] heart might be doing?”
Hogarth: “Beating?”
Doc Canard: “Well get this man a PhD, he’s a physician.”
(The crew tries to escape from the necromancer war that they accidentally stumbled into, and run into one of the participants on the way out.)
Grandmaster Adversarial: “WHO WALKS MY LANDS?”
Dormand: “What did they call us earlier…the ghost? Ghost captain? I’m the ghost captain? BEHOLD, THE GHOST CAPTAIN!”
Owen: “Hand God, do you have an undead dragon or something we can ride out of this bitch?”
SESSION 36: DUDE, WHERE’S MY SHIP?
(Karnassus gets back to the ships before the crew and tries to steal both ships and NPC crew. Also him and his team of artifact hunters may actually be vampires.)
Crewmate: “Prove you’re really the captain. Karnassus said there’s shapeshifters about.”
Dormand: “If I were a shapeshifter, would I be able to recite the full name of Dante Julio Ricardo Vos Riaz de la Voupltaire? The guy you idiots let onto our ship the LAST TIME THIS HAPPENED?”
Doc Canard: “I don’t know how long it takes to treat a bullet wound. Especially one from a vampire.”
Tristan: “This man has two very small bullet wounds in the neck.”
Doc Canard: “Oh no, he’s gonna turn into a gun!”
GM: To be honest, I wasn’t expecting the crew to roll so well there.
Charlotte: That makes six of us.
Dormand: “The difference between me and this cursed sword is that I have a ship and a government office, and Kliss has nothing.”
Kliss, the sword known as the Soulbender: But I do have something, Captain. I have you.
Owen: “Aww.”
Doc Canard: “I just know what I learned in fake medical school. I mean, medical school.”
SESSION 37: WHO’S SHIP IS IT ANYWAY?
Karnassus: “I control this ship!”
Owen: “Does he have a hat? How jaunty is it?”
GM: He’s actually wearing one of Dormand’s hats.
Owen: “Well shit. He may have a leg to stand on, here.”
Kliss: What did I tell you about stabbing? You put it IN.
Dormand: “Don’t tell me how to put it in!”
GM: The lookout spots a sort of bird that lives on land, so you know you’re getting close.
Dormand: “A bird. That’s how we know we’re getting close to a land of strange and unknown myths.”
SESSION 38: WE’RE HERE TO START A RIOT
(The crew finds the legendary City of Starlight, which rumor says is full of gold and diamonds. And which may not be as unoccupied as the stories would have them believe…)
GM: You can tell that you’re being followed.
Dormand: “I am always being followed because I am a leader.”
Wynne, shouting into the woods: “We mean no harm. We’re just here for your diamonds.”
(The crew discovers that the City of Starlight is a city in a bottle, a last remnant of the elven Zancharian Empire that still acts like high elves run the world and all other races are inferior. The crew, being pirates, takes exception to that attitude.)
Tristan, to a human laborer in the City of Starlight: “Stop me if you recognize any of these words. Uprising. Revolt. Proletariat.”
Laborer: “Avonte no vous ektre class struggle?”
Charlotte: “Jackpot!”
Elf: “They apprehended him on the road. That’s the reason the road is there, to apprehend people on it.”
Dormand: “…That’s THE reason?”
SESSION 39: STORMING THE GATES
Tristan: I shove the table at him.
critical fail
Tristan: “Really should have checked to make sure this thing wasn’t nailed down first.”
Charlotte crits
GM: So about that “taking him hostage” thing.
Charlotte: “Oops.”
Charlotte: “I spent a Fortune Point to find us a way in. How lucky. Only six points left!”
Dormand: “I’m waiting for Charlotte to just not roll for the rest of the session, coasting entirely on good luck.”
Dormand: “Hey, Wynne, good to meet up with you again. Did you know that apparently elves can magically fly within city limits?”
Wynne: “I’m sorry, what?”
Doc Canard: “Have you felt floaty today?”
Tristan: “Can we steal some uniforms from these elves?”
GM: You can, but the dwarves might be a little short to pull it off.
Dormand: “Owen, let me stand on your shoulders.”
Charlotte: “We’re gonna Little Rascals this shit.”
Tristan: “Two swords, one stone.”
Wynne: “Two birds, one sword? I don’t know. We’ll work on it.”
SESSION 40: FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
Dormand: “This sword is still morally ambiguous.”
Tristan: “This is where it asks us to fuel it with the blood of orphans.”
Owen: “They might be evil orphans!”
Tristan: “He’ll save children, but not the elven children.”
Dormand: “Elsinier, Elsinier.”
GM: You’re going to jump from the fortress rooftop into the jungle, hitting a dozen branches on the way down, and be totally fine at the bottom, because this is a pulp adventure.
Dormand: “Ah, the mattress trees!”
GM: You see a diamond the size of an egg.
Owen: “When you say egg, are we talking chicken egg, or ostrich egg?”
GM: They see you jumping off the roof, and assume you have some sort of magic to protect you from the fall.
Tristan: “Just the magic of luck.”
Dormand: “Protagomancy.”
Tristan: “After eating that lightning spell, I spend a Fortune Point and jump.”
Charlotte: “I also spend a Fortune Point and jump.”
GM: I’m not shocked.
Charlotte: “No, that was Tristan.”
SESSION 41: AKAB
GM: He fires the bow. blip
Dormand: “The arrow goes blip?”
GM: I was trying to do the bow noise.
Dormand: “The crew hasn’t seen a bow in long enough, we probably just accept that this is what bows sound like. We forgot.”
Dormand: “Jet fuel can melt elven ships.”
GM: If this elven city survives, there are going to be so many conspiracy theories about this day, and the burning of their fireproof ships.
Dormand: “The revolution was an inside job! The empress did it!”
Tristan: “Only elves can fly in this city, but five of the insurgents were seen jumping from the tower roof. Explain that!”
GM: Realistically, you probably wouldn’t be able to turn a ship of this size around in a channel this size.
Tristan: “You just gotta crank the wheel, drop anchor, immediately raise it, and power turn out of there.”
Dormand: “Zancharyo drift.”
Hogarth, sarcastically: “What, are you wanted in Tyb?”
Dormand, Tristan, and Owen: “Maybe.”
(The crew returns to the Kastos Freeport, only to discover that the city has been taken over by the Knights of the Broken Tower, who are in the Boundless Isles looking for stolen royal artifacts from Merdallan.)
Dormand: “I’m disappointed, individually, in each of the various parties that allowed this port to fall.”
Wynne: “Didn’t we teach them to work together and fend off invaders like two weeks before this happened?”
Owen: “Did we not teach them the power of friendship and gun batteries?”
Dormand: “Maybe we did too much of it for them. You know, save a man’s harbor and he’s safe for a day, teach a man to save his own harbor…”
Owen: “Take their harbor and it’s safe for as long as you can hold it.”
Dormand: “So, Tristan, these knights are the people who you weren’t quite good enough to join, right?”
Tristan: “That’s not…quite the way I would have phrased that.”
Dormand: “Maybe he was lying about knowing how to swim.”
Owen: “Is our escort wearing armor?”
GM: Not a full suit, but he did have a breastplate.
Owen: “So he’s done us the favor of attaching weights himself.”
SESSION 42: BLOOD IN THE WATER (LIKE, SO MUCH BLOOD)
GM, summarizing the last session: The party was in the Kastos Freeport, and some shenanigans were going on.
Owen: “You mean the Freeport being a pussy-ass bitch, collectively?”
GM: I wouldn’t go that far.
Owen: Owen would.
Dormand: “You’re good at lying, right?”
Tristan: “Yeah, I’ve told a lie in my day.”
Dormand: “Wrong answer! I need honesty from my first mate!”
Tristan: “I mean, no, I have never told a lie.”
Dormand: “That’s terrible for a pirate! You’re off the crew!”
Charlotte: “I tell them to keep it quiet, because we don’t have the whole ship.”
Doc Canard: “We do have holes in the ship!”
Doc Canard: “That was 4 sixes in a row for me.”
GM: 6666. The number of the superdevil.
Dormand: “If you parry a crit, you have to roll to see if your sword breaks.”
Charlotte: “Well, that might not be so bad for Darkfyre, since you’re trying to melt it down anyway. Would that make it easier to turn it into a gun?”
Tristan: “It’s not broken, it’s just sawn-off.”
(Dormand jumps into a fight to help Owen, who is losing, and is immediately crit for 16 damage in a game where most people have 8-10 health)
Charlotte: I jump into the water with Vindictus.
GM: And we watch as, one by one, each member of the crew jumps into the water and gets crit by Sir Gao.
Dormand: I only let myself get crit to give Vindictus a revenge story. I was the sacrifice to power up your sword.
SESSION 43: KNIGHT COURT
Owen: “I also have Gao’s sword.”
GM: Did you say gout sword?
Owen: “Yeah. One hit poisons people and instantly gives them gout.”
Tristan: “The eighth magical sword…”
Sir Tibrious: “Somebody in this room could have the map, I suppose. But it’s a pretty big parchment to hide.”
Doc Canard snaps a rubber glove tight.
Sir Tibrious: “I was hoping this information wouldn’t reach the ears of every jewel thief in the city…”
Doc Canard: “Well, it’s just us right now in the parliament chambers.”
Tristan: “The lights go on in the spectator booths.”
Knight Errant, explaining a scene that the players had stumbled upon earlier: “He tried selling us a map. It was a fake. Then he, uh… took hostages.”
Doc Canard: “Are there insight checks in this system? Did he plant a gun on him??”
Tristan: “So we still have to eliminate Dante [from this social combat]?”
Dormand: “So when you say ‘eliminate…'”
GM: If you shoot him, it will certainly change the tenor of the knights’ reaction.
Dormand: “Yeah, they’ll be relieved.”
Dormand: “So once we save the city three times, it’s ours, right?”
GM: I think you can exchange those reward points with the Silver Mage. Three points gets you an air fryer.
SESSION 44: BLACK ROAD BECKONING
GM: You’re very wealthy, so your next step is obviously to bury some treasure in a chest.
Tristan: “We need to find those jewels and dig them up, so we can complete our fortune and bury it somewhere.”
Owen: “It’s the circle of piracy.”
GM: You hear a shout from the deck, and a splash from off the side.
Owen: “I head up to the deck to berate the crew again.”
Dormand: “I thought I told you not to fall overboard!”
GM: The sorceress is going to escape out the window in mist form.
Dormand: “Inhale her! Inhale her!”
Tristan, mishearing: “You need an inhaler?”
Charlotte, stabbing furiously: “I’m trying to impale her!”
Owen: “That is some hubris, to just decide to appoint a new god.”
Dysius: “Sir, I am an elf.”
Tristan: “Yeah, that checks out.”
SESSION 45: BUG HUNT
Dormand: “My beard keeps me warm.”
GM: It doesn’t. It’s too cold.
Tristan: “I don my beardfur cloak.”
Dormand: “You have a lot of problems with monsters around here?”
Mining Company Manager: “No, most trouble ’round here comes from the cold, or the natives, or the nameless frost creatures from the deep wastes.”
Dormand: “That…sounds like monsters.”
Dormand: “Monster problem” is similar enough to “Monster Prom” that I have to assume this monster is hot.
Owen: You don’t have to. You choose to.
Dormand: “We’ll pour one out for Derek.”
Miner: “Oh, he’s still alive. He’d probably prefer you buy him a round…”
Dormand: “Nope, too late. We’re already pouring one out in front of him. This one’s for you, Derek.”
Frost Elf Infiltrator: “Now tell me, what is the lineage of the school at which you trained, so I can know whether I shall win or lose this duel!”
Owen: “Frost elves don’t actually duel, they just hurl their credentials at each other.”
Tristan: “What’s your sword ELO?”
SESSION 46: SEE YOU IN ICE COURT
Tristan: When a chase reaches Point-Blank, you get a free action. Making a grapple check, initiating a boarding action, etc.
Owen: Sounds like I’m grappling.
GM: Are you sure you don’t want to begin a boarding action? Every dwarf comes with a contingent of pixie crewmen.
GM: So here we are, on the [B]angman’s [B]ide and the [B]angman’s [B]ake.
Tristan: The Bangman’s Fleet is definitely the name they use in the porno parody of this campaign.
(The crew plans a heist on the Black Road, the legendary ghost fleet of pirate superstition, in order to steal the last of the Seven Swords.)
Dormand: “I don’t think it’ll just be their flagship we have to deal with. I think they have, like, a ghost fleet. Despite the fact that I am the Captain of the Ghost Fleet.”
GM: It seems like she knows something, but she’s reluctant to talk about that part of her past.
Tristan: “We’ll have to employ tact…we’re doomed.”
GM: “Tact” is what Owen named the harpax.
NPC: “The Silver Mage is probably listening to this conversation right now, since we said his name.”
Dormand: “Well, I’m expecting you to come help us when the time comes, wizard.”
GM: There is a rumble of thunder, from a clear blue sky.
Dormand: “One rumble means ‘yes.’ Nice.”
GM: There is another rumble.
Dormand: “Two rumbles mean ‘very yes!'”
SESSION 47: THE BLADE OF NO RETURN
Dormand: “They owe me. Kinda saved the town.”
NPC: “Aye, but what have you done for them lately?”
Tristan: “We’ve got another saving of this town scheduled real soon, actually.”
Dormand, singing: Into da sea /
Into da sea /
Doin’ dark magic /
Summon da tragic /
Captain Sari………no
NPC: “We’ll get this handled. Wink wink.”
Owen: “What’s wrong with your eye?”
NPC: “Oh, nothing. Got a condition. Wink.”
Owen: “We have a doctor. You want him to take a look at that?”
NPC: “Nah. Don’t trust doctors. They’ll just wanna put leeches on my eyes.”
Doc Canard: My ears perk up.
GM: I thought about making the Black Road’s flagship the largest ship size possible, but it seemed weird to have a Size 5 ship burst out of the water and start flying.
Dormand: Yeah, let’s keep it to reasonably sized ships bursting out of the water and flying. More realistic.
Dormand: I think boarding actions can use any career, if it’s relevant.
Charlotte: My only other good skill is Temptress, and I don’t think that applies.
GM: Depends what sort of boarding action you’re trying to make.
GM: It sounds like a freight train passing by, not that Wynne knows what that is.
Wynne: “Eh. I’ll live to see one.”
GM: The last few boarders are still playing jump rope with Owen’s harpoon chain.
Doc Canard: “Guess I’ll challenge them to hopscotch, or something. I’ll just draw the hopscotch squares off the gangplank so they’ll have to jump off.”
Tristan: “Now that’s some mountebanking.”
Doc Canard: “Them’s the rules, boys.”
(The magic sword the crew is trying to steal begins taunting Precipice, the magic sword that Tristan has been using)
Tristan: I was going to start chanting “Sword fight!” But that’s…actually what we’re doing.
EPIOLOGUE SESSION: PATHMAKER’S SECRET
Pathmaker, the Forge God who made the Seven Swords: “The swords do not have their own personalities. They look for certain kinds of thoughts in your head and amplify them, presenting them to you in a different voice.”
Doc Canard, who has been carrying Mournreaver, the Grieving Sword: “Wow, I think I need a therapist.”
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