Happenings and Going Ons in the Red Frontier Part 3: The End?

With a combination of procrastination and laziness, I've neglected updating this blog for awhile now. I owe my players, and you, the readers an apology. I'm sorry. While I've slacked off on doing session reports, I still keep session notes. Unfortunately when I go back to read them, they come across more of the mad scribblings found in the Necronomicon rather than actual notes. Moving on.

Between sessions 42 thru 49, the players mostly stayed underground, looting the ancient dwarven keep while using Undertown as a base of operations. That said, through using random encounters from the DMG, MM 1& 2, and the Fiend Folio, they've made a couple of allies. First, while exploring a bit outside of the keep, they came across a caravan of silver gnomes. The party quickly befriended said gnomes and learned of a great trouble emerging in the northern crystal forests. The gnomes once lived there but were forces out and now residing is the Cyclops Lord. This vile creature has been gathering forces to him for unknown purposes. The players invited the gnomes inside the keep and soon the diminutive race began trading with the denizens of Undertown. 

The party also came across a band of albino Bugbears who quickly surrendered after their leader was dispatched. After some minor interrogation, the party learned that the bugbears were heading north, to go in service with the Cyclops lord. Growing concerned, Laughing Fox decided to take the bugbears to Cyclops and pretend to ally with him, but spying on him all the while. He left out of the end of July and planned to stay at least a month before deciding to leave out or continue to spy for longer. I'll get back to him in a bit. Another faction that the players came across were mongrelmen in the ruined levels of the keep itself. They were forced out of their home by forces of the cyclops lord and found a tunnel leading to the keep. They soon became under the protection of the dwarves. 

During one session, the party came across some green dwarves performing some weird ritual inside the keep. They killed two but the leader disappeared within the acid pool that had a strange tree growing out of it. Another time they managed to get down to the second level, which turned out to be a long abandoned dwarven town. Spooky.

Eventually Laurentius, verging on level 9, decided to venture out of the depths and head down south to the vast coastal city of Ies-Ton. He wanted to see if he could gain support for a plan involving him building fortifications going north along the Thundhr river to finally connect to Pottsfort. He's gained support, but also some resistance threatening his life. That said, the king of the city and most of the city counsel have agreed to his plan but under the condition he brings his former ally Boldvay the Black to Ies-Ton for justice. Preferably alive, but dead if left with no choice. He's agreed to this but is seeking a way to redeem his friend and maybe even change his alignment. Laurentius also found a letter in his abode telling him there are forces that will try to stop him, even if it means to end his life. Hopefully things will work out for him.

Back to Laughing Fox. After some time, he managed to finally make it to the far northern crystal forest. What was once a glittering and glimmering hope in the vast underground, was now darkened and poisoned. Forces of orcs, goblins, giants, among others, were slowly gathering to the new lord. After using his magics against a goblin in a show of brute force, Laughing Fox was accepted among the underground vermin. Since he wasn't an assassin, I ruled that I would have to roll on a more difficult mission table on the spying table in the DMG on page. Laughing Fox's player accepted this. Once a week, I rolled and for three weeks he was successful in spying. On the fourth week however, it all went south. Rolling on the captured table, Laughing Fox was found out as a spy, captured, and eventually killed. That said, he never gave up any information about who he was or about Undertown and Pottsfort. This hurt as while it is the job of the DM to remain neutral, one does eventually root for and even become attached to the players' PCs. And Laughing Fox was one of the longest running PCs. He's now with The Great Spirit.  

So where does this leave us? Not sure to be honest. At the moment I've not run any games in over a year, including Red Frontier. When I do get back to running something, I doubt it'll be The Red Frontier. Or at least not in it's current form. Maybe Red Frontier Rebooted or something. Regardless, I'm going to try to be diligent in writing session reports in a more timely manner whenever I start back. I've had fun running this game for some really great players, and have learned a lot that I can apply to whatever comes next. Hopefully I can get something started sooner rather than later. Until then, fight on!

The Bandit Problem: Or What Happens When the Game Goes on WITHOUT THE DM!

Well mostly. Anyway, during the month of March of 2023, Boldvay came across some bandits, stole their loot. He then got a couple of patrons involved and they soon went to battle against the bandits. I had no involvement in this: Boldvay encountered the bandits on his own during downtime. For the battle, I told them to use the rules and keep me informed in what transpires. If I'm not mistaken, Boldvay used his wargaming rules based off of AD&D 1E/Chainmail to run this battle. And that's it! I find it more than interesting how campaign events can spontaneously happen without the aid or knowledge of the dudgeon master. With downtime, 1:1 time, and patrons, campaigns truly become living and can continue on without any input from a DM. Here's a doc written up by Boldvay on went down: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZuIh1WtKRA50-leLI06v-k6iArn6qEYEDPKoyV5rmiI/edit. Also, here's some links to a couple of sessions Boldvay ran in the Red Frontier to give you more background. In fact, you should check out his blog Fantastic Wargames Campaigns and read about the game he runs!

Happenings and Going Ons in the Red Frontier Part 2

These events took place during August thru October of 2022

While the Urgak and Wier were preparing to fight against the forces of Law, the players were busy making their own plans. Using the Eagle Eye treasure found in Cahn's treasure hoard, Boldvay cast levitation and invisibility on Mark the Thief to have him fly far into the air to spy on the forces of Chaos to the east and southeast. He managed to see a large force getting ready in some ancient city on the coast of Crystal Lake. Made up of hill giants, neanderthals, green dwarves, bugbears, iron golems, a dragon, and many others. It was more than enough to wipe out Pottsfort and the surrounding areas. And towards the east, Mark saw the burning fort of the Knights of Chic Fa'lar.

Lord Commander Roggett commanded most of the civilians to seek shelter in the Power Station with a company of his troops and some mercenaries for protection. He and most of his troops decided to stay and fend off the oncoming armies. Zappos, the eccentric wizard, decides to use the Black Eidolon for the upcoming battle. Boldvay decides to summon two efreeti to aid the forces of law. He also decides to the scroll of summon undead legion. The only problem is finding enough corpses for such a task. Zappos approaches him and tells he know of a place where he can contact a being who lords over another domain. A being who could aid him with supplying with such a force. But doing so is dangerous, and could very well cost Boldvay much. Boldvay doesn't hesitate and asks Zappos to lead him to such a place.

Zappos, using his teleportation mirror, takes Boldvay to a small secluded lake in the southwest. They arrive at night and it's cold. Boldvay can hear whispering in the back of his mind. Zappos uses words of power to summon the DM of Brovenloft, Moundshroud of the Mists. 

Anyway, Boldvay and Quirkus soon set out to the north shore of Crystal Lake before Wier's forces can get there. Quirkus, in the crab mech, casts invisible, uses the control dragon potion and takes possession of one of Wier's dragons and manages to destroy some of the Dark Lord's forces. Boldvay then meets Wier and the rest of his forces at the northern shore of Crystal Lake while Quirkus gets out of sight. The powerful mists Brovenloft emerge from the woods just north of coast. Through the mists, a large army of undead make their way to the invaders. Ghostly tendrils and envelops the beached army. In no time, it kills the remaining forces and takes their souls and Boldvay to it's fog-drenched realm.

 

Wier then returns to the ancient city and realizes that his remaining troops found an underground bunker containing a cache of ancient, future tech weaponry, including nukes and a stargate. Wier's player, who is also a patron in both in Dubzaron and Brovenloft, will surely put such weaponry to use in those campaigns! I'm sure this in no way will come back to bite me in the ass (it does)!

With Boldvay gone, the Efreeti were no longer under his control, and decide to burn down most of Pottsfort before leaving. The Lord Commander declares Boldvay a wanted man. Another thing, between making a deal to destroy an undead army, and allowing the efreeti to run destroy Pottsfort, Boldvay's alignment changed to Chaotic. 

Soon some of the players travel to Brovenloft themselves. I don't know much about those adventures as I only ran two sessions in that setting. The first the players had to drive a tank from Boldvay's fort to aid the force's of Eddie. Not much happened other than encountering some giant snakes and hippogriffs. The next session though proved to be game changing to Brovenloft itself. 

They meet up with my patron there, Reverend Hopkins. Hopkins gives them the idea to nuke the Brovenloft city of Dublin due to him thinking that the Irish there were going to become a major threat later on. Two of the players gleefully accepted the mission and managed to out maneuver angels sent by the Pope himself and ultimately kamikazed themselves by flying the nuke, which was powerful Tsar bomb originally found in the Red Frontier, into the city of potato demons. This was hilarious! I used a combination of grenade throwing rules from AD&D 1E with this website. It was a hit and proved to be devastating. Not really sure what happened afterwards but it was fun. Eventually some of the players, and Boldvay himself, managed to make it back to the Red Frontier. And that's it for now!

Frontier Bulletin 41: We're Back!

So last Friday was the first Red Frontier game in months that I ran after taking a brief hiatus. There's a lot that happened after my last post (which occurred last fall). Heck, even the player of Boldvay took over a bit to run the Red Frontier to try to connect my world with his own. But those are all for other posts. Let's dig in on what happened last Friday instead!

The Players:

Mark the Gnome level 8 Thief

Laurentius, level 7 Cleric

Mnemonic, level 1 Magic-User

Plus Mnemonic's faithful war hound

The session begins in the so far unnamed underground town that many of the survivors of Pottsfort have made. This town is located in the same area where the battle between the albino orcs and the Duran Durin took place. The surviving albino orcs were driven out by the gloom crawler and that fowl beast was destroyed by the players. Gnarly stuff! Since I didn't have much planned for this session as I was more concerned about getting back into the saddle, I had to improvise! During the months off, many more of Durin's clansmen arrived at the Power Station and two weeks before the session, a small group of dwarven scouts decided to explore the underground river that the orcs had escaped on. A day before the session started, they reemerged and told the party what they found: the orcs!

They followed the river for a few days and eventually emerged into another gargantuan chamber, even larger than the one they left in. Following the first hook of the river they found an ancient dwarven keep on it's other side. This surprised them as they and the other dwarves of the Shaggy Mountains believed that they had never travelled this far down under the Devil's Spine. They noticed two cone towers flanking the five story cubical keep, along with two smaller cone towers on it's top. And spanning over the width of the river was an ancient stone bridge. On the opposite bank, the glowing forest of giant mushrooms and ferns grew and spanned the length of the river as far as the eye could see. But the dwarves noticed an orc patrol among the bridge and being a small group decided to head back.

Back to our players. Having this information, the party decided to investigate said keep. Instead of take a boat like the dwarves did, they instead took their hovercar. They made good time and arrived at the keep the next morning without any encounters. Nearing the bank of of the river where the keep resided, the players heard a disturbing sound of tribal chanting and drumming. Along the top of the ancient keep, they saw the eldritch glow of great, green flames. The party came up with a plan. First, Laurentius cast Silence on Mark. Mark then downed a potion of Giant Strength. After that, Mark went ahead of the group to scout. Nearing what was left of a stone wall that circled the keep, Mark discovered a small patrol of orcs. He decided to surprise the orcs while charging but failed. Doesn't matter though with his giant strength, he managed to punch a large whole into a orc with his mace. The rest of party made quick work of the remaining orcs.

With Silence still in effect, Mark climbed the nearest tower. Once on top, he spied a horrid sight: across the fifteen foot gap between the tower and keep, he sees what appears a giant, black statue of a frog with bat like features behind the green flames, and an orc priest holding a hairy dwarven baby over an alter before the green fire with one hand and in another a cruel dagger while many orcs and some squirming dwarven captives. Before the vile priest could sacrifice the babe, Mark unleashed a crossbow bolt into the priest. The surprised priest was instantly killed and dropped the still alive baby amongst it's kin. The orcs stopped their evil chanting and drumming and looked around stunned, not knowing what to do. Mark then descended down the tower and met with the remaining party.

The players soon entered in the opened doors of the keep and were soon met by a few albino orc wars descending down stairs on their right. Combat was soon met and even with a few more reinforcements, the orcs proved to be no match and were put down by the party. The players soon made quick work of the remaining orc women and children and rescued the dwarf captives. The dwarves proved to have a strange appearance: more of neaderthal look along with even more hairy bodies then their above ground counterparts. While their dwarvish was a little different than what the players were used too, they soon made out that the dwarves were from a village in the southeast that was raided by the orcs. They invited the players to their village but the players politely declined. They soon explored the keep.

There wasn't much left in the keep. The entrance to the lower levels, including the vault, were blocked by giant stone blocks. That said, on the last floor leading up to the roof, they did precure a great haul. Ten 2' tall dwarven statues made of gold and having ruby eyes and each weighing fifty pounds and worth 20,000 gp, four magic scrolls, a spell book, on bag containing 3,000 gp, another with jewels worth 10,000 gp, and among the body of the orc priest, a book of black leather with the face of Tsathoggua. After this, party made their way back to the underground town. Mnemonic gained enough xp to get to level 7, but must find out a higher level M-U and take seven weeks to train. Both Mark and Laurentius gained a level but must train for a week each.

A couple of last things. By now we've switched from ACKS to AD&D 1E, which I might explain why later in another post and that I took Jeffro Johnson's advice about stealing adventure hooks from the pulps. With this adventure I took "inspiration" from both H.P. Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu" and especially from Robert E. Howard's chilling short story "The Black Stone." Both are highly recommended! Remember folks, Appendix N and the pulps in general are you friend!

Happenings and Going Ons in the Red Frontier Part 1

Unfortunately, I've slacked off on posting Frontier Bulletins for the Red Frontier for some time. This is due to my own laziness. Instead of writing and posting for each session after the Battle of the Vampires, I'm gonna do a recap and catch everyone up on what's been going on.

Urgag

First up, the two major patrons of of Chaos decided the time was right to attack the forces of Law in the Red Frontier. The Dark Lord Wier and his underling Urgag, the Orc Chief attempted to combine their forces to bring darkness and desolation to the frontier. They failed. But not due to a large battle between the forces of evil vs good. No, it was mostly due to the ingenuity of the players and an outside force. Their plan was to send the orcish forces towards Pottsfort Keep in hopes in drawing out the Lord Commander and his allied forces into a trap. With them away engaging with the orcs, Weir would bring his much larger force from behind to catch the Lord Commander unawares. Once done, they would soon bring their force to lay siege and capture the lone keep.

Before Urgag could make it to the keep, he was spotted by scouts from the nearby Knights of Chick Fa'lar. They soon waylaid on Urgag, but to no avail. Urgag rolled to see if his forces were surprised; they were not. He soon turned his attention upon the hapless knights. I used the same method for mass combat that I used during the battle between the dwarves and albino orcs and that of Urgag's forces when they took the first level of the Old Bastard. Number wise, Urgag's forces numbered about 268, whereas the knights only numbered less then 150. But the knights had two other disadvantages: 1) they were fighting in wooded, hilly country and 2), Wier, along with a small entourage, joined in the battle. Weir summoned a giant demonic spider (from ACKS Heroic Fantasy Handbook) that he road as a mount, and entered into the fray devouring anyone who got in his way. The knights tried to fight bravely, but were forced to withdrawal once over half of their forces fell quickly in battle. Unfortunately they were unable to, due to being forced to retreat uphill and were quickly cut down by the larger force.

While this was going on, a much smaller group of Urgag's forces that was left in the Old Bastard decided to scout around the knight's fort. They arrived around night and with a group of about 50, including about ten giant albino weasels, tunneled underneath the fort and managed to slay many of the sleeping forces. Those that were awakened and trying to scramble to get away, were soon killed. Urgag's main forces travelled to the now captured fort and set it ablaze. 

This ends Part 1.

Frontier Bulletin 24: The End of Cahn or Vampire vs Kaiju!

Players:

Laughing Fox, Shaman

Dogbreath, Fighter

Hellena Keller, Dwarf Machanist

Laurentius, Cleric

Boldvay, Magic User

Mark, Thief

Whiskey John, Explorer

Plus Boldvay's dog

After being forced to retreat twice, and at deadly costs, the players were taking no chances against the ancient vampire Cahn and his undead army. Some sessions back, the players had found the Black Eidolon and it's manual. The last session they befriended a family of storm giants, the Bunyans. With these turn of events in mind, they quickly formulated a plan. They decided to be back at the mines after sunrise, have Zappos the Wizard to summon and use the Black Eidolon to dig out the vampire horde, and finally get the Bunyans to pour down their holy water upon the hellish undead. Simple, right? Pretty much and it was executed nearly perfectly.

Flying with the giants in their castle Storm-Anvil, the players quickly arrived at the deadly mines as the sun was rising. Zappos began the hour long summoning process of the Black Eidolon. The players themselves prepared themselves. The Black Eidolon, which was just a foot tall black statue, grew into a gargantuan 300 ft tall, animated golem. With Zappos controlling the giant, eldritch weapon, it began to dig into the mine with its mighty hands. 

Soon, many of the vampires began falling from the eidolon's hands, landing into ash. The other undead, ghouls, wights, skeletons, etc., landed on the ground, crumpled and unmoving. Some of the older vampires (probably Cahn's daughters) tried to escape by flying away as giant bats, but were burned away by the sun. . While the eidolon was digging, the Bunyans let loose their pool of holy water to rain down upon the vile dark creatures and flooding the mines. Finally, a black stone coffin fell unto the ground. 

Before the party could get to it, a black, many eyed and tentacled eldricth horror from ancient times emerged from the now gaping pit: a Shoggoth! It grappled with the Black Eidolon who was forced to stop it's digging. Unfortunately for the tentacled, many eyed creature, it proved no match to the gargantuan stone giant. The shoggoth let out a high pitched, artificial sounding scream, and was soon torn apart and stomped on until it stopped moving. 

The players soon raced towards to the coffin. They pried it open to shine some light on Cahn. Clad in his black armor with red bat, he began to emerge while half burning away. Laughing Fox, in a moment of mad genius, covered his naked hand in garlic and punched Cahn in the face. Cahn flinched, but Laughing Fox was drained, again, of two levels. Sad!

Cahn soon succumbed to the rays of the sun, and now only ash lay within his black coffin. Lauerintius had the other pour some of the holy water inside the coffin, just to be sure. With the vampire menace destroyed, the party soon looted Cahn's treasure chambers. And a great haul was obtained! They found many spell scrolls (including Wish!), much coins and gems, and even some magical items, including a pair of Eagle Eyes. In Cahn's coffin, a Rod of Control Shoggoth was found. Zappos claimed this as his part of the loot, while the Bunyans took a share of the coins and gems. After all was said and done, the Bunyans bid their farewells and headed west, and players and Zappos set forth back to Pottsfort.

Frontier Bulletin 23: Stony Roosters & Dead Horses

Laughing Fox: Shaman, lvl 5

Helena Keller: Dwarf Machinist, lvl 4

Boldvay: Magic-User, lvl 4

Mark: Thief, lvl5

Whiskey: Explorer, lvl 2

The party kept their word and returned to the Power Station the next weekend. They left out on Friday but unlike their last trip, this one proved more eventful. That first night, they encountered a flock of 4 cockatrices who were flying towards the group's camp. Neither side were surprised, and fighting soon broke out. Spells were cast, including Holy Chant, Dispel Magic, Phantasmal force, and soon to follow, Spiritual Weapon. Arrows and bolts were launched as well. Mark used the opportunity to use the Horn of Blasting at the foul creatures. This, while proving very effective, scared off all the horses. Still, not long after, the party emerged victorious. Laughing Fox collected the bodies of the stony birds and the players decided to settle back in for the night and to search for the horses in the morning.

Early the next morning, a couple of the horses comes back to camp. The party soon leaves to search for the others. While most of the party stays in their wagon, Whiskey stays ahead of the group on foot, looking for tracks. They venture towards the northeast, and finally after some hours of searching, stumble upon horse tracks. They lead to a copse where they can see flying above a hippogriff with one of their horses clutched in it's claws. It soon drops the horse, and they hear a sickening wet crunch. The players then notice one of their other horses fleeing from the copse and is headed their way, with about six hippogriffs hot on it's trail. 

The players grabbed Whiskey and Laughing Fox decides to use the fleeing horse as a "snackrifice" so that the party can get away in their wagon. I ruled that each of the hippogriffs have a 33% to continue to focus on the poor horse instead of the party. Two of the hungry creatures made the roll and soon flew off with neighing horse. The horses tied to the wagon see and hear what happens to their equine companion and soon break morale and flee, taking the wagon with them. The remaining four hippogriffs soon chased after the now fleeing party in their wagon! Laughing Fox tried to cast a spell against the flying beasts, but I ruled that since the terrain was rough, he wouldn't have the focus needed to properly cast his spell. 

The wagon manages to stay ahead of the hippogriffs, but just barely. Many in the wagon use their missile weapons, which prove effective. Boldvay uses up another charge for his Staff of Wizardry and casts Fireball. This roasts and drops the pursuing bird horses. They finally reach back to their camp of the previous night, where they find two more of their horses waiting for them. Eventually, they make their way up to the Power Station where they are greeted by the welcoming dwarves. They also find that the Joe Bridger III has finished up the gunpowder. 

They stay the night and Laughing Fox, Joe, and Helena use the combine the bodies of the cockatrices with some of the gunpowder to make grenades that can explode and cause the targets to make a saving throw against petrification or be turned to stone. Nice. They head back the next day and on their way home, encounter a family of storm giants flying around in their cloud castle. I decided that these were the same storm giants that Urgag the Orc Chief (a patron player) encountered earlier in the week. He tried to recruit them but with them being Lawful, they told him to get on and leave them be. I also decided since they're lawful beings, the Bunyans (as Urgag called them) are also good Christian giants. 

They hailed the players and told them not to be afraid. They invited them to their cloud castle, Stormanvil. The giants treated the players well and took them back to Pottsfort. They even showed them their giant pool of holy water that they kept in case they ran into foul demonic or undead creatures during their travels. The players then asked them if they could help them with their vampire problem. The giants agreed, and decided to stay around Pottsfort for the following week. The rest of that story is soon to follow...