Miners and Mages
Summary
Adventure: The name of the adventure
GM: Phil
Season: Summer 797 WK
- Party
- Kern Silvercrest, An Earth Mage and Capable Fighter. (Elven / 6’2”)
- Raithmoor, A fellow Earth Mage. (Human / Male / 5’6”)
- Dido,An Earth Mage too but also a place of power for our college. (Dwarf / Female / 3’10” good PB - for a Dwarf)
- Red Brian, A fighter of some repute. (Dwarf / Male / 4’2”)
- Antonio (the plant), A renowned Ice Mage of power and prowess. Cunningly disguised behind a screen of bush. (Human / Male / 5’8”)
- Kate, An E & E search mage of note. She has few combat spells but plenty investigative ones. (Human / Female / 5’8” good PB)
- Time on adventure
- tbc 826 WK to tbc 826 WK
- Employer
- someone rich
- Mission
- Hired to do a job
- Original Scribe Notes
- Media:Snsu9707.zip
Scribe Notes
In The Beginning.........
We were all bought together in Guild meeting room 3A after volunteering for this potentially lucrative mission that we’d been offered at the Second quarter guild meeting at the Seagate Guild.
We decide who will take what party positions and Raithmoor is voted leader with Kate as his closest contender. Red Brian becomes the Military Scientist unsurprisingly and I become his second in command in case of mishap. I’m also the scribe as you may have guessed by now!!
Meet with the Bank’s representative and decide that we will opt for the % share of the mine (if found & producing gold that is) rather then the flat 10,000sp each we were offered. We think that 2% of this mine each may be worth it. Decide that we need further equipment and start our purchases.
Tuesday 2nd April 1996
A new day has dawned and we continue our purchasing and preparation for the mission. Have a brief meeting with employer and advise him to return to his plane ahead of us and arrange mounts for those without them (not RB or I), he does so and we continue planning to meet his transportation mage next morning.
Wednesday 3rd April 1996
We arrive at the rendezvous at 9am and see a hunched figure in a dark cloak. We greet him and he turns to reveal old and weathered features as well as his Aura, which we find is that of an extra planer mage. We show him our letter of introduction and he sends us to the other plane - well all but RB who turns up later after his portion of the transport spell was absorbed by his armour for some reason. Once together we reported to our employer in the nearby field for instructions and supplies. We pick up the necessary goods and we then set of towards our initial destination of Lucky Gulch. We travel for the rest of the day and have no significant encounters. However we run into an inordinate number of mages and it seems that people are forced to become mages if at all possible and the most present college is the Namer college cos it seems they will accept just any dim wit with enough MA. In the evening camp is made off the road and watches are set as follows 6pm-10pm Raithmoor and Kern 10pm-2am Kate and Dido 2am-6am Red Brian and Antonio The night passes uneventfully and Red Brian stands guard as we mages purify in the morning before breakfast. Thursday 4th April 1996 We start again on the road towards Lucky Gulch and find it is much the same as the previous day but with traffic diminished somewhat. Late afternoon sees us camping at the roadside again in a secure area. Again the night passes uneventfully. Friday 5th April 1996 After purification and breakfast we again set off and travel all day until early evening when we ride into Lucky Gulch. Don’t ever believe that this place is for tourists as it looks like a ghetto with a low opinion of itself. One that has let itself go to the pack whilst continually vomiting crap. This was being kind to it as it’s a squalid dump if ever I’ve seen one (Caulder’s sewers were prettier and more functional than this town). Anyway we pulled up to the biggest and most solid looking building in this dump and saw that a stiff breeze would blow it and most of the town over but it was the best of a worst lot unfortunately. So stabled our horses in the corral outside and went inside, we were surprised to find people inside it and we acquired a room for the princely sum of 10sp a night. We had a quick round of DA’s on the occupants of the pub and found that one table had 5 people which were all Spies, Thieves or Assassins (4 Thief/ 6 Thief/ 7 Ass/ 5 Spy/ 6 Spy) as well as being Celestial, Mind, Namer, Namer and one other college which we failed to ascertain. Needless to say we were petrified at the thought of spending a night here with such reprobates in close proximity and it did cross our mind whether we should exterminate the vermin here but we didn’t!! The night was spent fitfully whilst fortified and under strict watches in our room but nothing untoward occurred. Saturday 6th April 1996 We left as soon as the sun came up and found few others moving at this time - possibly due to the fact that most of them would be purifying. Anyway we had several Locates on the reprobates as were keeping a close eye on these in case we started to be trailed by them. We continued heading northeast towards the hills. We stop at 10am and make breakfast after checking to see if we have been followed out of town by the “Peasant Slayers”. Dido manages to hide our tracks quite well and after an hour we decide to continue our journey once more. Our line of travel is along the river but we follow it at some distance as we avoid all the staked claims. Most of the miners we see have a very proprietary look about them and we don’t feel they would welcome visits from strangers. An old timer happens along our path (a Namer) and we strike up a short conversation with him, he however seems very closed mouthed about things in general and mining in specific. It seems that everyone is quite paranoid about people and won’t tell anyone anything, which is of value or interest without similar information in return. We encourage the old mans paranoia and after some minutes let him on his way. We continue moving for the rest of the day after a brief stop for lunch in a small hollow. Around 3pm we come across a sizeable claim occupied by 4 dwarfs - 3 working and 1 guarding the area, naturally (obeying the first rule of adventurers - talk to all NPC’s in your path if at all possible) we strike up a conversation and he seems equally closed mouthed as all the rest of the general population. Stop for the night in a secluded copse of trees about 1/2 a mile from the river. We again check the locates on the “Peasant Slayers” (the reprobates from Lucky Gulch) and find something very interesting - around 11pm the locate on one of them lifts off from town and flies in our direction, passing by at some height and continuing on towards the Fort that we are heading in the direction of. Night passes without any further occurrences. Sunday 7th April 1996 The dawn brings another overcast day but with some sunshine, the mages all arise early and undertake purification for three hours until 9am. A quick breakfast follows (having been prepared by Red Brian) and we break camp and rejoin the trail by 930am. Around 1130am we encounter a squad of Ducal troops from the 27th Imperial Skirmishers in fine livery - lead by Captain Durrick. We discuss the area and it’s safety at some length with the Captain while his troops stand at ease. We don’t however find out much information from the good Captain and after some 15 minutes we are again on the trail. The locates reveal that one of the reprobates is still at the fort and we decide that it would be a good place to avoid. We therefore have Kate locate the fort before we are in sight of it and then arrange for us to detour around the fort at a distance of no less than 2 miles. The fort itself seems quite sturdy from our limited sightings and all the open ground for some distance has been staked out as claims but not mined in any way. We surmise that the area is a planed killing zone and we were right to avoid it. The travel through the woods near the fort slows us down somewhat and we rejoin the trail proper around 2pm. We continue our travels until 6pm; we do stop occasionally and make attempts at hiding our passage from any peering eyes. Dinner sees the cooks squabbling about what we shall have and Raithmoor makes one of the quick, insightful and decisive decisions that he is renowned for and details the cook with the most experience (ranks) to be in charge. What a truly inspired and unexpected decision......... The night however passes uneventfully once dinner is over and the heat from the food has died down. Monday 8th April 1996 The morning sees us up bright and early to greet the mediocre day which has dawned and we mages proceed with our daily ritual of purification followed closely by the casting of a multitude of spells for the day ahead. Since we are now past the fort we move closer to the river, as all the claims are back downstream past the fort. We find the river not to be deep but fast running in places and cool. We pass a ford in the river and soon afterwards pass a ford across the other side of the river (the northern side) and I examine more closely the maps we have in our possession in order to gain a better perspective on the geography of the surrounding area. The mountains to our north seem linked as part of a chain with the nearest mountain being classes as “medium”, the middle being “huge” and the three along the backbone being “big”. At around 2pm after a spot of lunch on a small grassy knoll beside the river we pass a small sign saying “Once beyond sign you are beyond the range of Ducal protection. May God have mercy on your souls”. We are outright pleased at seeing this sign as it coincides nicely with the passages from the journal that we have in our possession. Our days travel continues on until 6pm again when we set our camp off the trail and in the woods by some 50 yards (it got too thick after this point), camp is set up and food is cooked to the most experienced cook after no debate and we settle down to sleep. This is rudely interrupted at 3am when Red Brian hears some noise in the near woods, quickly the party is roused and before we are ready Red Brian charges off headlong into the undergrowth after Kate (with her Wizards Eye up) reports back “ Oh, they are only very short - stunted even - Goblins “, Raithmoor casts his special spell of Earthhand of something and splatters a goblin completely. Two other Goblins run away as fast as they can and are not seen of again, we get the body and examine it, we then dispose of it in the nearby bush and return to our restful slumber. Tuesday 9th April 1996 Sun up sees us purifying in preparation for possible encounters in this very hostile terrain and it is not until about 920am that we break camp and start on our way northwards. At 130pm we sight a stream on the other side that turns northish - we plot this and continue along the riverside. We continue our travel until 5pm when we find a tributary on our side of the river. We decide to set camp here and arrange our watches after a hearty meal. We have delineated the area whereby the northern side of the river is characterized by as being “copse and hilliest” and the south side “bushy”. Antonio does some spying with his crystal of vision upstream and espies a boat, which we will investigate tomorrow as it was mentioned in the journal. It starts raining around 2am but the night passes without incident.
Wednesday 10th April 1996
The morning dawns wet and misty but we purify and leave the camp by 9am. At around 930 we spy something floating downriver and find it to be the remains of a barrel, we surmise this to have come from the boat and it looks like there has been some smashing of this barrel. We decide to make haste and proceed at a fast pace. We cross to the north side of the river by way of a small ford and proceed towards the boat we sighted in the crystal. We arrive at the boat - which now turns out to be a wreck that has been beached by pulling it up on the bank. We see some giant footprints at either end of the vessel where they obviously pulled it onto the beach and broke into the hull by smashing in one end. It also looks as though there has been
