Black Box: La Llamada de los dioses – Session 1

Last Saturday I began to referee the campaign La Llamada de los dioses of the Black Box of Aventuras en La Marca del Este (previously reviewed in this post) with my regular gaming group at the La Cofradía del rol club from Barcelona. The beginning of this campaign also marks the beginning of a series of articles dealing with our gaming sessions taht also will functions as a campaign journal for my players.

Probably some of my readers are about to begin tehir adventures in this campaign, if this is the case better stop reading this as you are in danger of reading spoilers as says River Song in Doctor Who television series (although teh action of the campaign will probably change due to character's action, the background players made and my ideas).

Before I start let me introduce players and their characters:

And with introductions already made let`s begin this saga:

Characters are aboard Sombra Rauda (Swift Shadow), tha falgship of the Salmanasar Fleet, leaving with sails billowing and flags fluttering in the wind, ready for combat, something that soon happens... and the unexpected happens and all worsens...

Characters wake up with their comrades and the raider (orcs and other goblinoid creatures) corpses around them, they had also randomly lost a piece of equipment (their equipment lists have a series of numbers atached to decide with proper dice rolls which one they loose) and ony have half of their hit points as result of the explosion that shaked the ship, they also discover that the hold where they are is flooding because of some leaks, so the ship risks sinking if these are not plugged.

After this so uncomfortable awakening they begin to explore the ship and soon meet enemies still alive to face them, and can deal them for now thanks to potions to heal light and serious wounds acquired inspecting crew cabins and some ad hoc criticals by Kay (she acheived to decapitate one of the orcs leading the goblins), the Imaginary Fire spell by Morkhan didn't acomplish to scare the green beings (something seeming imposible due to the chaotic explosion and the aparition of flames, but the creatures`s morale check was succesful).

Exploring the ship they eventually discovered Brune, one of the clerics tasked with healing the crew (yes, they were clever enough to discover the poisoned needle trap in the doorknob of Brune's cabin, but this was very easy seeing the amount of green skinned corpses in front of the door and without any sign of a violent death).

Thanks to Brune they know about the hidden trap allowing them to go to the upper deck and surprise the osg and his goblin troops trying to ready the ballistas that were there, in this moment also happened a funny thing as Heldenhammer, who was aboard disguised as a woman thanks his class abilities, decided to change his apperance and improvised a mask to impersonate a goblinoid creature taking advantage of shadows (the other characters obviously didn't expect this to happen but helped to surprise the osg and his troop).
When the deck was cleaned they began to inspect those cabins there and clashed with a giant rats herd and their “shepherd”, a hobgoblin quickly eliminated by Heldenhammer, although the rats were more troublesome (those rolls...).

After dealing with the rats they decided to know where the ship was and a look through one of the opened ballista portholes soon proved that they were in the middle of the sea, no land in sight and no other ship near them. so things were getting complicated... They also decided to investigate the ballistas to check if they can use them to face the enemies that surely still occupied the ship, but owing that these were a bit heavy and that their arrows, as soon realized Kai and Morkhan, are covered with a certain dust (yes, the cause of the explosion at the beginning of the adventure) better not toy with this things as the ship could sink; and speaking of toys, Morkhan tried to build a pair of grenades putting the dust inside two of the glass bottles the group carried with them but his alchemy rolls where not so good so he broke them.

Now they are preparing to climb to the upper deck and the last one to explore, they already know there are orcs inspecting the functioning of the catapult there and the sea is getting rough.
What will happen in the next session?

As is customary to say:

To be continued...

The graphical elements of these post are created with elements from Freepik and Openclipart.

This entry it's also available in the following languages:
Castellano Català