I keep slacking on posting summaries for the Hangout games I run, so I decided to go for a long, proper summary for…

I keep slacking on posting summaries for the Hangout games I run, so I decided to go for a long, proper summary for this latest one. 

Last week, I ran a Hangout session for some players new to DW, and we had an absolute blast! I’ve decided coming in with 0 prep (or as little prep as possible) for a one shot / potential for more proved excellent: bonds and questions gave us a setting, a story, and boom we were off!

What happens when a ragtag group of adventuring heroes goes after a powerful, magical artifact, guarded by a giant, in an abandoned fortress that was once home to an ancient race of giants?

Fair warning: LONG summary coming up and the fights get a bit graphic. For anyone who’s interested, enjoy! 🙂

In our first session, our three main heroes: Scarr the Human Fighter, Avon the Human Wizard, and Herran the Human Druid were approached by the Thieves Guild of Cragport, where one of the thieves told Avon that if he and his mates journeyed across the sea to Jagged Rock and found and brought back Bort the Nimble, dead or alive, the Thieve’s Guild would forget the whole fiasco with the fairy gold Avon tried to fool them with and the whole ordeal with the Nine Serpents gang retaliating; furthermore, the Thieve’s Guild would owe the heroes a favor. That’s always nice, right?

Bort the Nimble, a halfling, was a high-ranking member of the Thieves Guild and a famous ‘Robin Hood’ type amongst the poor, starving citizens of Cragport. The nobles despised him, and had been quite content with his disappearance at Jagged Rock – the rocky island in the middle of the sea filled with the abandoned ruins of a great, stone fortress that was once home to an ancient race of giants. Bort the Nimble was allegedly seeking an ancient and powerful, magical artifact: a statue of a stag carved out of an ancient, mystical wood with the power to control time and the seasons themselves.

Avon, Scarr, and Herran accepted the job, and sought out a ship that would take them across to Jagged Rock. With hardly any gold amongst the three of them, the heroes sought out a desperate-looking crew and met Captain Burma who agreed to sail them across in exchange for a portion of the treasure the heroes promised him and his men.

Upon reaching Jagged Rock, Herran took the form of a hawk and scouted on ahead. He spotted the giant tentacle of a kraken and flew back to alert the others. The captain immediately turned the ship to circumnavigate it. As the ship approached the right side of the island, Herran continued to soar in the air above, scouting for danger, and danger found him first when an eagle lord came swooping in from out of the fog and snatched Herran’s whole body in its talons. Scarr threw random barrels at it that he found on the ship, and Avon cast magic missiles at it, singing its wings and forcing it to let go of Herran, which caused it to fall straight down onto the deck of the helm. Herran swooped over it, quickly transformed back into a human, and immediately morphed into a bear, executing what druidic scholars would, in later years, refer to as ‘The Bearbomb’ technique. 

With the eagle lord’s body crushed and its skull cracked open, Avon took the skull and several talons for keepsake, and the heroes left Captain Burma and his crew as they stepped ashore onto Jagged Rock. 

Avon immediately sensed a strange, unnerving magical presence permeating throughout the island that even forced Scarr and Herran to feel uneasy. Up a pathway straight ahead and through the mountain, toward the left, was the mouth of a dark cave fit for giants. There were stone pillars of various sizes scattered around the entrance and along the path to the bottom of the mountain. Giant faces were carved into the stone – some cyclopean in nature. 

Heading up the path, the heroes reached the cave only to find themselves flanked on either side by fiery imps that suddenly emerged from behind the stone sculptures and rocks. A fierce battle ensued as the heroes pushed forward, picking off the imps ahead of them one by one: Avon slinging off magic missiles like a cowboy, Herran scaring off imps with his intimidating bear shout and rendering them to bits with his sharp claws, and Scarr cutting them down with his sheer strength and signature weapon, Tormentor – a huge, jagged sword he took after finally killing the orc leader that kept him prisoner for most of his life. 

Inside the dark cave, the white light from Avon’s staff revealed a crater with the crumbled, stone ruins of the fortress at the bottom of the steep, rocky sides of the crater. As the heroes made their way down, the hordes of imps still left behind began magically disappearing and reappearing in front of them as Mrs. Eagle Lord made her grand appearance and swooped down from the top of the cave – where a hole large enough for her to fly through opened up to the sky above.

Scarr leapt at the eagle lord as she swooped down to attack him and caught her by the neck, snapping it and tumbling down the steep hill to the bottom of the crater. Herran and Avon followed as they fought off more imps in the process; and, upon reaching the bottom, they saw a gigantic, mausoleum-like structure with a dark, open doorway large enough for a giant to pass through at the opposite side of the crater.

The heroes began making their way over to the entrance when they suddenly heard a loud, bellowing groan emanating from within. At the same time, the last third of the army of imps appeared and charged down the rocky hill – their tiny little bodies ablaze with magical flames. A gigantic creature emerged from the darkness of the mausoleum entrance; and, as it got a little closer, Avon’s light revealed it to be a chimera getting ready to release a powerful, fiery breath. 

Chaos ensued; and, in all the chaos of fighting imps and avoiding the chimera’s fiery blasts, the heroes eventually discovered that the chimera was actually targeting the imps – and it quickly lost interest in them when a group of imps entered the mausoleum, and the chimera chased after them. It eventually turned back and sent blasts of fiery breath in all directions in order to incinerate the imps. The heroes, of course, were caught in the crossfire, and Herran, stunned, broke his leg after one of the blasts caused a chunk of fallen building to collapse on him. Scarr helped him out by lifting it and freeing Herran, who turned into a bat and flew on ahead. Avon, meanwhile, found himself trapped in a tight corner as he fought off a small group of imps with his glowing staff. Scarr came to assist him, slaying the remaining imps but becoming separated from Avon in the process and forced to run right into the fray of the chimera’s spitfire. Avon reached the mausoleum entrance without any further scrapes, while Scarr endured the flames, taking minimal direct damage but burning underneath his armor; nevertheless, he joined up with Avon and Herran, who utilized his supersonic capabilities to detect what lay past the giant entrance.

Inside, the heroes saw a chamber that was at least four times as big as the mausoleum was from the outside. Two, giant-sized treasure chests stood at opposite ends on the left and the right, respectively, surrounded by mounds of shimmering gold. Up ahead, the heroes spotted the dead, battered, and broken body of Bort the Nimble lying next to a giant, rectangular pool of water with wide and enormous, stone steps leading down into a hallway large enough for two giants to walk through side by side.

Upon examining Bort the Nimble’s lifeless body, Avon discovered a scroll with a crudely drawn map/blueprint of the giant’s fortress. The heroes learned that their adventure would continue downward, to the depths below Jagged Rock and the sea – that was where Bort the Nimble was headed and where they would find the magic stag.

Avon stuffed Bort the Nimble’s body into a sac, and the heroes worked together to climb into one of the giant’s treasure chests before making camp for the night – knowing the chimera was still out there as well as, perhaps, the imps.

Thus ended the first session. I want to thank Eadwin Tomlinson Isa Wills and Penda Tomlinson  for playing and bringing so much awesomeness to the Hangout table.

The summary for the second session is coming up next!