READ THE STORY OF THE BAND OF THE BROKEN BLADES by
CHRIS WRIGHT http://brokenblades.dtcweb.com

WARNING THE REST OF THIS PAGE HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED SINCE:
 January 29, 2003 0:09 AM

These are the stories of the Band of the Broken Blade a band of adventurers on Malaan.(See Malaan Homepage)Trapped in the isolated village of Boomtown in the Dane Mountains, south of the Kingdom of Uruhr, these intrepid adventures strive to find fortune and glory among the dangers of the high frontier. The game is played using 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons pretty much as is (see house rules ).

Boomtown is a small village perched on the cliffs overlooking Looking Glass Lake. It is built in the remnants of a once great mining colony which dates from the days of Empire. Surrounded by mountains the passes that lead to Boomtown are accessible only in the summer months. The people are miners, farmers, fishermen and trappers trying to eke out an existence in this barren land.

Boomtown is surrounded by hostile forces.

  • Kobolds had taken over the abandoned mines, only to be awakened by the new miners seeking their fortune.
  • Danic Barbarians have lived peacefully in the mountains and valleys, but now they seek the easy prey of homesteaders and others who wander into their territories.
  • Frost Giants have long been the terror of any who travel into the mountains. Now as civilization encroaches into their ancient domain, their threat grows.
  • Wolves, Bears, Owls, Snow Leopards, Siberian Tigers, Lynx, Ice Baboons, Winged Snow Monkeys, Ice Toads, Hoar Foxes, Thunder Hares, Snow Slipperies, and other dangerous creatures abound in the wintery peaks.
  • The people themselves, some are escaped criminals, others refugees bearing harsh curses, others misfits unable to live in the civilized regions, most of them rough, tough and dangerous. Other are incompetents who lure danger to themselves and others. Truly we have met the enemy and it is us.

This Week's Rumor

"A Genie's will is bound to their vocation. Discover that, and its will is yours."

THE BAND OF BROKEN BLADES
  1. Arek Anchorhaven, human warrior and archer extraordinaire.
  2. The Griffin, mysterious human locksmith.
  3. Arendt, elvish wizard and fighter.
  4. Killsten Whitestag, Danic Barbarian raised from the dead to unleash Hell's fury
  5. Galen Stonefist, Dwarvish fighter

Valhalla
Hall of the Dead

Vocado, Halfling Rogue and master of the crossbow.Slain by a commoner 227.

Karas, Mannish Wizard, Slain by a commoner 227.

Drixil, Half Elven Bard, Slain by a commoner 227.

Kargax, Half Orc Cleric, Slain by Lemure 227.

Mekklar, Human Cleric, Slain by Ghouls 227.

Minx, Gnomish Cleric and Illusionist, Slain by Ebram, cleric of the Stranger 227.

Flair, Human Necromancer, Charged to his death at the Hands of an Ogre Mage 227.

 

Maps (Click on Thumbnail to Enlarge)


[Boomtown]


[ Looking Glass Lake]


[Stairs of the Giant]



[Cave Cove]

Adventures

  1. The party investigates strange noises at the Beckner mine. They discover five Kobolds, and dispatch them, but not without injuries.
  2. The party is intimidated and extorted by four Danic Barbarians. They give them swift and pitiful justice in the barbarians camp with a midnight raid.
  3. The party investigates the strange lights at Castle Silas. En route they are ambushed by the Band of Bones and forced to delve into the catacombs beneath the Castle. When the party surfaces they meet the undead forms of the band, slain and reanimated by an unknown force.
  4. The party investigates rumors of the reappearance of lights, this time at the neighboring Totem Tower, seat of the mysterious Stranger of myth. They encounter Baboons and Spiders.
  5. The First Assault on the Tower.There is much bloodshed. The party is slain by a single, though treacherous commoner.
  6. Revenge of the PCs. The new party assails the mountain and dispatches the commoners.
  7. The Second Assault on the Tower. This time the party defeats the evil therein, and but one escapes to tell of it.The brave cleric Kargax dies in the battle.
  8. The party sets off on the Fall Patrol. Mapping, taking census, and kicking butt where needed. Several wild dogs are slain.
  9. Those pesky barbarians return. This time the party takes stock and defeats them in a major siege.
  10. The haunted mine. The party visits the sight of a gruesome murder only to be attacked by mini-skeletons. The party survives but tensions run high.
  11. The party investigates the mine. Fights, spiders, wolves, a leopard, and more spiders only to be captured to serve as live food for the Fiendish Spider's young. Will they survive?
  12. Party manages to escape with the help of their Dwarvish ally Galen. They seal the fiendish portal and return to Boomtown.
  13. Party heads for Arrowhead Lake. They get lost and are waylaid by orcish bandits. Some horses are stolen. The party attempts pursuit then gives up and continues, on foot to Arrowhead. They stop at McCavendish's for a respite.
  14. Enroute to Arrowhead they meet some relatively friendly Centaurs. They arrive at Arrowhead Lake only to find the complex taken over by Undead. They retreat.
  15. They assault the undead at Arrowhead Lake, after a long, grueling battle they are successful. In the battle only the Mage and Cleric avoid paralysis. Mekklar dies from poison wounds recieved in the battle.
  16. Party takes stock of the situation and heads ot to complete northern part of the Fall Patrol.They encounter tracks of a Dire Bear. They speak with the local inhabitants and hear more of the mysterious stranger.
  17. Return to Boomtown. They hear of a strange new cult in town. They investigate, they debate. They debate, and debate. Then they split up and get captured, then the left overs assualt the temple, take no hostages but allow the leaders to escape.
  18. A new assault on the Labyrinth under the Temple. They fight some automata, some skeletons, and have a brief encounter with some remaining leaders of the Stranger's cult. They kill a paladin and a cleric, but the leader Ebram and one warrior escape deeper into catacombs.
  19. The party assails Ebram at the entrance to a strange shrine. In the battle Minx is slain, Diesa joins the party briefly in the fight. Ebram escapes.
  20. The party decides to investigate the shrine, rather than pursue Ebram. They penetrate the shrine and enter the first room. Dedicated to water, this room vexes the party and several nearly drown in the attempt to slain the Mephit Guardian and retrieve the treasure therein.
  21. This time, they defeat the Mephit and push through several more rooms. Steam, Fire, Magma, Rock and Dust before their resources begin to dwindle. They discover a Golden door with signs that it may be opened once the various key objects are retrieved.
  22. They puch into the remain rooms, air and cold. They defeat in relatively short order the two guardians and retrieve the treasures and keys.Then move into the Golden room. There they encounter a strange Djinni like creature. After some confusion, the creature duplicates and asks how each person in the group will meet the challenge. After single combats, a battle of wits, and one refusal to fight the Jann indicates that each has been given a reward appropriate to the choices they made.
    Arek learns martial training.
    The Girffon learns some sorcery.
    Flair and Arendt are trained in the healing arts.
    The party leaves the Shrine and returns to Boomtown.
  23. Party heads out to Arrowhead Lake in pursuit of the Cleric Ebram. They encounter a hippogriff en route. When they get to Arrowhead they discover it occupied by a band of Kobolds. Combat ensues.
    They defeat the Kobolds with ease and interrogate the one survivor.
  24. On the captive Kobold's (Mik) information, the party heads north of the lake towards the barbarian village of seven banners. Mik disappears. They encounter a Shadow and a polar bear, the former they kill, the latter they avoid. They arrive at Seven Banners Lodge and trade with the Barbarians.They believe Ebram has made for the Stairs of the Giants (a barbarian village near Key Hole Mountain.). They make a diversion to the southern peak, to meet with the Wizard El-Kam. They are met by El-Kam's people and taken to the Wizard's Spire and welcomed to El-Kam's manor.
  25. The party was discussing things with El'Kam and exploring his library when an alarm was raised. The party went to investigate the alarm and journeyed into the old mines. There, they encountered difficulty with some heat drinking mold and the suffered from a collapse of the mine. Later they faught and killed four ogres, retrieving a strange artifact that furthers the mystery of the ogres presence in the mine.
  26. Returned to face the remaining Ogre and Ogre Mage. In a pitched battle the party lost long time member Flair. His presence will be missed. But they avenged his death, and learned the dark secret of the Caves.
  27. The party heads for Stairs of the Giants. Along the way they meet Killsten, a Danic Barbarian. He leads them to the trail of the Dire Bear they had seen sign of. They pursue the creature, and not without injury slay it, taking its claws a gifts for the Leaders at the Stairs.They head to the Stairs of the Giants and are welcomed at the thriving city.
  28. They go to meet with the Sage Mumblers, the mystic leaders of the Stairs.They, and the paladin Boroda, are told that Ebram had made for the Eye of the Titans (the Keyhole in Keyhole mountain). They climb the mountain. Climbing Arendt was poisoned by the dreaded Snow Slippery, but on Boroda's urging the party carries on rather than returning to get him healed. They encounters strange subhuman cavemen and defeated them on three occasions.
  29. The party having recovered from the battle of the caves, the party awakes to discover Boroda gone. They press on through the cave, meet some remaining cavemen resistance, but make it to the other side. After spending a night they move to the peak. After facing terrible weather they are faced with a dillema. Press on, through the weather or return to the great cavern hours way. They choose instead to trust the skills of their Danic barbarian and rest in a small cave he finds. Then in the morning they press for the peak. They do not make it unhindered though. They fight a dozen or so of the strange Danic exiles (the Children of the Giants). They would have beaten them easily were it not for the fiendish monster summoned by the dread cleric Ebram. In a pitched battle they pressed to the Eye. There the victims of their blades and spells rose from the dead to give a retributive strike. Finally, it came to just the party, the demon, and Ebram. When the cleric looked defeated his creature turned on him. But in the end, the final blow to Ebram was dealt by Arek.
  30. The Party investigates the strange alter. After much puzzling they discover its ability to act as a map and telescope. They use this to produce a map to their next destination, the tunnels through the mountain. They return to the Stairs of the Giants and get tatoos to commemorate their success. Some of them also get magical tatoos.
  31. They set out for the Steppes on the way to the Mountains. En route they stop in a dark woods and fight a pack of wolves. They meet the leader of this pack, a Druid who encourages them to move on. They do.
  32. They arrive in the Steppes and spend some time to get to know the people. Arendt decides to help the locals with their forge, the rest of the group investigates a strange character they believe to be undead. Later they fight and destroy this new intelligence undead and investigate a possible lair of the creature.
  33. They decide to try to provoke an ambush by bandits along the Way of Corsairs. They succeed and kill a couple of Ogres and a Suni brigand as well as capturing several others. They release them, and then later get assualted by the very same Suneese warriors along with their leader. They discover that these people are members of the very same organization they believe Killsten saw in his vision, the T'ien Lung or Dragon's Breath Guild. They were captured and after several abortive escape attempts they gave in.
  34. An abortive attempt to escape seemed to doom the party. The quick thinking of the Griffin bought them them lives. Now they are indentured into the service of the T'ien Lung. Freed, Arek wanders through Cave Cove in search of his brother Arro. The search yields a result, sadly not the one he wanted. Arek is captured by the Salke.
  35. The party finds out about Arek's capture and tries to rescue him. First, they find a healer who restores them for a cost, then they case the Salke complex. They assail it at night and things go awry. Despite the alert being raised the party manages to press into the complex. Killsten liberates the Salke's massive Mastadon but is convinced to return to the complex by a strangely familiar stranger.
  36. The assault on the Salke ends in a standoff when Arek is charmed and used in negotiations. The party finds its magical load lightened, but leaves otherwise unharmed. They return to the T'ien Lung and begin their charade as Ogre Slaves. They return to the mountains and for a while succeed in their ploy. Then when the ogres threaten one of the horses they assail their 'owners.' The battle is pitched and to the party's dismay one of the ogres is a levelled fighter. Killsten is slain in an abortive attempt to gain his weapons. The rest of the party scatters and Arendt is able to launch a fireball killing one of the ogres.
  37. The party carries Killsten and collects one horse, the others having fled during the fight. The losses are great, their friend, their supplies. They drag themselves back to the Steppes and negotiate some of their equipment. They are disheartened to learn that much of their equipment was sold to the very wizards they were travelling toward before the plan went awry.
  38. Killsten is Resurrected from the dead by the Sage Mumblers of the Stairs of the Giants. But not before the Party participates in a strange ritual that suggests the Danic Barbarian is in fact an ancient power reborn on Malaan. A harbinger or herald of the elder gods. Killsten knows nothing of his heritage. Also in Stairs of the Giants, Arendt is approached regarding the sale of his mysterious Panoply. The party sets off to Giant's Keep again.
  39. After deciding to return to El-Kam's manor they stumble upon the Blood Braid, an adventuring band apparantly pursuing them to obtain Arendt's Panoply. A fight ensues. In their weakened stake the party is no match for the well equiped and high level band. They are stripped of their artifact but left alive by the band. They return to El-Kam's manor, subdued and ready to resupply and head out.
  40. They decide to pursue rumors of the cache of the infamous Band of the Bones, a company of brigands. They press on to the secluded hold deep under lofty mountain. There they encountered a number of undead defenders and nasty traps. Most impressive was the mystical Bone Golem, a magical construct from ages past. After destroying the defenders the party still had to face the various traps. The Griffin suffered blindness from one such trap.

Miscellaneous Stuff

Boomtown Flyer

 


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