A Giant Casino

Bomilcar's Narrative

The priestess of Donblas seems very relieved to see Sir Blanque swiping his way through Lord Jagger's demons; "May the blessings of Donblas light upon you!" Some light does indeed appear momentarily around him, and he feels refreshed; it turns out that he took a minor slash to his torso from the scimitar of the ape demon, and that has now been healed. Even the priestess looks surprised at the effect her prayer has had. The warrior guy with the pompous voice and demeanour nods to Destiny; the Lawfuls seem very surprised that a Melnibonean has been helping. In fact, it was Destiny's intervention that crisped the maniacal lord of the castle.

A newly painted figure for Sir Blanque. This one is by Antediluvian Miniatures.

We all go up to have a look at the writhing Chaos portal that opened when Jagger died. Destiny says she can see through it into a huge octagonal hall containing a large sarcophagus. A voice seems to be calling from it: "I am Zugun of Law. You must free me, lest my old friend and enemy Boak becomes a great champion of Chaos." Marion starts at this; she relates one of the legends of the Western Continent, a titanic struggle between two heroes of Law in the early years of the Young Kingdoms named Boak and Zugun. "According to the stories, Boak lost his son to disease and broke his faith. He turned to Chaos, which was delighted to acquire a former servant of Law. Eventually Boak tried to ascend to become a great Agent of Chaos, but Zugun defeated him. Even so, Zugun could not bring himself to slay his old friend, and then Boak treacherously turned on him. Zugun was bound by Chaos, and Boak has not been seen since. It would seem that this is Zugun's resting place, and that Boak is returning..."

I sigh; why is nothing ever simple? I find myself longing for the life of a nomad of the Wastes once more. Still, at least I'm getting to see interesting places and... things.

The Lawfuls promise to stay behind at Jagger's castle as a clean-up crew, so we all step through the portal. There then ensues a very strange conversation between us and a coffin. Zugun tells us that Lord Jagger found a demon item that opened a gateway to this demi-plane where he has been kept for well over three hundred years. "I am bound by eight great signs of Chaos, and a special gem is needed to release each of them. Jagger found the first gem in this room and inserted it, but I was unable to tell him that the sarcophagus was further protected by a Demon of Possession, which entered his body and took his soul." That explains the maniac on the balcony, then. "Each of the other gems lies through those doors. If you find them all and place them in their places on my casket, you will release me. I can now speak to you because Jagger was able to place the first gemstone, but more than that I cannot yet do."

Time to go through the first door, then. We enter a large bare room containing a table and two chairs. Facing us in one of them is simply the most gorgeous woman any of us has ever seen; Destiny is a little bit jealous, I think. Anyway, this vision introduces herself; "I am Merut of Old Chaos. I am 'sister' to Myshella of Law. I have been guarding the casket of Zugun." She then greets each of us by name; strangely, she calls Destiny "Lady Wyvern-Rider"; Marion apparently is "Shadowborn"; and Sir Blanque is "Of the Waters." She explains further; "I am an Oracle of Chaos, but like Melnibone I will have no truck with newer, more brutal forms. In a sense, Chaos is always fighting itself, which helps to preserve the Balance. I suppose we are all servants of the Balance in our way. This is good because of the impending Conjunction of the Million Spheres." I have no idea what she is talking about, but anything that stops Chaos winning completely sounds good to me. She then says, "I invite each of you to ask me questions," and stretches out her hands.

Well, what the hell, I think to myself, chuckling at the irony, which is probably where we are right now anyway. I sit down and grasp her hands. For what seems like an age, she somehow teaches me the language of the Unknown East, because apparently that is where I am fated to go, "If you live long enough..." To the others, it seems as though a mere moment has passed, but I shake my head to clear it. Jorthan goes next, and when he is finished he says that he knows the history and geography of the East. The others go through a similar process, but are not quite so willing to divulge what they learned; possibly they each have something that is specific to them.

Eventually Merut turns to Jorthan. "I would relieve you of the pain you still feel over Ehlessa. Stay with me while your friends free Zugun." She gives us a gem for the casket, and we head out, with Jorthan staying behind. Well, that was weird, and doubtless there is a lot more strangeness to come.

The next door emerges in the middle of a corridor. There are eight doors ahead of us. I go through the fourth from the left because it's pretty much the closest; Sir Blanque follows me closely and that door vanishes. I turn around and see Marion and Destiny and the rest of the chess pieces. Yes, that's right, life-sized, demonic chess. Destiny and I are both in the position of a pawn, while Marion is a rook and Sir Blanque is our king. Ranked up beside us are the rest of the pieces on our side: pawns are like men bearing shortsword and shield, but have no faces. Knights are larger men with broadsword and shield, with the head of a horse. Bishops are tall, graceful beautiful non-gendered people in robes bearing a mace and shield. The rooks are tall, heavily muscled men bearing battle-axe and shield, with the head of a strange creature I've never seen before. The Queen is a woman and the king a man, both of whose weapons ceaselessly change form. We are all glowing slightly in white, as befits our status as pieces in the game.

A rook in demon chess.

The game begins, and our pieces begin to fall, but not in the way one would expect. When one side tries to take a piece from the other, instead of it being automatic, they fight for it, which means that the piece being attacked could actually win. As we watch, it becomes apparent that we have the power to move our own side when our turn comes simply by stating the intent. We do really badly for a while, because the opposition seems to be trying hard to avoid us in person, instead attacking the rest of our side, then it dawns on us: we might mostly be in lower positions, but going by the single combats we are observing, we are in fact more powerful and skilled than the pieces, at least up to the level of rook. We decide to take turns ordering our pieces across the board, and quickly turn the tables by releasing our queen to do most of the dirty work for us; it turns out that her weapon morphs to be the same as that of her current opponent, and the same is true of the king. The pieces have ascending hit points, armour and skill levels appropriate to their ranking. 

We clear the board and then Sir Blanque directly engages the enemy king in climactic combat. This finale is really nasty, because the king is a weapons master just like Sir Blanque. It even gets through his guard and strikes, but is thwarted by his weird displacing cloak. Eventually, he wins, and we find ourselves in the main chamber with another gemstone. It would appear that each of us has learned from this bizarre experience; any skills we used in there seem automatically to have increased. Sir Blanque in particular is becoming really good with his Virtuous sword.

The next room contains a sort of wheel of fortune, and there is a grid numbered 1 to 8 where, presumably, one places bets. I put down one of my gold pieces, and the wheel spins. I lose, and my gold piece vanishes. The others try it out, losing small amounts of bronze coins. We then leave, with another gemstone appearing in the door for us as we go. It would appear that all we have to do is try whatever is in the various rooms to be given the gem.

Next up is another room with a wheel of fortune, but this time there are tokens that glow slightly and are warm to the touch. There is a heap each of gold, silver and ruby red. I place a red piece on the grid and the wheel spins; naturally enough, I lose. I notice that my skin has become slightly greasier, but rather than chance anything else we leave this one in a rush. Who knows what the silver and gold would mean? This leaves us needing three gems.

We then enter a shooting gallery. There are five statues, each of a different colour, and each armed with a different distance weapon: black has a sling; blue has a bow; green brandishes a javelin; red is armed with a desert bow; and white has a Melnibonean bone bow. Facing each is a platform for an opposing shooter. I shrug, string my desert bow, and step up to the platform facing the black statue. As I do so, I notice it preparing its sling. We loose at the same time, and each of us hits the other. Fortunately for me, the slingshot pings off my armour. At the same time, a bell sounds and a beautiful 20-carat opal appears on my platform. I take it and step down. We decide that this could quickly become very dangerous, so decide to leave. We take another of the magic gemstones from the door on the way out.

Next up is a crap shoot, a game of dice with a huge Chaos man who calls himself Baleer, "Cousin to Merut!" he shouts. I, Marion and Sir Blanque sit down to dice with him, and Sir Blanque wins. Baller offers him "A boon! However, given the amount of conflict I foresee for you people, I suggest you keep it and call on me at a moment of great need." With that, we leave; one more gemstone to go.

The final door leads into a rather dusty corridor leading to a crossroads. We take a right, and go through what looks like a strange museum and art gallery, full of things that mostly seem very valuable, if unrecognisable. We then find a library, and spend quite a bit of time reading around the place. I find a treatise on archery, and the others are similarly occupied. We then leave with the last gemstone, and find Jorthan waiting for us. He looks a bit worn.

We fit the last piece into Zugun's sarcophagus, and the whole place starts to shake. The portal back to the Young Kingdoms begins to wax and wane - time to leave. We all jump through just as Zugun's prison and casket disintegrates behind us; I am sure I see a wispy tendril of white snake out to touch Sir Blanque as we exit the place. The Lawfuls are quite surprised and relieved to see us - apparently, we have been gone a whole week. 

Umpire's Notes

This was a combination of three adventures: Hall of Risk from the Stormbinger Companion; a short one-off dungeon that comes with Colin A. Brett's campaign; and the beginnings of The Chained Coffin  by Dungeoncrawl Classics, which you can find on Drivethru RPG here. I swapped out the combat room from Hall of Risk and replaced it with Colin's mini-dungeon.

Hall of Risk, which also appears in the Games Workshop edition of Stormbringer.

I used the combination to give the players some hints about the ongoing struggle between Law and Chaos, as well as Old Chaos and New Chaos. The characters all received small starting scores in the Lore of the Million Spheres, as well as a 'gift' of an appropriate skill from Merut. The three player-characters also had a private conversation with her while they were telepathically linked; suffice it to say at this point, they did indeed each learn something about themselves. It will be up to them whether or not they choose to divulge that information to the others.

I left out the Balo the Jester stuff, because it would detract from my campaign intentions, and I also toned down the danger levels; there are, after all, only three PCs. I invented the bit about the gems for the coffin as a way of tying it into the adventure. Stormbringer's world provides a very good setting for slightly strange, offbeat happenings, and this was no different. The two rooms that took the longest were the interaction with Merut and the demon chess game. This latter really alarmed the players as they very quickly started to lose, but once they determined the various capabilities of the pieces, they quickly turned the tables and won quite handsomely. Only Destiny and Sir Blanque took a hit here; Destiny's demon armour absorbed the damage, while Sir Blanque's magic cloak stopped his. Bomilcar's ruby chip cost him a point of Charisma; unknown to the players, silver represented Intelligence and Gold was for Power, and these are not stats anyone wants to lose. Like the demon chess game, the library was a chance for characters to learn an automatic skill increase depending on how well they rolled against their Intelligence; they all learned one skill except for Destiny, who piled three points into her new knowledge of the Million Spheres. The rest is pretty much self-explanatory, except that Jorthan's dalliance with Merut has cost him a point of Charisma.

There will of course be longer term ramifications of the various events; the players just don't yet know what those will be...