Chronicles of the Consortium

I placed the slave lords' Highport Temple outside Zoshai, a major port in the southern half of Changshai in the realms eastwards of the Young Kingdoms. It is badly damaged, but still functionally intact, as the volume of traffic going there and back from the slave galleys of Zoshai amply demonstrates. Campaign Narrative Sir Blanque, Destiny and Marion decide to investigate the temple complex outside the town, which they know hosts a base and staging post of sorts for the slave trade. This will be a dawn raid, taking place immediately after they leave the slave galley that raided the Aurea estate. They don't want to give the Dharzi captain time to think more on their visit in case he puts two and two together, so they decide to strike at once. They take a roundabout route, skirting the forests surrounding the cleared ground at the temple proper until they reach the rear of the place - proper scouting is always a good idea. This is how it looks to them from a wooded hill at ...

I placed the ruined temple outside Highport in the module in the southern Changshai city of Zoshai for my purposes. The trip to this temple is supposed to be the moment where the players are captured, but this is not something I wanted to force on them... Campaign Narrative Knowing that the sorcerer Hazzard has probably contacted his masters in the slave lords' organisation, the group of three adventurers leaves immediately on horseback for Zoshai. On the way, they manage to avoid a serious-looking ambush including pit traps, priests or sorcerers with some sort of Chaos affiliation, and troops hidden in the forest to either side of the main trackway [ critical See rolls by Marion and Sir Blanque ]. While they give this lot a wide berth, Destiny realises that the whole situation is being further reinforced by the use of some sort of silence effect around the pits that have been dug in the road, presumably with the intention of forestalling any sorcerous commands - and this gives ...

I inserted this linked module into the Stormbringer  campaign by emphasising politics. Basically, Stalman Klim, a main leader of the council of slave lords in the module, is the Usurper of Changshai in my version of the Eastern realms. After the defeat of his invading forces by Eshmir, he has seemingly faded into the background, and Changshai has become increasingly lawless. Rumours of a new force in the region have reached the ears of the merchant princes of Elwher, an organisation of reavers that has become known as the Slave Lords. Nobody in Elwher yet knows a great deal about this group - the location of its bases, or even its composition. One thing for sure, though: Stalman Klim is letting them run riot, and they have been encroaching on Eshmir territory and raiding its shipping. One influential view is that this is in fact Klim's doing; if he can't defeat Eshmir in open battle, he is trying to ruin the basis of the more northerly nation's prosperity, partly as another...

I have only run this campaign once before, and even then I disliked the 'railroad' aspects of it - the characters must  be captured at certain points. I don't like removing player agency in this way, but in any case this kind of approach is not really necessary. The best way to deal with it is to think more carefully about how to integrate such a plot line into one's campaign; the rest will take care of itself.  I learned this when I ran it before. The first railroad stop comes when, early on in proceedings, two possible attacks on the PCs are given: one on land and the other if they are travelling by sea. On the previous outing (over 25 years ago!) I inserted it into an ongoing Lankhmar campaign, and the group was attacked at sea. There was an especially memorable fight with one of the players left in a state of collapse against the last of the boarders who were supposed to capture everyone; it came right down to the final die roll before the hero (Bob, for 'twas ...