Chronicles of the Consortium

Sir Blanque   - swordsman and handsome, dashing noble half mer-person Marion  - stabby stabby dagger specialist; Nihrain who currently carries the Runestaff Destiny  - Menastrai sorceress covertly raised on Melnibone Bomilcar  - Weeping Waste nomad from a chieftain's family Campaign Diary ... Or, rather, a ruined dam. As the characters continue towards the hills to the north of the lakes area of Menastree, they continue to see evidence of the devastation wrought by the flood waters. Mostly, the signs are petering out, but there is one main river valley running through the hills that seems to have channeled the waters into a forceful flow northwards, overbearing the natural current of the river itself. The remaining force of the wave must have hit what was previously a dam, but since the flood came from the wrong direction, the combination of the original lake behind the dam and the momentum hitting it from the other side has obviously caused the dam to burst. From De...

 The alleged "Old School Revival" is something I missed; it happened while I was out of RPG for a while. However, I have started piecing together a collection of what I have seen more happily called DIY D&D - seemingly offbeat campaign and scenario items that have more imagination packed into them than hundreds of official or semi-official role playing products. Often the result of a labour of love, some of these contain fabulous ideas that can be incorporated into a setting that is flexible enough to take them, and Moorcock's multiverse is an obvious place. They don't have to be D&D of course - just something that oozes the need to be played. I used the original version Deep Carbon Observatory is one I have been itching to try for a while because it fits my expectations. I'm actually not all that bothered about how deadly something is, so much as how interesting it will be, and the ideas here are great. I changed the premise around a little bit and then l...

Sir Blanque   - swordsman and handsome, dashing noble half mer-person Marion  - stabby stabby dagger specialist; Nihrain who currently carries the Runestaff Destiny  - Menastrai sorceress covertly raised on Melnibone Bomilcar  - Weeping Waste nomad from a chieftain's family Menerain is the name of the ancient Menastrai capital, located in a region that is covered by great lakes in the time of the characters, 1,000 years in the future.  Destiny knows the history of this era as well as anybody, so is well aware that Menastree is destined to be conquered. And then the Dharzi will arrive. However, none of the historians seems to know the ultimate fate of Menerain. The characters make use of the river system leading towards the lake region, which is smaller than they remember from the future. It does look as though the waters are rising, though - perhaps their new canal through the mountains is beginning to feed water into this area.  There are a few hairy momen...

Sir Blanque   - swordsman and handsome, dashing noble half mer-person Marion  - stabby stabby dagger specialist; Nihrain who currently carries the Runestaff Destiny  - Menastrai sorceress covertly raised on Melnibone Bomilcar  - Weeping Waste nomad from a chieftain's family I've shamelessly stolen the title for this blog post from Iain at Caveadsum , because it's cool. The characters have been asked to help in the defence of a small Menastrai/human town from marauding Melnibonean forces, and each of them has been given command of a small group of local warriors, a mixture of humans and Menastrai: I put together a combination of my Cry Havoc battle mats to set this up over several small tables. The mats are 2D, and some of the details are obscured by the unit cards I employed to make running a larger combat more manageable, but I hope you can make out most of what is going on here. We are looking northwards in the first photo. The river comes from its source in the m...

  Sir Blanque   - swordsman and handsome, dashing noble half mer-person Marion  - stabby stabby dagger specialist; Nihrain who currently carries the Runestaff Destiny  - Menastrai sorceress covertly raised on Melnibone Bomilcar  - Weeping Waste nomad from a chieftain's family The four friends are now 1,000 years in their own past, having gone back in time to the period of the Melnibonean attacks on Menastree and the onset of the Great Dharzi War. They are currently located on the north-western side of the great mountain chain that separates Menastree from the rest of the continent that will become the Young Kingdoms, having freed a great tunneling basilisk thing that promptly celebrated by boring its way through the entire mountain chain. Which is how the great canal tunnel the characters found in their future came to be - in effect, they caused it to be constructed. While the basilisk, sacred to Grome, is off doing its thing with highly powerful ultrasonics, th...

 The characters are taught how to use Destiny's entropy Configuration b Zotaquaan of the Balance; it turns out that Sir Blanque has a particular affinity with the machinery. The group finds themselves standing in what they already know will become the site of the giant pyramid they will enter in 1,000 years' time as they begin their epic quest to find Zotaquaan in his guise as The Martek. Ouzzlingly, though there is no sign of the giant bowl that will collect the overspill from the elemental plane of water to create the river that will flow through the mountain range in to Menastree proper. The mountains are there, but nothing else, certainly nothing like the artificially created canal tunnel they remember from the future. While Zotaquaan gets himself ready to start his monumental building tasks, the characters all settle down for the night. Each of them has the same dream: a white crow flies towards a particular point n the cliff face and vanishes into it. When they wake up, t...

 Now that they have completed all six of the side-quests in the chapels of the crystal cathedral, the characters find themselves transported to the interior of an enormous building. Much exploration ensues, and they find an astonishing treasury together with a perhaps even more valuable library. And it's all in High Melnibonean. After a bit of time and a lot drooling over the possibilities this lot represents, Destiny realizes the group has found the wealth and lore of the Menastrai, so this place holds incalculable possibilities. Eventually they find themselves in a central chamber with a grand dais that holds a skeletal body - (The) Martek, one presumes. A bit of careful investigation shows that there are five depressions  set into the dais, one at the head, and two each at the feet and hands. They look exactly the right fit for the star gems, so they put them in place. A lattice of super-cool light springs between the gems and coalesces around the body. It is now a whole pe...

Sir Blanque - swordsman and handsome, dashing noble half mer-person Marion - stabby stabby dagger specialist; Nihrain who currently carries the Runestaff Destiny - Menastrai sorceress covertly raised on Melnibone Bomilcar - Weeping Waste nomad from a chieftain's family Unpronounceable - Draconian from another plane of existence, probably related to the Melniboneans White Plume Mountain! I've been planning this one for a while now. As well as the individual campaign elements, many of which were published as standalone  like this one, but which I have loosely linked together, I have a grand overarching campaign arc. Some of that now comes together: https://external-preview.redd.it/i9_wO7qVPpubsGA4wPjgm4GFhZgUQrB19N3vztXfV10.jpg?auto=webp&s=e3c7f6ebab8e8de0a8bda2dda77af131461c528d White Plume Mountain  is a very famous early 'fun-house' dungeon; above is the link and image to someone's run-through, with really nice details. It's basically composed of three...

Sir Blanque - swordsman and handsome, dashing noble half mer-person Marion - stabby stabby dagger specialist; Nihrain who currently carries the Runestaff Destiny - Menastrai sorceress covertly raised on Melnibone Bomilcar - Weeping Waste nomad from a chieftain's family The Desert of Desolation  campaign book provides the three encounters the characters have already had, and states that three of the minarets are already on the towers of the central hologram they are supposed to join; three of the corresponding side-shapes are darkened. The suggests that someone else (or perhaps multiple groups) has already accomplished three of the six tasks, which seems very unlikely given all of the interplanar shenanigans involved. So I made it six. There are particular campaign reasons for the final one, although the players don't know that yet. I'll make this brief as a way of describing the three extra ones I used. Two of them were taken from the first White Dwarf Compendium, the same ...

 I haven't posted on this blog for many months. Life became very hectic after being threatened with redundancy yet again, and I applied for jobs, some of them quite far afield. I did this on a previous occasion, before I moved to England, and I was offered one in Cyprus and another in Oman, but I couldn't accept them because they were fixed-term contracts only, and with a young family I needed more security than that. So we toughed it out, and eventually things went our way and I got a permanent job in England.  And then it went awry too. I knew this wouldn't end up in compulsory redundancy because the idiots doing the dirty did everything wrong; it was, though, clear that they wanted to get rid of as many of us as possible by making the place impossible to work. So we had a family confab and decided that I should apply for jobs overseas again, as well as in the UK. And I got one. I've been working remotely since January for a University in Abu Dhabi, but it has been fu...

Sir Blanque - swordsman and handsome, dashing noble half mer-person Marion - stabby stabby dagger specialist; Nihrain who currently carries the Runestaff Destiny - Menastrai sorceress covertly raised on Melnibone Bomilcar - Weeping Waste nomad from a chieftain's family Campaign narrative The four adventurers are currently part of the way through a series of side quests. They need to find six inscribed plates that generate holographic images of minarets. Once they have these, they are to add them to a central large holographic image of a floating citadel, which is missing six of its minarets. This will help them summon the Sphere of Power of The Martek, which will destroy the rampaging Efreet Prince Khalitharius. Not so simple, then. At least they already have one of the minarets, and they now go into a side chapel that shows another plate and its associated minaret sitting on the pillow of a sleeping woman wearing loose silken robes that don't cover very much. The teleport plat...

Sir Blanque - swordsman and handsome, dashing noble half mer-person Marion - stabby stabby dagger specialist; Nihrain who currently carries the Runestaff Destiny - Menastrai sorceress covertly raised on Melnibone Bomilcar - Weeping Waste nomad from a chieftain's family Campaign narrative The crystal cathedral in which the characters now find themselves has six side chapels, each of which holds another hologram depicting a different place/time of some sort. They know that they need to find six miniature holograms of minarets to complete the main artwork in the centre of the cathedral, so it looks as though it's time for six side quests. It doesn't really matter which is first, but after taking a look at them all, they realise that each has what looks like a teleport station set into the floor underneath the hologram that represents what is presumaby its destination. It doesn't really matter which one they take first, since they'll need to follow them all. They decide...

Sir Blanque - swordsman and handsome, dashing noble half mer-person Marion - stabby stabby dagger specialist; Nihrain who currently carries the Runestaff Destiny - Menastrai sorceress covertly raised on Melnibone Bomilcar - Weeping Waste nomad from a chieftain's family Campaign Narrative The four characters now have all five Star Gems, the last of which is supposed to be placed in the appropriate indentation in the obelisk at the centre of the deserted city. The obelisk has been giving off a rather lovely chiming sound, almost like a crystalline heartbeat, starting from the point the group retrieved the final gem from the Temple of Ra. When they do this, crystal pillars at various strategic locations around the city begin to emit an accompanying chime; according to an inscription on the obelisk, the players now have to touch one of the Star Gems against a pillar. Doing so summons a teleport disk that takes them to a beautiful garden beneath a glorious crystalline dome - obviously a...