Posts
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Let's Play Hell's Rebels: Player Character Origins
Hell’s Rebels includes some traits in its Player’s Guide that can be assigned to PCs to tie them to the campaign either by providing a motivation or by giving them additional ways to contribute. A PC could be a minor worker in the opera, or a fed-up citizen, or interested in the city’s history, and so on.
I don’t think those quite fit what I have in mind for my solo campaign. They are suitable as backgrounds for level 1 starting characters and their mechanics can be useful at the start, but pretty much cease to be a factor in the story once the “main plot” kicks in.
Despite being released six years earlier than Hell’s Rebels, the Neverwinter Campaign Setting for D&D 4e does a much better job at allowing players to create characters who are deeply involved with the campaign at hand. More than starting motivations, its character themes provide entire story arcs that will remain relevant throughout the entire campaign.
I want the same thing for my game, so I’m going to replace the relatively generic reasons given in the Hell’s Rebels player guide with something that’s narratively on par with Neverwinter’s themes. I want them to not only be more exciting, but also to reflect the increased starting power of Dungeon Fantasy characters. They’re going to be key players in the rebellion from minute one of the campaign. Why just be a random history buff when you can be The Last Archivist instead? This status might be reflected in some of their traits, but the story consequences are the main thing here.
Here are the “character themes” I intend to use. There are five, one for each of my intended PCs, but presenting them separately will help provide some inspiration to other GMs who want to do the same thing whether in GURPS or another system. I’m using Dungeon Fantasy archetype and ancestry names instead of those from Pathfinder, but the correlations should be pretty easy to deduce. Each of them also has plot ties to some of the game’s possible allied factions.
Each theme bellow includes a short background description, and paragraphs listing prerequisites, benefits, and drawbacks. These are mostly story-related, but they might also add optional mechanical traits to your character’s template. You can buy these right away with your starting points, or buy them later with earned points like any other template trait.
The Sixth Raven
Most surviving historical documents about the Silver Ravens say they were five in number: Jackdaw the elf swashbuckler, Amyreid the half-elf cleric, Ba the halfling wizard, Kyda the human bard, and Brakisi the human scout.
These documents were wrong. There was one other: you.
You were a small orphan child then, adopted by the group as a kind of mascot somewhere along their career. You shared their love for Kintargo and its freedom, but you were too young to go on any actual adventures, so you mostly helped by running small errands, and heard from their big battles when they returned to tell the tale.
This lasted until the last battle, the one against the massed armies of House Thrune. Jackdaw sent you away with many of her other non-combatant friends the day before that one, promising she’d call you back when the danger was past. She never did, because the Ravens lost. Jackdaw surrendered so that the demonic army would spare the city, and the others were either killed by Thrune agents over in subsequent years or disappeared forever.
Over the following decades you would finally reach adulthood and set out on your own, becoming an adventurer of some skill and renown elsewhere in the Inner Sea region. Now, you’re ready to return home and finish the work of your old friends. Your name has been struck from the history books, but your passion burns as brightly as it ever did.
Prerequisites: You must belong to a species long-lived enough that you could have been a child 70 years ago and still be of adventuring age in the present. Being a dwarf or some kind of elf is enough, but the Half-Spirit ancestries from DF 3 might also fit. Another alternative is to play a Warforged who was an active member of the Ravens and spent some of the intervening decades disabled and unconscious, but was recently repaired. You can belong to any profession.
Benefits: You remember things. The GM might occasionally give you hints and clues about old Silver Raven safehouses and stashes. You also knew the Ravens personally and they knew you - should any of them still be around, you will be able to recognize each other.
You can add the Serendipity {15} trait to your template if it’s not already present. This represents your memories of old Kintargo and Raven hangouts, and might let you find useful shortcuts, items, and passages that are not pre-written into the campaign.
Drawbacks: Things remember you. Demons, vampires, and other similarly long-lived monsters who faced the original Ravens back in the day will recognize you just as readily, and will be extra-mean to you as a result. Once word spreads that you’re back, some of them might even travel to Kintargo for the sole purpose of killing you.
This can be represented by the Enemy (Monster of the Week, 9 or less) {-15} trait, which gets added as an optional disadvantage to your template.
If you only have the DFRPG, the disadvantage works like this: the GM rolls 3d6 in secret at the beginning of each adventure or each session of an extended adventure. If the result is a 9 or less, a significantly powerful monster will appear somewhere along the coming adventure or session, inserting itself into one of the upcoming situations and making things more complicated and dangerous for you and your group. It’s usually something complicated to fight, and not necessarily the same monster every time. This is in addition to any pre-existing monsters in the adventure who recognize you and want you dead.
The Last Archivist
You were a member of the Sacred Order of Archivists, a secret society made up of worshipers of various deities of knowledge and wisdom. The Order was dedicated to preserving the true history of Kintargo and other such “forbidden” knowledge from Thrune redactors.
The Order is no more: its hideout was raided and ransacked by Thrune forces during the Night of Ashes. You were away when it happened, on a mission to retrieve an important document in another city. That’s why you survived. When you returned, you reached out to a few contacts and learned that some of your colleagues have surviving family. They were nobles and their family estate was razed during the Night of Ashes, but one of their sons is still at large. You are now trying to find this son, help him stay safe, and then get revenge on House Thrune.
Prerequisites: None! While the Order is an excellent origin for Clerics, Wizards, and other big brains, it could easily have employed fightier or sneakier types as security or retrieval specialists.
Benefits: It’s impossible to be a member of the Archivists and not learn something. In addition to being familiar with the Order’s hideout and its procedures, you also know a bit of the region’s unredacted history and a few other tidbits of unrelated but potentially useful knowledge. You can recognize the Sixth Raven if run into them.
You can add the History and Research skills as an option to your template, and also all specialties of Hidden Lore if they aren’t there already. You also add Wild Talent {20} as an optional advantage, representing a large trove of random knowledge. If you’re using the Basic Set, add Intelligence Analysis to your template as well.
Drawbacks: You’re riven by grief and driven by revenge against Barzilai Thrune and his minions. This might manifest as Intolerance (Diabolists) {-5}, an Obsession (depose Thrune)(12) {-10}, or both! The Obsession might seem redundant since it’s also the overall campaign goal, but it also compels you to take potentially risky and unwise courses of action if they seem like they will yield quicker results. It could also prevent you from retreating from a fight against Thrune’s minions.
Knight of the Deep
You come from one of the subaquatic communities off the coast of Ravounel, where you enjoy an heroic reputation. You recently went to visit your friend Aava in the coastal village of Acisazi, only to find her missing and the village suffering under a strange malaise. The village’s elder told you Aava had led a small party of scouts into Kintargo to ask seek help breaking the curse, but she never reported back. She begged you to find Aava, and you accepted.
You arrive at this land-lubber town to find it embroiled in a lot more trouble than you thought possible. Aava is nowhere to be found and neither is her contact, the singer Shensen. You suspect both of them vanished into the prisons of the despotic Barzilai Thrune, and your queries have led you to the Aria Park protest. You suspect you might need to bloody this human despot’s nose to fulfill your mission, and that’s just fine with you.
Prerequisites: You must belong to a species capable of breathing underwater! Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level contains two possible choices here: the Sea Elf and the Water-Infused. From this blog, you might also pick the Argonian or perhaps a Warforged who has been modified to be hydrodynamic and Amphibious. And of course we also have a whole article about the Denizens of the Sea that also contains a few usable ancestries.
This theme is open to any profession, but martial types should probably keep in mind the rules for underwater combat for fish-people.
Benefits: The people of Acisazi know and trust you, and Aava is your good friend (or even a relative if you’re also a sea elf).
You can add Swimming, Aquabatics and Survival (Undersea) to your template as optional skills, and should probably put some points in them during character creation.
Drawbacks: Add Obsession (find Aava and her scouts) (12) {-5} to your template as an optional disadvantage. It’s what you already want to do anyway, but like the Last Archivist’s Obsession it might drive you to unwise actions.
Phantom Thief
You are one of Lady Docur’s School for Girls’ most distinguished graduates. You had parted ways with your alma mater and set up shop in nearby Vyre, but a recent letter from Lady Docur herself brought you back to Kintargo. The city’s political climate is getting rather inhospitable to the school, and she hopes you will be able to help them survive these turbulent times.
In other words: the school is currently the closest thing Kintargo has to a thieves’ guild. They specialize in training secret couriers and the nicer sort of thief. Thrune prefers the nasty sort of thief, so things might get difficult for the school and its students. That’s where you come in.
Of course, you’re not here just to help your old school. You’re also, er, taking a breather from some rather complex entanglements you left behind in the good city of Vyre. Hopefully it will be a long while before you have to set foot there again.
Prerequisites: It’s a school for girls, which means you either are a woman or only discovered you weren’t after graduation. You must also be some manner of Thief, either the base template or one of the variants from the corresponding Dungeon Fantasy Denizens book.
Benefits: You know Lady Docur and other characters associated with your alma mater, and have their trust. You also know Vyre’s customs, which might come in handy if you ever need to go back there.
Add Area Knowledge and Current Affairs for both Kintargo and Vyre to your template, as well as Connoisseur, Savoir-Faire and the Fashion Sense advantage. The School does give one a proper high society education.
Drawbacks: Those Vyre entanglements will come back to haunt you if you ever return there during the campaign.
No extra disadvantages here: everything which could make a thief’s life harder is already part of the relevant templates.
Mysterious Satirist
Even before Barzilai Thrune rolled in like he owned the place, you were already well-known among Kintargo’s rebels, malcontents, and antifascists. Whether you make poems, plays, essays, or songs, your work criticizing House Thrune was on everybody’s minds and the pseudonym you chose for yourself was spoken in the same tones as that of The Poison Pen and other such figures. Thrune’s opponents speak it with admiration; his supporters, with disgust. That’s how you like it.
While no one has figured who you are yet, Barzilai’s arrival and the Night of Ashes have made your life very difficult already. Most of your contacts among Kintargo’s several resistance organizations have vanished, left town, or gone to ground. While you still value your art, you also feel it’s time to engage in more direct action against this dictator.
Prerequisites: None! While Bards obviously have a head start in terms of the artistic skills implied by this theme, the Mysterious Satirist could be anyone.
Benefits: Choose one of the Bellflower Network, the Cult of Sarenrae, the Rose of Kintargo, or the Poison Pen. You’re indirectly acquainted with that group or individual. Though you have never met, you have corresponded and set up pre-arranged signs that will let you recognize each other when the meeting does happen.
Add the artistic or performance skills of your choice to your template, as well as an appropriate Talent covering them to your optional advantages. Writing, Poetry, and Musical Composition are appropriate if you share your work through in written form. Public Speaking, Singing, Acting and Musical Instrument are also good if you actually perform it. If you have the GURPS Basic Set, you can also add Artist to the list of possible artistic skills, and you also add Propaganda no matter what your medium is.
Drawbacks: Add a 10-point Secret (Mysterious Satirist), Selfless, and Trickster to your optional disadvantage list if they are not already there. The first represents the risk of bad things happening when the authorities discover who you are, above and beyond what being a Silver Raven would bring. The other two represent possible reasons for you to have chosen this path in the first place.
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Let's Play Hell's Rebels: Adjusting Setting Assumptions
It’s time for me to put on my GM hat and begin preparing my solo Hell’s Rebels campaign. As mentioned in the previous post, I want to play this using the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy rule set instead of the campaign’s native Pathfinder 1e. Let’s take a look at what this means.
But wait a minute! Wasn’t that previous most published more than a year ago? Well, turns out I started writing this one shortly after publishing it, but one thing and another got in the way and I’m only getting around to publishing it now. I’m actually a fair bit along in campaign preparation and even started playing, I’m just behind on documenting the process. Anyway, let’s keep going.
The Setting
As we all know by now, Hell’s Rebels takes place in Golarion, Pathfinder’s setting. Golarion was built from the ground up to support dungeon fantasy campaigns so we don’t have any fundamental friction between it and the Dungeon Fantasy rules. Despite the many D&D-isms of Pathfinder’s first edition we already know the setting can easily be used with other systems, since it has an official Savage Worlds port and Paizo itself is in the process of removing those D&D-isms from the latest iteration of their house system.
That being said, I do want to make a few changes to the version I’m going to use. The most obvious one is I’m going to drop the many different fiend classifications from D&D and Pathfinder in favor of Dungeon Fantasy’s simplified “it’s all demons from Hell”. Any of the demons from DF will be fair game as opposition here.
And since I’m talking about setting changes, any mention I find of Cheliax’s fascists and diabolists being in any way “disciplined” or “organized” despite their evil will be altered because incompetence, corruption, and a disregard for any rules lies at the heart of fascism. These fucks do not make the trains run on time and never have. You do not, at any point, gotta hand it to them.
I also want to lean on the similarities between this campaign and Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, so we’ll be at a Renaissance tech level with early guns widely available to guards and rebels. Make ready your blessed bullets, o devil hunters.
The Mechanics
I think this will mostly be pretty simple, because this won’t be the first time I’m converting between Pathfinder and DF. I did already run the first two volumes of Hell’s Rebels and the first three volumes of Iron Gods to different player groups. During those times two issues jumped at me as being the most difficult to handle.
The first one was treasure conversions, but I think I’ve arrived at a satisfying process for that in this post. Our delvers will eventually end up very wealthy, but I imagine the rebellion will prove to be a great money sink.
The other difficulty concerns the only somewhat common part of the dungeon delving experience that’s harder to do in Dungeon Fantasy than in D&D: underwater adventures. There’s a couple of extended underwater segments in the middle of the adventure path, and Pathfinder’s default items and spells for it are a lot more accessible than Dungeon Fantasy’s.
But hey, it turns out I already solved that too! This post collects the underwater rules I’ll be using, and this one has a nice set of more accessible items to let our PCs go for a swim and live to tell the tale. The truth is that I started writing this post before I wrote the underwater ones, so they were actually part of my effort to figure this campaign out.
Monster conversions used to be a big problem back when I started the Let’s Read, but now I have enough DF monster books that I can swipe appropriate stat blocks for nearly every one of them. If I need to create new ones for specific foes, you can be sure I’ll post them here.
Coming up Next
Character themes! Everybody loves character themes!
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Denizens of the Sea
I’ve published an article about underwater adventuring in the past, in which I mentioned that “fish-people” had several advantages over “land-lubbers” when it came to mobility and fighting in an underwater environment. A later post included a few items that could help those land-lubbers close the gap… so how about we take a look at those fish-people now? As a bonus, you get a nice little bundle of setting info you can drop on your campaign if you want.
The Fate of Atlantis
The name “Atlantis” figures in the myths and legends of many more places than it should. Cultures that have never heard of each other have stories about an empire that ruled the waves in ancient times but no longer exists. The stories might differ but the name is always the same.
That’s because ancient Atlantis was the largest and most powerful underwater civilization to ever exist. They discovered a means of traveling to other worlds and exploited it with gusto.
Despite its power Atlantis eventually fell, as all empires do. The exact sequence of events is more or less impossible to piece together, and mostly irrelevant in the present day. The important bit is that their inter-world travel network was the first thing to go, instantly fragmenting the empire. That’s why each of them has a different story about how Atlantis fell - those stories talk only about the bits of it they knew about. In some, it happened overnight due to a cataclysm. In others, they eventually morphed into successor cultures that might still be extant in the present day.
Aside from giving rise to a whole bunch of legends and to fueling the occasional would-be despot’s ambitions, the most enduring legacy of Atlantis was its underwater engineering. They pioneered a lot of the techniques that used to make sturdy weapons and tools out of implausible aquatic materials like bone, shell, coral, and mother-of-pearl. They were also the first civilization to successfully make and work orichalcum.
But we’re not here to talk about stuff, we’re here to talk about people.
So Let’s Talk About People
Opinions differ on whether Atlantis was a Golden Age utopia or a despotic empire whose downfall was a blessing to the world, but everyone agrees it was pretty diverse. Unlike most typical dungeon fantasy kingdoms, its citizens belonged to many different species with none of them making up an overwhelming majority of the population.
Many of Atlantis’ citizens can be described using already-published stats. Sea Elves and Water-Infused from GURPS DF 3: The Next Level fit very well, as do the Argonians from this post. The octopus- and shark-folk from GURPS Banestorm are also good fits, though they’re a bit more complex and costly than the standard for DF racial templates.
Below are a few new templates, with the overall goal of allowing a diverse all-underwater party if the group wants to play that type of campaign. A couple of the new ancestries I present here might have equivalent official templates already, but since I don’t have those I’m writing new ones for my own use.
These templates assume that being Amphibious also makes you able to see and hear unimpeded while submerged, and the ability to breathe underwater also makes you able to speak there. I feel this is in line with the simpler feel of Dungeon Fantasy. If you want to follow Banestorm’s assumptions instead, give all templates here one level of Nictitating Membrane {1} and Speak Underwater {5}, increasing their costs by 6 points each.
Atlantean (20 points)
This template describes people who are a product of successive generations of intermarriage between the other species that made up the population of Atlantis, and possibly some surfacers too. They are known as “Atlanteans” because their general look became associated with that empire. Surprisingly, they look a lot like humans even when they have no humans among their ancestors.
Atlanteans are warm-blooded, have legs, and can breathe both water and air. Their human-looking bits exhibit the same ethnic variety as humans. Individuals can also have a variable number of “fishy” traits like visible gills, fins, blue or gray skin, and so on. These might be visually striking but are never significant enough to count as more than 0-point features.
Atlanteans can appear in worlds that had an Atlantis, or those whose underwater peoples are generally friendly with each other. The base stats could also be used as they are or modified a bit to represent any species of underwater humanoid.
Advantages: Amphibious {10}, Gills {10}.
Other Traits: Those fishy bits might count as varying levels of Unnatural Features in a setting where almost everyone is human and the character is the only known Atlantean, but in all other situations they’re 0-point traits. If the character has something like rigid fins or a prominent tail growing out of their lower back, they might need adapted body armor. This doesn’t cost extra, but might restrict their usage of looted armor.
Crab-Folk (40 points)
Crab-folk are sapient humanoid crustaceans easily distinguished by their heavy segmented carapaces. Like crabs, they lack distinct heads and their eyes are located at the end of a pair of flexible, retractable stalks. Unlike crabs, they only have the usual complement of humanoid limbs, though these are still armored.
Crab-folk can operate normally on the surface, but their gills begin to dry out if they go more than a day without being immersed in sea water. This means they tend to stick close to the coast. Their voices sound strange and “bubbly” outside the water, which most surfacers find off-putting.
Advantages: 360-degree Vision {25}; Amphibious {10}; Gills {10}; Damage Resistance 5 (Cannot Wear Armor) {15}; No Neck {5};
Disadvantages: Cold-Blooded {-5}; Disturbing Voice (In Air, -50%) {-5}, Dependency (Sea water, Daily) {-15}.
Optional Traits: If your campaign takes place far from a coastal area, the Dependency disadvantage is worth -30 points, and the template therefore costs only 25. Your local alchemist can prepare a solution close enough to seawater to satisfy the requirement, but it’s still not free.
Deep Ones (50 points)
These humanoids are much more obviously “fishy” than Atlanteans, with an anatomy closer to that of an abyssal fish than a human’s. They’re adapted to the lightless depths of the ocean and that’s where they prefer to make their homes. Deep Ones can swim up to the shallows without suffering ill effects, but can’t breathe air.
After Atlantis fell, it was not uncommon for its Deep One settlements to become more isolated and break contact with shallower or surface communities. This some times gave rise to sinister legends and rumors about what they got up to down there. These are mostly bunk: they are no more prone to worshiping Elder Things than any other species.
Advantages: Amphibious {10}, Dark Vision {25}, Fangs {2}, Gills {0}, Pressure Support 3 {15}, Tough Skin 1 {3}.
Disadvantages: Cold-Blooded {-5}.
Optional Traits: A variant that can operate on the surface would be closer to several classic D&D fish-people. They have the 10-point version of Gills and so cost that much more.
Merfolk (20 points)
Merfolk are humanoid from the waist up and have fish bodies from the waist down. They can breathe both air and water and have naturally melodious voices in both mediums, but they require magic or assistive devices like wheelchairs to operate on land. Their human halves display the same variance as Atlanteans, and their fish halves can resemble a variety of species of fish, shark, or cetacean.
Advantages: Gills {10}, Voice {10}.
Disadvantages: No Legs (Aquatic) {0}.
Features: The “Leg” and “Foot” hit locations on merfolk refer to their tail and lower fins instead. Armor for those locations must be specially constructed. As usual this doesn’t cost extra but limits which looted armor they can use.
Optional Traits: If your character’s fish half mimics a particularly speedy species, they might have Enhanced Move 1 (Water) for an extra 20 points. At the GM’s option, this might be a matter of training instead of biology, which means any merfolk character can buy this with earned points as a power-up.
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The Great Tabletop Hackaton: Hard Wired Island
Hard Wired Island's cover. Hard Wired Island is a cyberpunk game published by Weird Age Games in 2020. It’s a beefy 400 page tome comparable in size to the Shadowrun or CP RED cores, but only about 25% of that is rules.
Setting Overview
Hard Wired Island takes place in Grand Cross, an O’Neil Cylinder habitat orbiting Earth’s Lagrange 5 point, in the “distant future” of 2020. It was built according to an idealistic plan in the wake of terrible environmental and economic disasters on Earth, but is currently in the process of being co-opted and corrupted by the interests of ultra-rich corporations and elites. The way in which this is happening is described in very realistic detail throughout the book, which also talks a bit about what people do to fight back. PCs are usually expected to help in that fight, if not for moral reasons then because those billionaires cause constant economic shocks that threaten their survival. This is the main conflict in the setting.
Grand Cross has cybernetic implants, gene editing, fully sapient AI and androids. However its “global net” is still pretty much the internet of 2020. It’s even named “the internet”.
Every building in the station is wired for high-speed internet. The airwaves are serviced by cell carriers like the ones you know from the real world, and some of its wards even have free public wi-fi, though that tends to be poor quality because capitalism is the worst virus. The station is linked to Earth’s internet by satellites, with a 1.2-second lag there due to the physical distances involved. Most big services have station-local data centers to try and get around this, and there are some GC-native ones as well like HeoCities (website hosting) and Pulser (a Crosser social network).
Hackers are simply called hackers. Their equipment is collectively known as a Hacking Suite, and it can be anything from computers that wouldn’t look out of place here in the real world to some fancy cybernetic implant. Target systems tend to be private corporate intranets or other networks located on the station, and whether hacking is done remotely or on-site depends on the specific mission.
Mechanics Overview
Most tests in Hard Wired Island use 2d6, with bonuses coming from one of the PC’s main stats/approaches (Cool, Clever, Tough, and Quick), from a skill specialty, from Augments (implants), and from Assets, which are special equipment. There are rules for rolling with advantage/disadvantage (add a d6 and drop the lowest/highest) or for Boosting rolls (add a d6, don’t drop anything). Criticals happen when two or more dice roll the same value.
The system for hacking is a mixture of the systems for stealth and social interaction. It has a set of specific actions associated with it, but also uses some actions from those other systems.
Hackers begin each hacking attempt in a state called “Ghost”, meaning they haven’t been detected by the target system’s security. They also begin with three chances to avoid getting caught. Every time a hacker needs to do something that requires a die roll, they might get caught if that test fails, and must spend a chance in order to avoid that. If they fail a roll after running out of chances, they’re discovered and their physical location is traced. Security is on its way, but the hacker can still disconnect and try to run. A hacker can try a Cover Your Tracks action to restore lost chances, but that’s also a roll so it might backfire.
Target networks have two stats: a Network Level that determines the basic difficulty of all tests made against it, and a Mood that describes the strictness of its security procedures and how willing it is to let you do things. Hacking is mostly about improving the network’s Mood towards you. Friendly networks are helpful, giving Advantage for data searches within then. Indifferent networks neither help nor hinder. Hostile networks assume everyone is an intruder until they can prove otherwise.
Most networks start out Indifferent, and their mood can be improved to Friendly through hacking actions, or degrade to Hostile by failures. Hostile networks can’t have their mood improved except by gaining admin access. This can be done by succeeding at a number of rolls equal to its Network Level, but it’s not strictly necessary to accomplish your goals. Admin access on a network makes it Friendly, and prevents its mood from lowering. Doing anything in there becomes almost trivial and you only need to maintain Ghost if someone intelligent is monitoring the network (like another admin or an AI).
There’s no deadly ice here, and no cybercombat at all. Getting discovered and traced is usually enough of a threat here, since those armed goons will kill you just as dead, and the heightened state of alertness from the target will also complicate your teammates’ lives.
Hard Wired Island tries to abstract the extensive planning sessions players of other games engage in with a resource named “Prep”. Before the mission itself you use actions to gather both Individual and Group Prep, and you spend those points during missions to use your Assets or acquire new ones on the spot.
Run Parameters
We do have a sample hacker here, the ever adorable Maru. Her Hacking Suite is built into her cybereyes but she still operates it with a keyboard. She will be going with the team on this one, which might mean leaving that keyboard behind but won’t affect her effectiveness.
We will once again go with three separate target networks here. The office network is level 5 and Friendly to access from the inside; the security network used by the guards is Indifferent and level 6; and the isolated server is Hostile and level 7.
If the first two detect intrusion they grow Hostile, trace Maru’s location, and notify both the guards and the police. If the secret server detects intrusion it will destroy itself in a very messy and noisy fashion, drawing guard attention. This counts as a mission failure for our purposes, since the team will spend the rest of the run trying to leave the office without the evidence they came here to collect. As these are separate networks they have separate Ghost counters.
Run Summary
For the first time in our series we’ll have to concern ourselves with stuff that happens before the mission itself. Let’s make an Individual Prep roll for Maru. She’s getting her software in order before the run, at her hacker den. We roll 2d6 + Clever + Hacking + Hacker’s Den against a difficulty of 7, and get a 11. Since this is the first Prep roll we’re making, Maru gains 1 automatic Prep, and an extra 1 Prep for beating the difficulty by 4. She takes part in Group Prep later, and let’s say they agree to leave 1 of those points for her use.
Now for the actual run. As always, the rest of the team manages to bullshit the receptionist and make into the office posing as a repair crew. Maru locks herself into a stall in the ladies’ room and begins.
The security network isn’t advertising itself, so I rule Maru needs a Search roll to find it. Her bonus here is +3 from Clever and +2 from Hacking; the difficulty is 11 (the network’s level + 5). She succeeds with 13.
Since there’s a lot she must do in this net, we spend 1 of her 3 Prep to activate the Data Bomb program Asset, which gives her Advantage on her next three rolls here.
I rule that opening the door and turning off the camera each require an Operate roll. From what I see in the rules this seems to use the Drone specialty instead of Hacking. Maru doesn’t have that, so she’s rolling only 2d6+3 from her Clever. Thankfully, the Data Bomb still gives her Advantage on these rolls. She succeeds at both rolls with a 12 and a 11, precisely because of that Advantage.
Maru and her team move to the records room, and find the secret server. She jacks into it and begins searching for the data. The difficulties here are all 12 from the Network Level. Maru spends another Prep to activate the Ghost Protocol program, giving her Advantage on her next Hacking roll and an extra Ghost chance. These rolls do use her Hacking specialty.
Advantage once again lets her succeed with a 14. I think succeeding at this lets her take the data? Let’s be cruel instead and ask for a Spoof roll to download the data without authorization. This is a Hostile server after all. No more advantage here, but she still gets a 13.
The team leaves the records room and Maru connects to the security wifi to open the exit door. She still has one roll with Advantage remaining from her use of Data Bomb, and succeeds on the Spoof roll with a 13.
With the way out secured, she searches the office network for the money. No roll needed to locate it, it’s Friendly and advertising itself to people inside the office premises. A Search with Advantage lets her find the money with a roll of 11 versus the network’s lower difficulty of 10.
She has no advantage for the Spoof roll to transfer the money elsewhere, but she still succeeds with a 11.
Mission accomplished! Time elapsed: around 15 minutes.
Run Analysis
Hard Wired Island feels more complex than Neon City Overdrive in its presentation, but the hacking sequence here was about as fast. This was in part due to good rolls all through the run, but a failure here would have had less impact than in my Neon City run. There, a failed roll would have meant cybercombat, a system I didn’t get to try at all. Here it would have meant an extra roll or two as I lost one of my Ghost points and retried the test. Perhaps I’d have spent another action or two recovering those points as well.
Keeping it to about one roll per Thing You Do seems to be key to keeping hacking brief.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Veil and Surcross
And finally we get to look at the Thayan cities and the road between them.
Veil
The town of Veil is so named because it’s built atop a stable rift to the Shadowfell, which makes it look like it’s covered by a veil of shadows from afar. This is where Shadowfell Road ends. Valindra’s people are very aware of that, so they’re busy fortifying the town and bringing in undead defenders to gradually replace its living garrison. Should the down fall or the rift close, their Neverwinter contingent would be cut off.
The rift also protects Veil from direct bombardment by the flying fortress, as it makes its shadow-powered projectiles go astray. Its defenses cannot stand up to a Netherese ground assault, but the attacking army would risk getting caught between Veil’s defenders and a relief force sent from Surcross. The fortress therefore focuses on the bigger town, but sometimes comes here to float ominously over Veil and throw some rocks at it. As we saw before it does this when it needs to take in supplies, as its own Shadowfell portals require proximity to a rift to work.
The city’s defenses are led by a priest of Bane named Renault Abrecht, who coordinates everything from the local temple he took over. When not doing that, Abrecht spends his time ensuring the forces under his command are more loyal to him than to Thay, and acquiring more converts from the town’s stressed-out population. When he judges he has a big enough army of followers, he will cross into Shadowfell Road and collapse the rift behind him, hoping to conquer a kingdom for himself elsewhere in Faerûn. The Netherese would actually love that, as it would achieve their own goal of cutting off Valindra’s supply route.
The Road
The road linking Veil and Surcross is warded and trapped to a frankly ridiculous level, because the Thayans rightly fear that if it got taken then Veil would fall soon after.
Both sides of the road are lined with stakes upon which are impaled bodies. These are enchanted to animate, jump from the stakes, and kill anyone who attacks the town of Veil or a Thayan national while on the road. Under the road itself are a series of deadly necromantic rune traps that activate when anyone living steps on them. They deactivate for five minutes if an undead being steps on them, so caravans to and from Surcross use zombie guides to travel the road.
I guess it’s possible for the PCs to travel overland between the two cities without using the road, since by this point they should be able to navigate the area’s environmental hazards without much trouble. Armies, however, would prefer to use the road if they can, and supply caravans must use it.
Surcross
Tam was smart enough to foresee any serious attack against Thay would have to go through Surcross, so he had potent defenses installed in the city a long time ago. However he couldn’t imagine that the actual attack would come in the form of a whole Netherese flying fortress, and the particulars of that attack lead to the current stalemate.
Surcross is a town under permanent martial law. It’s governed by the military garrison stationed here to fight the Netherese. Its civilian population is suffering greatly because the soldiers requisition all the food for themselves, and don’t hesitate to kill any who complain about it or displease them in other ways. A dead Thayan is just an undead Thayan in waiting, after all.
Getting into the town is hard and will require some ingenuity from the party. Once inside, though, they can easily pass for residents, because who in their right mind would want to break into the place?
The town’s governor is Ukulsid, an undead gnoll general who is entirely focused on the war effort, and therefore dislikes the fact that his town also became the center of Valindra’s schemes. His loyalty to Tam forces him to obey her, though, because she outranks him.
External Defenses
The gates of Surcross are made of necromantically animated bone. They open and close themselves at the orders of Thayan military necromancers, and will attack others who linger close to them for too long like the animated wall traps we saw earlier in the Dread Ring.
The wall surrounding Surcross is pretty solid, and also festooned with hundreds of hidden crypts. If the wall is breached or bypassed by enemy forces, a single command will trigger a selective zombie apocalypse. Every corpse within the wall will be animated and the shambling army will be sent into the town to kill every non-Thayan they find.
Fingers of Szass Tam
These five bone and marble towers are the reason Surcross hasn’t been flattened yet. Located at equidistant points around the perimeter of the city wall, they can project force fields over the city. They can’t cover the whole city for long, so the towers usually project stronger but smaller fields over whatever parts of it are being bombarded.
The towers have no windows, but their walls are enchanted to “not exist” to anyone inside them. They’re filled with arcane artillery pieces similar to those that defend the plateau, whose crews can see and fire through the walls just fine. They also have assault units ready to deploy to anywhere inside the city or to just outside its walls by marching on force field bridges.
The Garrison
Another important structure in Surcross’ defense, the garrison houses all living Thayan troups stationed in town. It’s guarded around the clock by undead. Its barracks are not segregated by gender, but by species: human, orc/half-orc, gnoll, and “other”. It has short-range teleportation circles that can move soldiers instantly to the front gate or to any of the five Fingers.
A particularly luxurious section of the garrison is reserved for the Sunmasters, a contingent of Bane clerics and star warlocks who specialize in radiant attacks. They mostly work as a special strike force against the Shadovar, or when there’s an emergency and they need every soldier in the field.
The Tombstone
This squat fortress at the very center of town is where its leadership resides. Its windows and doors can be commanded to meld into the walls and disappear, allowing it to serve as a last redoubt if the wall is breached.
Ukulsid holds court here and lets people petition him for judgment on disputes or to make other requests and complaints, but since he tends to draft those who annoy him into the army, few people make use of the opportunity.
The building also contains an enchanted audience chamber that’s a perfect replica of the one Szass Tam uses in his palace. It’s one of many such chambers spread throughout Thay. The lich can sit in his throne in the original chamber and establish a link with any of the replicas, causing an illusion of him to appear on the corresponding throne. This lets him talk to anyone inside the replica chambers as if he was there, and lets him forcibly teleport people inside the replica chamber to the original one if he wants. Ukulsid occasionally uses this room to report to his boss. PCs should probably avoid lingering here.
Valindra has an area reserved for her use underneath the Tombstone as well. This currently stores a large and still growing collection of dragon bones, guarded by skeletal guardians hidden among them. Valindra is stocking up in preparation for the time when she learns the ritual to raise dracoliches.
Impressions
Surcross looks like an even worse place than Evernight, and that’s saying something. PCs who make it inside the walls will have some freedom of movement, but still their stay there will resemble a dungeon delve more than a city adventure. Nowhere is safe, no one can be trusted, and you ideally want to do what you came to do and leave as quickly as possible.
If the PCs main reason for coming to Thay is to disrupt the Thayan supply lines, then Veil is probably their best bet, since the portal can be closed without them needing to destroy either city. If the GM says Valindra’s Soul Vessel is here in Thay, though, then its most likely hiding place is her bone collection under Surcross’ Tombstone.
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