Rifts: Dowsing for New Hope

The party gets back to town just in time to clean up and get to the funeral. The service is well performed and most of the men-folk congratulate young Fredrick Bancroft, the dead preacher's son, on a good sermon and say that his daddy would be proud. Most of the women-folk can't stop crying. The list of the dead includes: Robert Thicket Jr. (Sheriff), Bill Anders (Doc) and his two oldest sons Dean and Elie, Jon Bancroft (the Preacher), Hugh Hudson Jr. and his brother Hunter Hudson, and the last two were also brothers; Coal and Curt Jackson; there was also seven Arapaho Scouts, but the only one the townsfolk knew was called Running Wolf. The wooden caskets are buried in the cemetary behind the old church with wooden crosses marking the graves.

While the townsfolk bury the dead; Javorin pulls the party to the side at the same time that the party is pulling Javorin to the side. Earl does most of the talking while explaining the situation with the young Hairy Jacks, what they eat and how much, where they are and what they are, and asks if the town could look after them. Javorin gets noticable flabbergasted and doesn't say a word. He just stands there thinking. Earl keeps talking about the underground Rift and how the party has a plan to fill in the well with dirt and bury the rift good and tight. Fortunately, one of the men-folk knew how to dowse for a new well. It took him 2 days to find a new spot and that is where Roger started excavating. Roger went down about 60 feet and stopped, he had hit something metal and MDC. The rest of the party told him to start digging around it and then to clear enough dirt to get the box up to ground level. After Roger had done that, the party marveled at what they had uncovered. It was a metal box, 20 feet by 16 feet and about 10 feet tall. The box was shiny and reflected the daylight pretty darn good. Roger recognized it as some sort of storage box, but he hadn't seen one of these in a long time. Somebody found a small electronic keypad hidden behind some sort of hidden panel.

The group started thinking about what the passcode could be. They noticed that it could take a six digit passcode. The pondered awhile, then someone had the bright idea about the tombstones, the ones that had been there before the town had been there. They remembered that the first stone had the symbol XXX on it and the last one had XXXV, they went back and realized that the middle one had XXXIII scrawled atop it. Thunderheart realized that these were some sort of pre-rifts form of numbers. He determined that XXX = 30, XXXIII = 33, and XXXV = 35. Three numbers, put in numerical form was a six digit number, 303335. They tried it on the keypad. The door opened and Ralph walked in.

Ralph walked in. He noticed a lot of cargo and crates inside. The party also saw the cargo and the eerie red illumination coming from somewhere inside. He was near the back when he spotted movement. Something walked forward slowly and two mechanical voices repeated the word "Tresspasser."

It was two old-style skelebots with glowing red eyes. They party preceded to pack into the crate while Ralph and the skelebots battled it out via energy weapons. The skelebots were having a difficult time hitting the Juicer, but then again, Ralph was having a hard time hitting them. Eventually, the skelebots were defeated with their main bodies destroyed. The party now gets to inventory the tremendous find they have uncovered. The first crate they looked into had seven seperate missile crates in it.

This is where we left off, the rest of the loot will be forthcoming after next session is reported.

New Hope Happy's

By the time the party returned to New Hope, it was already approaching dusk and with the funeral tomorrow; they decided to get some rest at the inn. Nothing happened during the night and all of them slept contently except for Ralph who didn't sleep. Earl slept at his home.



When morning came, the group gathered for breakfast downstairs in the dining room of the inn. They had a wonderful meal of eggs, sausage, bacon and texas toast. It was delicious. While eating, they noticed Scott Weatherby talking with his mother, Mary Weatherby, who had prepared the wonderful breakfast. Thunderheart, with his enhanced bionic hearing, overheard Scott saying to his mother something about the boars being back. Scott, noticing that they were listening to his conversation with his mother approached the party and asked them if they were experienced hunters. The group simultaneously looked down at the guns they were carrying. The group responded with sarcasm. "Noooo, we don't hunt, not with this gun or with these knives or with this armor that we're wearing; No, we don't hunt." Scott recognized the tone, but was confused if they were accepting his proposal or not; so he asked again. " Is that a yes?"


At this time, Earl walked in and Scott started explaining the situation. Earl suggested that they get rid of these "boars" since they harrass the livestock and might be taking them. Earl realized that it was still day time and told everyone that they usually attacked during the night. Be that as it may, the group decided to finish breakfast right quick and since they were all already in their gear, started towards the other side of the forest isthmus and the field that contained the cattle and the three boars nipping at their ankles. When they arrived, they saw that all the cattle had been rounded up into a corner of the pasture with three small boars keeeping them there. While Earl tried eyeing up a shot at one of the boars, one of the others started moving forward. Right as Earl was squeezing the trigger on his energy rifle, the boars all turned and it looked like they were talking to each other. One of the party, I do believe it to be Dirk, recognized the language as Faerie speak. The boars were wondering what the party was doing there and what they were up to. They decided to take off anyways, just to be on the safe side so the boars, running pretty fast, made it to the forest before the party could react. The party, being ever vigilent in their quest for figuring stuff out set off to investigate where the boars had gone. They soon discovered that there was a clearing in the forest where the sounds of the beasts could be made out, but they couldn't see anything. Then, all of a sudden, one of the party spotted a boar and then it vanished as soon as it had appeared. The party ventured into the forest and discovered the clearing, full of grass and void of any fallen leaves from the trees surrounding the clearing. Within the clearing, the party discovered a large boulder. Ralph, being Ralph, decided to charge and attack the boulder with his make-shift sword. He charged and chipped the boulder something awful. When this happened, Thunderheart saw the boulder move, just a little, and asked Ralph to hit again. This time it moved again. Thunderheart informed everyone else that the boulder was moveable and Ralph pushed it out of the way, but the boulder kept rolling towards town until they moved to stop it just in front of the well. The rest of the party looked down and discovered a hole in the ground. Ralph jumped in and found to his surprise that the hole was quite shallow and that there was a tunnel leading further underground. Ralph started following the way right quick and Dirk decided to follow him. The rest of the party stayed above ground.

Below, Ralph started crawling since there was only a crawlspace and it was pitch black, but that didn't stop Ralph and it didn't stop him from falling down into the opening in front of him. Dirk, hearing such noise, cast a globe of daylight to illuminate his way, he saw that Ralph must have fallen from the opening down into the den of the beasts. The lair was small, but it was large enough. Dirk noticed a door on the other side and right after he said something, Ralph was off investigating the door. After Ralph had gone into the other room, Dirk had made the discovery when his globe winked out that there was some sort of light coming from behind the tapestry hanging on the wall. Dirk peeked behind the tapestry and saw a passage way leading up. Ralph walks back in and says there is a room with a dock in it on the other side of the door. Dirk goes and investigates and finds that this room is in fact the town well. At that precise moment, Earl decides to come down for a peek, he feels safe with Thunderheart and Roger watching the back door sorta speak, besides, they had already gotten the boulder back from the town center.

With the three of them down in the lair, and Dirk being able to speak their language, and Ralph being Ralph, and Earl being able to feel what they are thinking. They approximated the whereabouts of the boars, which when they found them, Dirk told them that they were not boars, but Hairy Jacks and that he had never seen them before on Earth. He also told them that they were fairie folk and magical. Well, with Earl's excellent ways of negotiating, they agreed to stay below ground for now if they were fed. Earl, as the Jacks waited, went and got a cattle and brought back down to them. They were starving, so they just started ripping at the carcass and the three of them, after two hours of feasting and half a cow left said that this here cow would last them one week. Earl and the others agreed to bring them one cow every week and went to inform the townsfolk of the situation.

That is where we left off.

PointCon 09 quotes

"Congratulations, you have successfully beaten the crap out of a 75 year old man." -- TS

"No, he bought a horse instead, remember?" -- Mort de Magus played by me.

"I make it, right on the nuts." -- Matt C.

"That's what she said!" -- Brian M.

"The only food that's good the second time around, raddishes." -- TS

"You have a pointy hat; I got distracted." -- Zevryk Shadowbourne played by TS

"The head-slap signifies dissapointment. The gnomw is worth five." -- Mort de Magus played by me.

"Headbutt 'em with your sword." -- Defender played by Brian M.

"Wait, your eating them, they must be good." -- James
"Yeah, that's a test!" -- TS

"I rolled a 5, take it wherever you want it." -- Ray

Bugbear accidentally slips and slits his own throat.
"See; I told you I wasn't going to kill him." -- Druid played by TS

"You feel pleasure when you put the glove on and the rod feels like an extension of yourself." -- Dungeon Master

"Go to the glowing balls and bust a rod." -- Ray

"Before he does that, I am putting the shield on my head." -- Ray

"Take 5 everyone, some of you feel free to take more." -- TS

"Oh my God, he's approaching slowly; kill him." -- TS

"The only damage I've taken so far was by my own hand." -- the cleric played by Ray
"I stab him!" -- the druid played by TS

"I use my spear to break his fall." -- the druid played by TS

"You hear screaming coming from inside." -- DM(Dungeon Master, James)
"Good screaming or bad screaming?" -- the druid played by TS
"Good screaming, good screaming!" -- the gnome played by me

"Which one is his lazy eye?" -- Chris N.
"The right one." -- Brian M.
"Good, then he wasn't talking to me." -- Chris N.

These were just some of the random quotes I picked up while attending Pointcon and playing in a Castle and Crusades game.

The Return of the Body - Rifts

The party arrives back in New Hope without incident, however, on arrival they are greated by the townspeople. The townspeople are overcome with greif and despair while one amongst them keeps a level head. Javorin pulls the party aside and explains that it will take two days for the funeral to be ready. Javorin explains that caskets have to be made and the preacher's son needs to perform the service and time to practice the service as well. Javorin then switches topics and asks the party if they could go and visit the Arapaho village on the other side of the Hudson forest which covers the Minotaur Mountains to let them know about their fallen scouts and to see if they wanted the body back. The party agrees and decides that Roger can take all of them there faster than all one at a time with Buttercup. First however, they decide to take all the bodies to the church and put them in the root cellar except for the Arapaho body which is left in the Sheriff's office. When they drop off the bodies, Earl asks if anyone in the party can read. The only one with any kind of reading skills is Thunderheart. They ask why, and Earl replies that there is some stone slabs sticking out of the ground in the cemetary behind the church and they have some kind of writin' on them. Thunderheart goes and tries to decipher the three slabs, which are headstones dating back to before and right after the appearence of the rifts. Thunderheart can decipher two of them. The first has "XXX" and "May you rest in Peace" written on it and the third one has "XXXV" and "May the Rifts Monsters Die" written on it. They figure that they can always come back and see if the can learn about what is on the middle headstone.



With the problems of travel solved, the party is taken up above the village of New Hope and starts to the south which is the way Roger believes is the Arapaho village. Five minutes into the flight, which Earl is absolutely loving, Earl notices that they are a little of coarse and tells Roger to head southwest instead. After another two minutes, they notice a clearing with odd, sharp angles mostly covered in some kind of purplish moss with odd, shiny and sharp metal bits on the tips of the protrusions from the ground. They agree to get a closer look and while Roger starts to descend into the clearing Earl notices some shadows in the woods that look vaguely familiar, Earl identifies them as minotaurs and starts yelling for Roger to go back up. Roger finally sees what Earl is yelling about and starts ascending his earthen platform after being only twenty feet from touching down in the clearing.



The party, being still a little roughed up from their Simvan encounter and not having their armor repaired yet decide to head for the Arapaho village instead. Along the way, Earl does tell the party that the closest place to repair their armor would be in Scottsbluff which is a two-day ride by horse. The rest of their voyage is uneventful and they arive in the village in about 7 minutes. When they land, they are greeted by three Arapaho dressed in war paint and armed with magnificent looking spears. The Arapaho, seeing the party flying into their village, were naturally untrusting of the party, but Earl spoke the lingo and made them understand that they weren't there to fight but to tell them about the dead scouts that had aided New Hope's Sheriff with the hunting of the worm creature. Earl successfully explained everyone in the party except the Juicer Ralph; For him, Earl was lost for words.

The party comes back with four of the Arapaho Warriors, two to find the missing bodies and two to take back the one body. Roger takes flight and drops off the two seeking the missing bodies where they found the bodies and then takes the other two back to New Hope to pick up the dead Arapaho and takes them back to the Arapaho Village. Then they return to New Hope awaiting the funeral of the dead men.

Matt C.

Just reminding you Matt to join Facebook so we can get you on the Gary's Greyhawk Group. I am almost done with the Rifts blog as well; just waiting for James's character's name. Otherwise, let me know if you are coming Tuesday for Settlers of Catan. Talk to you later.

New Hope - New Friends - Rifts

After finding the Worm Wraiths horse and pack pony, Thunderheart combed the area looking for some kind of tracks. Although the Worm Wraith had covered his tracks, Thunderheart was able to get a bead on where the creature had come from. It had come from the south and a little west. Everyone in the party, except Roger, had a genuine interest in finding out where the wraith had come from, but more to see if they could find anymore of those high-quality weapons.


Roger, however, agreed to go along, but grudgingly (Mostly since Jung wasn't here to play his character, but since his character probably wouldn't have gone on by himself). The party started making their way towards the direction in which the tracks lead.



They continued south until they started to smell something wrotten and decaying. They looked around and spotted a mound off to the side of the trail. Dirk went over to investigate. Thunderheart heard buzzing coming from flies and saw the flies covering the mound that Dirk was approaching. He started saying that it was just a dead animal when Dirk cried out that there were 16 dead bodies layed out, all naked with their clothes piled neatly at their feet. Dirk started rummaging through the piles of clothes and found a sheriff's badge along with six deputy badges. The bodies all shown signs of strangulation along with gaping holes in their chests that were cauterized by the energy weapon used to shoot them at close range. The bodies were layed out along a hill, but because of the way the grass grew, it looked like the land was flat when in fact, there was a gulch there and the bodies were layed out down into the gulch. It was getting dark, so the group said that they would camp for the night, up the trail a bit and come back in the morning and bury the bodies if there were any left. The night passed, and in the early predawn morning of the next day, Ralph heard some unquieting howls.



The party woke up and headed back to see how many bodies were left. They found the place without a problem and discovered that there were only ten bodies left. After some debate, they figured out that Roger could just lift the earth instead of them actually digging the graves, so that is precisely what they did. One mass grave and then they were heading south in the direction of the trail.



It wasn't long until they cam to a dirt path intersecting the trail they were following. Thunderheart went across the path and discovered that the trail didn't extend past the dirt of the path. Thunderheart then determined that the wraith had ventured from the east, so they group set out towards the east much to the dismay of Roger. It wasn't an hour past when they spied a small village with many outlying buildings within a 100 feet.



The party rode in on their steeds and tied them off after dismounting in front of the first establishment. The sign up above had a picture of a full and foamy beer mug and the words -- Javorin's Saloon -- burned into the wood. Ralph and Dirk walked into the place through the swinging saloon doors and saw three men gathered around the bar. One man appeared to be around 80 years old, the other next to him was about 60 and the third man was the bartender and he was about 40 or 45. Ralph walked up to the bar and ordered a whole bottle of whiskey and then sat down. Dirk followed a few paces behind.

Meanwhile, Thunderheart was outside across the street peeking his head into the Sheriff's place with the star badge burned into the sign outside. Nobody was there, all he saw was a empty desk with some scattered pieces of paper and door that led to the jail cells. Thunderheart then walked outside and next door to Cassie's Coral (pronounced like corral, just misspelled). When he entered; he was unimpressed with the twelve girls he saw standing there. One of the girls stepped forward while the rest giggled and made eyes at him. Thunderheart simply asked, "Who's in charge here?"
"Why, I am sugar," replied the girl who stepped forward. "Welcome to Cassie's Coral, how can we help you," as she motioned with her hand the other girls standing behind her.
"No, I mean, who is in charge in this town?" asked Thunderheart.
" Oh, silly, that would be the sheriff, but he isn't here."
"Oh, then who is second in command then?"
"Well, that would probably be the Doc."
"Where's the doc then?"
"Well, he went with the Sheriff, for sure."
"Then who's in charge after him?" Thunderheart was getting impatient.
"Well, that would be Javorin."
"And where is he?"
"His place is right across the street." She pointed in the general direction.
Thunderheart turned and walked out. The girls had a look of disappointment in their eyes that nobody saw save themselves.

However, while Thunderheart was busy with the girls, Ralph had struck up a conversation with Cletus, the 80 year-old looking man that was sitting at the bar in Javorin's. Ralph started asking questions about the Sheriff and found out about him, the Doc, and the deputies and the scouts who had gone with them. He also found out about the stranger who stayed on the outskirts of town and how he did his disappearing act and how that is why the Sheriff is gone because him and the doc and the preacher and the deputies and the scouts had all gone out looking for him and tracked him out north of town. Ralph was very impatient, and started getting bored, so he pulled out his red liquor and gave a shot to each guy in the place. Cletus took it and stayed seating while the 60 year-old looking man got a shit-eatin' grin on his face and Javorin, who was the bartender, passed out cold behind the bar. Ralph was bored, so he decided to start running around town and up and down the main street; rising a whole lot of dust doing so. Dirk remained inside talking with Cletus.

Earl walks in and starts talking to Cletus and about what's going on. He asks where the Sheriff is since he saw his horse outside. The party tells him that the Sheriff is dead along with the other members in the posse that went with him. They tell him about where the dead bodies are and how they found them. Earl asks where Javorin is and finds him passed out behind the bar. Earl helps himself to a drink and starts rambling about what the town should do. Earl then starts planning a party to go and retrieve the dead bodies for a proper burial. The party plus Earl go talk to the blacksmith who happens to have a wagon that they can borrow but needs to be fixed before it is taken. The wheel needs to be put on. After they get the wheel on, Earl decides he needs to run home quick to get his gear. On his way back, he stops off at the church and tells the Preacher's wife and son what happened. The wife starts crying while the son is firm and recognises that he will have to fill his father's footsteps earlier than anticipated.

Earl gets back and meets the party, which is everyone who is going, and they start off on the way back to the bodies that they had found. They get back to the bodies, but are ambushed by Simvan. This time, the Simvan are better prepared but launch their ambush to far away to get to the party quickly. The party protects Roger while he unearths the bodies and loads them onto the wagon. The Simvan are easily killed and looted. With the bodies loaded and the Simvan dead, the party starts on their way back to the town of New Hope.

Finals

yeah, semester is over. I have one final on Wednesday afternoon. I have one take-home online final that is due on Friday the 15th. I have a final project due on Monday. Otherwise, I work next weekend, so cool-beans.