O My Ruritania!: Fall In 2015

I attended the HMGS Fall In convention in Lancaster, PA, last week. Had a good time as usual. Attendance on Friday afternoon seemed very sparse but did pick up considerably by Friday evening and things seemed pretty active on Saturday afternoon. Friday night, I played in Temple of the Snake Priestess, run by Howard Whitehouse, using his Chainmail Bikini rules. The game involved four teams of adventurers entering a ruined Maya-ish city with the goal of getting their astrologer to the top of one of several temples to obtain some sort of Important Sign from the Heavens. Each team had three players, and the four teams were Arabian Nights adventures, Barbarians, Evil Cultists, and the Sisterhood of the Amazons who ended up being played as a sorority from a Southern University. I played the Snake Priestess and her various monsters and minions. All of the parties did manage to achieve their goal, the evil cultists perhaps too well - they summoned a Cthulhu-like Elder God that ate their astrologer and whose weight collapsed the temple killing remainder of the cultists.

The city of the lost temples

Dodo birds are not as fearsome an encounter as one would have thought. There's some much better pcitures from the game found at this Flickr album:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/51989410@N03/sets/72157660948715206/with/22910228161/

Saturday I ran my Solomon Kane game. I had seven players running individual good guys and two running the bad guys/creatures. In addition to SK and his African witch doctor side-kick N'Longa, there was the English soldier John Silent, and Baldric, the scrofulous servant from Bladderadder. I also included Robert Howard's somewhat psychotic swordswoman heroine, Dark Agnes de Chatillon and her sidekick Etienne - it's a shame Howard only wrote a couple of stories about Dark Agnes, she is definitely one his most interesting characters. These were all assisting Jack Hollinster whose fiance Mary had been kidnapped by the evil Sir George Banway.

The game took place in three scenes, each on a separate board. The first was the hero's raid on Sir George's Cornwall estate. It was defended but a couple of troops of Irish mercenaries lead by two big gallowglass. There were also a few pirates and witch who could summon skeletons and a small demon. This proved a difficult board, for the players, who each went their own ways and several ended up in very tight spots. In particular, Etiene took on the demon whom he couldn't harm, Solomon Kane was surprised by one of the gallowglasses when he stormed the manor house single handedly and John Silent in what became the recurring theme of the game, was beat upon by everyone and drastically wounded. Ultimately, they did defeat all the enemies and captured Sir George who told them he had sold Mary to the Venetian sorcerer for some dark purpose.

The second scene was Venice and the heroes stormed the palazzo of the evil sorcerer before he could escape. I think the players had a better handle on the rules at this point since they succeeded here much more quickly. Things started with Baldric disguising himself as the filthiest and most-non-Italian-speaking gondolier in Venice. It was less than successful. Fortunately, Solomon Kane rampaged through a host of mercenaries while the rest of the part stormed into the building. N'Longa, who had a spell that allowed him to possession NPC, eventually took control of a weakened Costrano which more or less ended this scene.

Fortunately, Costrano was captured before he could completely summon all of the tentacles of the canal leviathan. Which proved to be fairly easy to avoid if not kill.

From Costrano, they learned that he had sent Mary, by means of the notorious pirate The Fishhawk, to the evil vampiress Nekari who dwelt in a ruined city in the heart of the African jungle. The party arrived shortly after the Fishawk. N''longa possessed on the gunners on the pirate ship who opened fire with a swivel gun on the local tribesman, thus starting a very useful diversion for our heroes to try and rescue Mary.

Ultimately, Solomon Kane personally killed The Fishhawk, N'Longa torched Nekari with multiple fireballs and Gulka the native apekiller was beaten to death by a homing gorilla Mary was nearly freed but then captured by one of Nekari's giant bats. Baldric shot the bat but was unable to catch the girl as she fell from its clutches. Mary was severely injured but was now free to escape. However, they were not able to escape before the dying Nekari was able to summon the huge demon Apep. Without Mary being sacrificed, the creature was out of control and attacked the largest target it could find, the pirate ship. This gave the party enough time to beat a hasty retreat back to the coast.