Greg Stolze: Forums

Hi, all !

In Insect Kings´Bind Kickass Ninja-thread, i babbled myself into writing a “high-level”one-off scenario for Reign, set in Upunzi, home of everybodys favorite gourmets.

I´ve made some headway, and what i´m posting below is Stage One of project “Night of the Jackals”. Hopefully this will end as a large one-off fan scenario that gms can use to trick people into playing Reign, dick-killing horses and all : )

I´ll be posting scenario bits in the comming weeks.
If anyone spot any inaccuracies in the description of Upunzi or anything else in Reign, please let me know!

NIGHT of the JACKALS
A Reign One-off for high-powered characters.

In this scenario the the characters are dangerous, capable and vicious mercenaries who have taken a semingly impossible job- to murder Gulu, one of the eleven Elders of Upunzi, all-seeing, eye-eating sorcerers of Ruhini.

There can be only one attempt; Gulu must die within eight days- and escaping dread Upunzi alive can prove even harder than the assasination.

It is a task no normal adventurer could hope to accomplish; but the characters just might pull it off- or end their lives blinded and crucified atop the Tower of the Elders, flayed alive under the beating sun.

This scenario resembles a caper movie, and probably falls into three phases.

First the characters need to use their abilities to discover Gulus shedule for the coming days, and plan the murder and their escape. They interact with npcs who can can provide information or assistance, while risking drawing attention to themselvs.

Phase two is the assasination itself, which is likely to become a big, setpiece fight with magic on top.

Phase three is the escape.”After Them !” is probably the natural way to resolve that, though the players planning and execution of the murderin´ will probably dictate events.


Note: This scenario obviously goes into further detail about Upunzis people and culture than Stolze has yet. Therefore all new material must be concidered “unofficial” by purists…

Wow, this is going to do wonders for my post count..


Presumptions about Upunzi:

The Elders rule, but are also locked in a constant, political tug of war with each other. Since they choose who to recruit when one of their number dies, the newest elders are always beholden to other Elders.

Their constant strife hardly ever spills over into physical conflict, but the town of Upunzi is a sprawling, messy chessboard where eleven immortal sorcerers seek to increase their influence.
As a consequence, it is a deeply corrupt place, where connection to some influential individual in the service of an Elder is the ultimate definition of your social value. Those with no links to these informal structures are ultimately powerless, no matter what.

Elders sever ties with their families, (at least publicly) as they rule for all. They also lose the ability to, and desire for procreation over the years.

The Tower of the Elders, (in fact a fortress with eleven bastions and a central spire) has tunnels to the Hall of Justice, where troops are quartered and prisoners kept before de-eyeing.

Upunzi has a police force (“the Red guard”), merchants guilds, nobles and generals; but they are all fragmented into different informal networks. And as Elders also sit as judges in the Court of Upunzi, there is no recourse for those who have little influence.
As a result, there is tremendous apathy and disenchantment among the common people, who can never hope to better their lot by their own efforts.

Also, Upunzi is crowded with informers. No meeting in a marketplace or new song sung by harbor bargemen will escape notice. In fact, this helps the PCs; so much information must be sifted and evaluated by the spymasters that they will have finished their mission before all reports of their movements are correlated.

The Red Guards
A rudimentary police force, the Red Guards patrol the streets and man the walls of Upunzi.
Their cloaks and clothing are dyed an ochre red, a hue forbidden to others.
This dye is manifactured by crushed mites, and fresh recruits get terrible itchy rashes from wearing it.
“Squinters” or “squinties” is a nickname for a rookie Red Guard, describing their facial expression as they struggle to not scratch like a newbie.
A few of the Guards know spells like “Minds eye, clarified” or other lesser spells of Upunzi Visioning… but the maths involved elude most of them.

Gulu the Elder.
-Is a powerfully built woman who wears her hair in two thick braids down her back.
She is still only intermittently scaly (mostly around the bones of the face and hands) and her forehead-mouth is quite large. Gulu experiments with adorning it with pearls, or henna patterns. She favours ochre reds for her clothing.

She is around forty, unusually young for an Elder.

Gulu has only been an elder for three years, after the previous holder died “of a fever”… according to the other Elders.

Being so recently “converted” Gulu still retains many human traits older Elders shed, like venturing out in the daytime (veiled and shaded, naturally).

Gulu is followed by ten guards, “the fat lads”, who carry her palanquin, tote chilled wines and fruit baskets, and cool her with perfumed fans in the midday heat.
They also set up additional screens of ochre linen decorated with her favourite equations around her when stopping outdoors.

The fat lads are all wrestlers, fed immense rations of greasy meat. They train to deseisitize themselves to pain, and are passably capable with their jewelled scimitars.
Their tactic is to form an immovable wall of flesh around Gulu at once something unusual happens- and they fight with special gripping tactics: One will seize a foe and hold on, ignoring any pain or injury, while his comrades hack at his victim.

Naul
Naul Menase, a young noble poet is a personal friend of Gulu and usually accompanies her.

Slender Naul is beloved throughout Upunzi for his verses, which tends to be bittersweet poetry about life and human frailty. When the poet wanders the city, crowds gather to him and recite his work, hoping to lure from him a few new lines.
This naturally pleases Gulu, who shines by association and showers the young man with expensive trinkets and wine.

But Naul is also an archer of repute, among the best in Upunzi.
“They say he can shoot another arrow from the sky”.
He usually carries a dainy, ivory-inlaid shortbow and four ornate, gem-studded arrows painted red.

If Naul were to be killed, it would cause grief far beyond Upunzi.
His fame is such that lowly robbers and drunken soldiers would stay their hand rather than injure the beloved poet. Should Naul be felled, it is likely that all Upunzines nearby would cease fighting and rush to help save him.

Gulu, Scourge of the Dark Ocean:
Her network of merchants has invested heavily in trade and seeks to increase her clout with successful export ventures. They have built ships built and hired sailors, only to see cargo after cargo taken by pirates.

Frustrated by the losses, she has blamed the navy for incompetence and taken direct command, only to lose yet more ships.
Now she is comitted to bolster Upunzi´s naval clout, wipe out piracy and secure the sea routes.
She has hired Laula, a wandering Stormtongue to aid these efforts, and is having a magnificent galleon, the “Scowling Brow” built.

SCREAMING GRANDFATHER

On a cliff hill in Upunzi lies “Grandfathers´house”, a ruined, ancient tower atop a warren of caves. The whole area is taboo, and only the Screaming Nuns are allowed here on pain of death.
The tower is the home of the legendary giant bat, “Grandfather”, who protects the city and its inhabitants. Every evening, huge swarms of ordinary bats fly from the tower, but enormous Grandfather is only glimpsed once a year, during the Ritual of the Milk.

The origins of Grandfather is lost in the mists of history, but the consensus is that the enormous bat is a lesser god who protected the first settlers of Upunzi, and that he and his children protect the city still.

The Screaming Nuns are all blinded survivors of the Elders´ appetites. Any woman victim can beg for the “judgement of grandfather” after her blinding, and is taken to Grandfathers House at nightfall if the Elder agrees.

Most of them are found terribly mauled and clawed at the foot of the mountain next morning. But around ten to the hundred are accepted, and become Screaming Nuns, spending the rest of their lives in the Tower, forbidden to leave and fed by the city, who fill baskets with poor foodstuffs, that is hauled up into the tower on ropes.

--
The truth: Grandfather is a moldering carcass, dead for centuries. Long ago, earlier Elders stuffed and conserved the carcass, hanging it from the main hall, and making it shudder and flex with hidden wires. Its eyes are set with glass to make them glitter, and the nuns are skilled at giving the hollow hulk the appearance of life.

The Screaming Nuns are a half-crazed collective of survivors. They know every inch of their tower and the warrens, and depend on the food the city provides. When new victims are delivered to them, they are usually murdered by the Nuns in giant bat fashion, and dumped, unless there has been a death among the Nuns. Dependent on the food delivered, they mercilessly cull any newcomers.

The Screaming Nuns live in such closeness with the bats that they can imitate most bat sounds perfectly and can make the immense flocks of normal bats inside both swarm and settle down again.

The tower itself is a horrific warren of dead nun mummies, rooms made toxic by bat droppings (and others merely made slippery and dangerous through batshit and crumbling stones). There are hidden paths and decaying statues throughout.
It is also older than Upunzi, and contains decayed frescoes and statues a member of the Wronged would think valuable beyond money, as a legacy of the time before the invaders.


The Ritual of the Milk
Once a year, an Elder brings a brimming urn of milk from the Elders´ own herd to Grandfathers house in a solemn sundown ritual. The eleven elders have let this duty rotate among them, and this is Gulu´s first year.
She enters the temple with her retinue (probably no more than a handfull men), meets the Screaming Nuns in the great hall, and takes part in ritual song before pouring the milk and then leaving.

The ritual is held to be lucky both for Upunzi and any spectators. A throng of locals are likely to show up and wait outside, joining in the hymns, hoping to glimpse Grandfather and catch some of the luck. The red guard will be present to keep control, and a section of twenty proper spearmen from the army as a honor guard..

But she will be in there almost alone. And the huge wooden doors could be barred from the inside.

--

The Truth: The Elders all know the truth about Grandfather. But they don´t want to mess with the myth of the citys gigantic guardian, so the rituals go on. The ritual of the Milk is a tiresome chore, and Gulu will cut it as short as she can, breathing through a pomander and wearing her most filth-resistant finery.

March of the Convicts

Gulus network of merchants has invested heavily in trade, and seeks to increase her clout with successful export ventures. They have built ships and hired sailors, only to see cargo after cargo savaged by pirates.

Frustrated by the incessant losses, Gulu has blamed the navy for incompetence and taken direct command, only to lose yet more ships and quite a lot of face.
Angered, she has hired Laula, a wandering Stormtongue to aid her antipirate efforts, and is having a magnificent galleon, the “Scowling Brow” built.

And then an undeserved victory fell in her lap.

In an embarrasing display of ineptitude, ObLob pirates recently rammed an Upunzi freighter and got themselves fouled. Before the chargrined raiders could free their vessel, the freighters´ belated escorts arrived and seized them.

The pirates were sent to Upunzi´s prison camps, but Gulu has other plans. Furious that the cargo was destroyed, Gulu ordered the ObLob captain and helmsman brought before her- but the pirates, to a man refused to name the two.

This refusal was a public slap in the face. Infuriated by such disrespect from filthy foreign bandits, Gulu intends to demonstrate, very publicly, the cost of defiance.

Gulu has decreed the entire ObLob crew gathered in the square. A torture platform is being built, and three expert eye-pluckers given new robes of office.

--

No other Elder will take part- they all pretty much think Gulu has embarrased herself enough, and don´t want to stand next to her when ObLobs with nothing to lose have a citywide audience for their taunts and rude gestures.

Upunzi has several prison camps of fifty to a hundred captives scattered outside the city.
They house the Ob-lob pirates, desert bandits (anyone the army comes across outside the city and dislike the look of), rebellious delta villagers and other undesireables unable to bribe or talk their way out. Ethic groups (like Ob-lobs) are spread across the camps in order to prevent alliances, and spies and trustees used to break up any organized resistance among the inmates.


Guards from the camps will round up every `Lob and the prisoner next to him, and march them to Upunzi the morning of the gathering.

Red guardsmen, Army spearmen and some noble Charioteers will be present for the affair, as well as throngs of curious Upunzis. Very aware of the presence of local Oblobs, as well as potentially rebellious convicts, security is tight.

Gulu himself will bring his Fat Men, as well as Nuul and his retinue.


If the Characters intend to strike here, they will have a massive battle on their hands-

The Oblobs and sundry other prisoners will gladly fight as soon as they see the slimmest hope of escape, and fight hard- they have little to loose.

If supplied with weapons their fighting prowess increases dramatically. Even so, they are outnumbered, and their best hope is to escape in the chaos.

The ensuing melee is a golden opportunity to assasinate Gulu- when fighting breaks out, she and her retinue will pull back and head for the Fortress of the Elders. In the streets, a vicious PC group could ambush them to terrible effect, and hope to escape in the general confusion.

This naturally leaves the rioting prisoners to face the consequences… and if an Elder is slain, anyone recaptured will suffer a fate horrific enough to render all but the most callous PC sleepless for the rest of their lives.

Oblobs can be induced to fight by the slimmest plan.
They will, themselves, suggest hacking their way to the harbor and seizing ships to escape, confident that their seamanship will allow them to outdistance any pursuit.

If properly planned, this can work- but the PCs had better prepare cunning shortcuts for the force through the city, diversionary fires and boats ready in the harbor.

When you say high level what sort of point-base are you thinking of using? 120? More? How many characters?

Also, isn't ochre more of an orange-y tan colour than red?

C.

Coooool. I love the nuns. Gives new meaning to "batshit crazy."

-G.

Hey Skaville,

What else is happening? You've got some background material, some locations and a deadline, so how is it going to fit together? What are all the character and GMC notivations?

C.

It´s coming - but for some reason people expect me to work for a living..

The fools !

Expect more from this weekend-to-mid next week.

I swear on the Hairy Legs of the Spider King !

Shit… better sacrifice TWO goats to Spider King next time.

I went all fashionable and got the swine flu.
Better now, but appologies to everyone (anyone ?) annoyed by the delay.

Some more stuff coming. Also:

Yeah, ochre is yellowy. I meant “ohcre red” which is.. um, yellowy red .

About characters: I was leaving that ´till last, but in the 120-150 range, depending on number of players. This will be a scenario with big fights full of unworthies, magic and missile weapons, to i think hypercompetent heroes are warranted.

So far, i´m thinking the following, ideally a wide enough variety to let Reign-noobs ask for a “warrior” or a “ninja” and get something close.

-All should be gender-neutral-

Ob-Lob seer;
-For someone wanting to play a “monk”, a martial artist/magican..-
Aqueous Divination would be a whopping advantage- and Rollneepo is cool.
Also, the “March of the Convicts”-storyline is an interesting hook and complication, and it would be quite a feat for an Ob-lob to kill one of the Elders…

The Shadowbinder:
-Pretty classic evil necromancer-
Lots of magic that can bring forth monster hordes to stop the guards, but the most effective spell is probably Wave of Darkness.

The Jackalman.
-For the “weird action” type- “Feral batman”
A conjoined man/jackal monster, who must go veiled or cause Morale checks..
Kinda hyper-effective animal/warrior, inhumanly fast and strong.
Possibly also one of "The Wronged"- Someone, at least one, should definitely have "Spiritual Escutcheon" .

The Blind Beggar assasin..
-For the ninja/drunken master-fan-
Using Insect Kings´ “ Sublime Blindness of the Beggar God” path, and maxing out the sneaky, eerie and “other senses” skills.
..How much blindness is too much blindness in a game ?
Another good candidate for being one of "The Wronged"

The Truill Prince
-Fans of conanesque barbarians-
A wandering warrior lord driven from the Truill homelands, living by his own code of honor among the strange people of the desert. Possibly with a retinue of warriors…

..Anyone have character suggestions? Post !

The flu of the season had a name. Someone wasn't paying attention when they played Feng Shui.



Like orange then? Or mustard?



Okay, I'll give these a go at writing up this weekend. I can't say they'll be 100% in what you want but close enough.



Eh, I know why you want them to be genderless so players can assign whatever genitals they want but I still prefer solid histories to vague hir and hirz and other smooth-crotched words.

Cheers,

Chris.

Hey, put as many dicks on them as you want.. it´s all good !

Feel free to do anything and make anything- i´m sure it´ll be good.





And theres more:

The Nasty Nuns !

Molol, Abbess of Grandfather Bat:
Molol is in hell and expects to stay here for the rest of her miserable life- and determined to live as well as possible. If this means ruthlessly lording killing other nuns, that’s fine.
She was a social climber and a blackmailer before it all went bad- powerful enemies had her accused, arrested and blinded within the space of a single day, and only her fury at this bitter defeat gave her the strength to survive.

After arriving she toppled the benevolent head nun, picked some tough newcomers for leutenants, and made herself top dog.

Allthough Molol and the nuns will automatically fight any invaders, she is quite willing to help the PCs, if they take the trouble to seek her aid. She has no love for Gulu or Upunzi, and will gladly command her nuns back off and let their plot go ahead. Further, if promised a share of the profit and help getting away, she will help wholeheartedly, which should make the ambush easier to carry out.
-Also, she will tell the PCs about the possibility of bringing down the tower.

Chutvira
Molols second in command has a staggering advantage in Grandfathers´ house- she can see. When blinded for stealing, she already had one eye ravaged by disease, rheumy and grey. The Elder took her fresh eye and sent her to Grandfathers house, not realizing that her “sick” eye still works.
Chuitvira can make out shapes and movement, but no precise vision.
Molols gang keeps this an absolute secret, as it gives them a tremendous advantage.

Lelis
Lelis is brutal and coarse because life made her so. Her readiness to do violence and her wrestling skill makes her a natural enforcer for Molol.

The weapons: Molol controls the secret cache of weapons used to kill new nuns- two cutting swords and two daggers with blades shaped to cause “giant bat-claw” and “giant bat-teeth” looking wounds.

Also, they have a sizeable stash of Mwiwu-derived poison made by saving and drying the poisoned pancakes.

GRANDFATHERS HOUSE

Atop of a jutting, mesa-like limestone hill, so ancient all corners have been smoothed by sandy winds and great cracks cover the walls.

A stone bridge stretches halfway to the huge double gates. Once a year, at the Festival of Milk, a wood section is carried into place (requiring ten men), completing the bridge to reach the gate.

Food suplies for the nuns is hoisted up to the temple by rope, suspended by ancient hoists and tackle.

The whole temple and the hill it sits on is taboo, and no-one may enter it and live. The dessicated corpse of a new nun who did´nt please Grandfather still lies where it caught on a sharp rock instead of tumbling all the way down.

There are about a hundred nuns inside. About twenty of these are gibbering, insane wretches, and another twenty are too emaciated, too old or to catatonic to react. The remaining sixty will obey Molol and her crew, but will not fight on their own.


(I´ll try to do a map over the weekend)

Inside:
The hill is hollow, with a huge well shaft, ringed with rickety walkways of wood and rope.

This nervewracking path leads to a honeycomb of caverns and small hovels carved in the limestone. There are some rooms, used for storage, workrooms and crypts for dead nuns.

Disused passages lead to ancient caverns with pre-Upunzine bas reliefs of great interest to The Wronged, as well as dangerous insect colonies.

Higher up; larger rooms open to the outside with load beams for the winches, where food is brought up. Sleeping halls, prayer rooms and workshops for the nuns.

Main hall:

The central keep has a stone troth like a font (for the ritual of the milk) just inside the gates.
The gates are barred and must be opened by hand.

Deep inside the keep Grandfathers stuffed carcass hangs, as well as thousands of ordinary bats, many of them nesting inside him. The floor beneath the bat colony has been eroded by their ammoniac droppings, creating a lethal area of gas and weakened sandstone floor.
This is the nuns´ toilet, too.

Above the gates rise the tower, a crumbled, unstable deadweight of stone. Molol knows the tower is dangerously unstable, and keeps away. The PCs may realize the same, and try to bring the whole thing down on Gulu..