My latest is a Mississippi-esque flatboat trip through about 2500 miles of terra incognito to a coastal city that will pay top dollar (top gold piece?) for the valuble woods the flatboats are made of.
Trouble is the forest where these valuable timbers grow is upriver of an enormous lake. So big it has seven major drainages. Only three of which come out anywhere near the city and only one, of course, goes right by it.
I'm allowing firearms in this one. And there is still a bunch of close calls and adventure.
After thirty plus years of gaming, the guys in my group have several characters who have aquired odd and powerful devices, usually through interplaner or interdimension travel. So this campaign was for the little used guy with the cool stuff.
The overall layout.
The river drainages and the destination city have only recently been liberated from the sway of a monsterous entity. Something on the scale of the thing at the end of
Hellboy. Holding reign over an area about the size of the continental US for some five hundred years. But as I tell my players, that was someone else's adventure. All you guys know is that it's gone. (How would you like to be part of the first group of humans back into Moria? I can arrange it.)
At the end of every epic adventure lies a second I always say. Least ways for the normal man.
The PC's (player characters, the gamers) are in two groups. One group lives in the destination city and the other group is making the boat trip. Tonight should be the downriver groups turn. They have been hired by a Great Witch to travel upriver a day and then do what they can to make a side river "safe for gentle traffic".
The guys on the down river trip have avoided diaster through simple choice twice now. And when they realize it they always give me that look.
The first came when they were at the starting city. Its a wooden boomtown actually. Totally frontier. If the river route can be re-established it will take months of the travel time to the final end users. I got the PC's to invest their wealth in order to raise the stakes in the game, rather than merely crewing someone else's investment. Makes them possessive, what with the twenty to one return expected.
Now the first choice was either a flatboat made entirely of the rare and aromatic wood plus other cargo or a traditional vessel loaded down with pallet loads of the wood in the hold. More expensive, but more defensable and faster in open stretchs of water. Those were the selling points I was making through several imaginary hawkers.
But one of the players decided to make an Ancient History check and discovered that before the entity took over that the flat boats were the customary method of moving the cargo, so they went with it.
As it turns out...
After a full day on the river they entered Large Lake after starting out in a good sized flotilla. The PC's had hired local rivermen, who every evening would bring out five gallon bucket sized citronella candles. Seems they have mosquitoes with two foot wing spans, stylets the size of pencils and a two pint capacity. The PC's were glad they hired the rivermen as they had no clue. (besides their obvious use as "red shirts" I try to make hirelings useful. That way it hurts more when the monster gets 'em)
At first light the second day something else became clear. The adventurers started coming across debris and wreckage. Several sailing vessals that had preceded them had come to grief during the night. A pair of survivors from different ships both said that thier ships simply started coming apart in the middle of the night. One of whom is a merchant prince who appriciated the lift.
After a bit it was discovered that the lake is inhabited by enormous fiftyfoot wide jellyfish that consume normal wood in minutes. BUT the aromatic trade wood is not only repellant, it's* actually distructive to them.
The guys intentionally left the cargo hold empty guessing there would be some sort of swag to be had. Turned out to be a good idea. They spent a day recovering some 8 pallets of wood to put in their own hold.
The guy who had come the closest to renting one of the sailing ships and funding the whole shebang gave me such a look. Just because I knew ahead of time the jellies lived there, yet tried to get him to put out 32,000 gps in fine gems as sweet as you please.
Well, they finally reached the south shore and took the first river south that looked deep enough.
Yep. Orc** central. They had it industrialized to the point it eventually completely disappears, but the players didn't get quite that far. They had been using a "mystical engine" from another place to out pace the other flat boats. I gave them an arbitrary progress of twice that of an unaided flat boat on the big map. And even with two pintle mounted weapons and some rapid fire light stuff they still had to work their backsides off to save themselves.
Three different times in the fight back upriver it looked bleak for our heroes. But they not only saved themselves they rescued the crew of a another flatboat who had preceded them while they were hauling in that salvage. I, of course, then tempt them with the other flat boat. (It will only slow you down about 50% Think of the extra money! but they weren't biting.)
I'll relate more as it happens. Some of my players read my posts so I can't blab about future plans for them.
*I honestly must say that its because of Gillian and posting here that I give a hoot and check which "its" I'm supposed to be using. Though I find it funny that the contraction gets the apostrophe and not the possessive.
**There are no green orcs! Nope. Nada. They were bred out of elves. Therefore run the gamut of "human" pigmentation. And, as I explained to some little kids outside of a theatre one night, the reason a lot of orcs appear black is because they are
filthy! Ever see a bunch of troops who have been in the field for weeks? You would think they were all green and black too.
The Elves don't just say that as a perjorative everytime they mention orcs. It's literally true. When one is invulnerable to all pathogens, poisons and toxins it imposes another standard of hygiene not typical to other humanoids. That's why you see all the crude surgery using screws and plumber's tape. They are not subject to infection. They also don't fatigue, though they have to sleep more often than Elves. About every three days instead of thirty. So they can keep doing what they are doing until hunger or sleep overtake them.
I've been killing them for 3 decades, so I would know.
BD.