Working on compiling the latest developments of the fresh Campaign; in Dutch and English is my plan btw.

Hello people,

Yesterday I played out some more of the storyline with Joshua, who plays the wizard Josh Melthir and it was quite a thrill. He loses his new found buddy Capn James Steepcliff and almost gets assassinated himself, after which a cunning plan is devised to avoid further loss of lives.

I've constructed two new characters for the players Taco and Joel, who will be joining the campaign soon. Taco has already played about two or three hours with just me guiding him along, because the party will remain separated until there is a sound plot where I can weave their storythreads into smoothly. Know that most of the stories I tell are made up on the fly, but I can only do that by knowing everything there is to know about the world I've built and also most of what is in the rulebooks, though I often need to peek a bit I must admit. NPCs rarely have premade stats in this early stage of the campaign, but once I've decided on a certain skilllevel or attribute level for someone, it stays that way for the entire game so it will appear like there is a certain fundamental sense of honesty in the game. I can do this because I always have a basic idea about the character's abilities and weaknesses and I want to challange them on various levels of the gamemechanics, without neglecting the roleplay element in all of this of course.

I sometimes need to remind the players about aspects of their characters that they're neglecting due to the quick start of this campaign. I can't expect them to act out all of their disadvantages and quirks perfectly right from the start. However, I must applaud them already for being so swift on the uptake, it brings me great pleasure to see them actually doing what their role asks them to do, instead of what I'm expecting them to do. They surprise me everytime they think up a way to advance the story, understand where the plot is going and display their newly acquired insight in the rulesystem. It took quite the crash course in personalized rule explanations for them, but we're getting there, no doubt.

I've also drawn a crude map of the world, which started as just me doodling a few blobs where the continents would roughly be for one of the players to get a mental picture. This slowly became filled with all kinds of territorial divisions and invented cities and, combining the map with some older ones I already had, it has become the thing that no player would want to learn by heart, but all of them want to take a look as soon as it is first presented to the party and then gawk at the amazing amount of indecypherable scribbling and small explanatory arrows which could mean anything to the uninformed viewer. A picture of this map I took with my phone will be on display in the Photogallery shortly.

Before I go, I'll just give a short description of the characters I've drawn up for the players, because they have been a bit careful about meddling with the GCA program, which is like a digital spawning pool of endless, but not limitless, possibilities to me and a certified nightmare to comprehend for them...

Taco will be playing Takor Heartstealer, a Troll spawned at the pool owned by the Thunderbolt clan. These Greenskins are truly hardcore and live in the place where all storms originate from: Omonar, City of Thunder, which is covered by black clouds at all times and is the seat of Omonosian power. He was bred and trained in the dungeons of Omonar for just one purpose. He was to fight in the war against the Sons of Solar, as a mercenary for the Proudfoot Empire. He has been engineerd to grow huge musculars arms, with hands like snowshovels that both hold an extremely dangerous Katar. He is trained to obey orders from his future Proudfoot masters and will make the clan very rich when he reaches the age of maturity. He is 17 when he is put on an airship and is blasted northward by divine storms towards his fated destiny in the Jungles of Solaria. He and 19 other Trolls, who all look up to him, for he has been the Alpha male of their group since they where young, are managed and cared for by a crew of cooperating Goblins, Orcs and the Proudfeet Military ambassadors who brought their clan so many gold bars to trade their lives for.

Perhaps by misfortune, or maybe a moment of sheer luck for the surviving trolls afterall, the ship is hit heavily by some kind of artillery machine from the ground. It crashes into a lake of quicksand with only three of the Trolls surviving the crash. These hurt young Greenskin berserkers are then ensnared by the mobile netthrowers that had been placed on the edge of the lake, their captors quickly subdueing them with heavy doses of sleeping powder, making their attempts to resist futile. Takor's extrordinary capacity for recovery could be his salvation though, because he comes by just after they have been tied onto a wagon and hauled off to Omonos knows where. Read about the daring escape attempt of Takor and his mates in the Dutch Stories Trial where you'll get to meet Robnar (who is the smart Troll and the follows Takor closely in status among the other Trolls) and Joltak (who has always been the weakest of the Trollish regiment, but makes up for this by sheer bloody insanity!) Oh how foolish of me to do this in this particular way, but it is going to be in Dutch I think yes, but I'll try to see if I can get around to translating it back to English after its done ;)

Finally a character who will be played by our group's current expert on fire magic wielding wizards: Joel. He truly left everything but the name of his new character up to me, and I pampered his tastes to the best of my abilities. He will be playing a Rontra Mehrunite (just like Crispin the ominous gnome, only very, very different in a lot of ways). This character can be described as a rat-faced martial arts wielding monk with the added feature of Mehrunite magical powers in the form of Body Control, Fire and Healing spells. His kicks are deceitfully tough to take to the gut and his specially trained legs move him around faster than most elves can run. He taught himself everything he needed to know by performing the Rituals of his people in Andarr, where the steppe Rontra live by the ancient Mehrunite tradition of reincarnating previously led lives while in deep meditative trance, so that the practicioner may learn things from himself as a teacher from a former incarnation. So indeed he was trained by a master, but that had been actually himself, or his immortal soul that went back and back again to the Belly of Iawat until he would become one of Mehrun's fabled chosen. Now, after receiving the same prophetic dream three consequtive nights around seven years ago, he sets off to find the last of the Chosen of Mehrun. He has gone all over the Rontra Republic and through the Zenian Federation and already stumbled upon eleven chosen people of all different races and heritages.

Xin-Li as he is known among the few who he discloses his identity to, invites all the chosen of Mehrun to come forth and enter the Arena at Bellioca Bay in western Quatropolis. Here, when sixteen contestants have been gathered, a great championship will decide who may claim the rightfull place as Grand Champion of their Lord Mehrun. Naturally he hopes it will be he himself who gets to bear this honor, but the competition is not at all to be thriffled with and every part of the  competition must be taken into account to decide a winner. There will of course be a test of martial prowess, but equally important are the tests of skill and the ability to channel the Lord Mehrun's powers effectively. The final four contestants will have to perform a test of the heart and will go on a journey through a separate realm of existance, a pocket dimension where a couple of moral dillema's have been desinged to test the finalist's ethical considerations. This last test will throw off any bookmaker's carefully calculated odds for the four will be going together as a team, so when they get out the other side, hopefully, they will have decided amongsth each other who will be the first Grand Champion of Mehrun in history and who will  be the ones that just went along for the ride. It is expected or at least sincearly hoped for that the Avatar of Mehrun will appear to present this heap of honor to the victor and shower the people with blessings as he makes a tour around the stadium and maybe even perform a quick hawk flight display over the city in order burn out all the plague infestations, cure those who have been stricken ill and restore all those with crippled or lost limbs. This last part has been boasted to take place by the letter, by every single one of the eleven candidates that have recieved a similar prophetic dream like Xin-Li had, as they all claim.

Only five contestants to find and the games may begin, but will things be that easy? Or will the tests of skill and mortal prowess be coming early for our faithfull Rontra? We will find out who have been chosen to take a crack at the title, but only after Xin-Li survives his journey across the ocean towards the Proudfoot city of Decora, where he believes he will find at least two more within the year. The surviving part of this journey might be tricky though, for he will be asked to defend a mysterious Zhulite artefact from unseen assaillants that seem to travel below sealevel and have blown a couple of nasty holes in the ironclad hull of their oceanthreader. Can't wait to find out more? Be patient my friends... sooooon you will know all of this....!

Ciao!