I’ve been playing a roleplay game based in a 15th Century Europe, based on the Runescape rules. We’ve been playing for about a year but the campaign itself started many, many years ago. It has Runescape gods, but in the guise of saints since there’s only one God and we’re all Catholics (although at this point in history, the number of Popes was debatable).
We’re all members of the King’s Own Heretic Hunters, a select regiment (mostly pious ex-convicts) who are tasked with hunting out heretics (obviously) and performing certain tasks for the King of England. So far, this has involved us going to France, unwittingly becoming pawns in the schemes of the Duke of Arras (an old nemesis in this campaign, also a vampire and the brother of William the Conqueror) and poisoning our king with foul mutating crap. We ended up having to steal the Sword of Charlemagne (note: French not too happy about this) in order to kill the king.
Of course, it is well known that the king died of dysentery. We weren’t anywhere near him. No-one suspects a thing. WINK WINK.
Since then, we’ve been attacked and captured by demons, gained a few insanity points and crippling phobias (or in one case, amnesia, which can only be overcome by beating 97 on percentile dice), gone to Germany, come back, and just last week met God.
We were travelling back to our king with evidence that France is working with demons, and the Duke of Arras has an army marching around the country. As heretic hunters, we have a duty to destroy demons (which are heretical) and vampires (also heretical), as well as the French (mildly heretical – wrong Pope). While travelling through a forest, we saw a cart transporting troops coming through, so we hid while we debated whether we could take them on – we were outnumbered heavily. Then another cart came past, and another… and another… it was clear that ‘attack’ was not a sensible strategy. Then cannon and mortars, and other large black powder weapons came past. Dozens of them. Finally, three large, guarded and well protected covered box-carts came past. Our party gunner recognised these as the gunpowder carts.
“I cast Ignite on them!” he cried triumphantly. Before working it out, our GM told us that as soldiers we’d be well aware that gunpowder is magically shielded to prevent some prat casting ‘Ignite’ on them.
“Would a Sunspear get through?”
Sunspear is a spell granted by Armalia, which creates a blast of energy doom from the Sun into a target, with the usual effect of the loss of the target. It definitely resulted in the loss of a gunpowder cart, and the explosion set off the other gunpowder carts, flattening most of the forest (see: Tunguska, although geographically this is closer to Tuscany) and wiping out half of the enemy forces.
We were hiding in the bushes 150ft away from the source of the explosion.
Thanks to a lucky ‘Divine Intervention’ roll, St Armalia returned us to life (naked, but all our equipment in a neat pile and clothes neatly folded). The only things missing were our horses and the gunner’s gunpowder.
As a result, one of our archers is now the biggest murderer in the known world, having killed over 21,000 people. I think the Duke of Arras might be a little peeved about this.
We go again tonight, and I have no idea what we’re going to do next. Quite possibly, neither does the GM.
(picture: Wittman80 on deviantart)