Nappendixia Campaign Session Report
Session #- 138
Session Date- 7/31/26
Time Passed- 1 week
Roll Call- The Goblins and their Dragon leader Faction
Atagon and the Sun Shard Order Faction
Fort Dawnbreak Faction
Guidon's Evil Brigand Faction
The Amazons of Myrinna Faction/ Kenny’s Cave Hideout
Adventure Log- Julystein Week 5 Events and Wrapup-
7-24
A Gnome courier is spotted riding to and then later from Ft. Dawnbreak.
7-25
9 tall glowing angelic figures hover motionlessly above Ft. Dawnbreak, all facing the South East.
7-27
Many decades of Gnomes march to Fort Dawnbreak.
Work begins at Fort Dawnbreak as the men begin shoring up the fort's defenses under the watchful eye of Wolverinius and his angelic host.
On Friday
A Haunting Dream
The men of Fort Dawnbreak wake up restless. During the night, each stalwart defender was shown a disturbing vision of their death at the hands of the Loc-Nar's horde!
Rock Slide!
In the early hours of the morning, a great rumbling can be heard. The face of the mountain SW of Fort Dawnbreak slides away, revealing a ghastly sight. Carved into the rock are the massive busts of the four holders of the Loc-Nar: Guidon the Reaver, Slither the Dragon, Xena the Imperator and Diana the Chosen!
The forces of the Loc-Nar create a green glowing cloud blocking off Fort Dawnbreak from the south, rumors are the cloud increases defensive power. The forces of good are plagued by nightmares foretelling their doom, 3 nightmares harm the forces, each more horrible. Both sides recon and mount their troops and the forces of Dawnbreak make defensive improvements to their fort, anticipating an attack by the evil army.
The evil army chooses a direct assault in view of the Mount Rushmore of Evil that has formed on the horizon. A throne of carved stone has been prepared for the Demon Bear to observe the battle. The Fort Dawnbreakers prepare for the assault. The opening order of battle is as follows-
The evil army moves out of the green cloud of defense only to find the fort has been surrounded by sharpened posts- anti-cav barriers. The ogres move forward and start ripping them out but are quickly smited with fire by the fort’s angelic host. The firedrakes fall shortly after from the same fate. The reconstructed body of Slither flies over some cavalry setting up a flanking charge and scares them off the field. The goblins breach the walls of the merchant quarter and start looting. The head angel then moves forward to engage Diana and Xena who have the Loc-Nar. The demon Bear- watching from the mount evil throne summons a Type IV demon to assist the evil forces. The angel makes Diana’s enchantment falter, and she drops the Loc-Nar. The summoned demon tries to telekenese the artifact away, but is quickly imprisoned deep below the ground by the angels. Atagon tries to plane shift the Loc-Nar off Nappendixia, but it resists the magic. As the mass combat ensues, and the evil army tries to breach the walls of the fort, the elite forces fight over the Loc-Nar. The demon places a symbol of Discord amongst the scrum, and the group falls to bickering and random fighting. The crab men do great damage with their lasers, but on the second attempt Atagon is able to plane shift the Loc-Nar, using a special tuning fork he helped create with the help of the gnomes. Guidon the Weasel escapes despite the angels trying Power Word Kill on him as he flees. The Loc-Nar rises and is bathed in positive energy, and a planar portal opens. However, right before it enters the portal to be locked away on a positive plane, the Demon Bear rises and shrouds the Loc-Nar in a small field of negative energy and announces that the forces of good may have won for now, and that there were no one on this plane worthy of the Loc-Nar. It will be banished to a positive plane, but it does have the ability to figure out how to escape. It is only a matter of time before the Loc-Nar’s evil will be released again. He tells them that the portal will remain open if they ever want to try to enter and truly destroy (or wield) the Loc-Nar they can by entering the plane and travelling through several other worlds to try to find it.
Session Notes- DM notes from the final battle-
I resolved the main force versus the fort and the goblins vs the Nuge seperately, counting down until the Loc-Nar was banished. The amazon and brigand horde was slaughtered by a combination of spells, missiles, and bombs. Only twenty amazonian heavy foot and sixty brigands survived. Meanwhile, the Nuge lost forty light foot while causing the goblins in the merchant quarter to surrender.
The board has changed fairly significantly. The Amazonian army has been crushed and Diana has been humiliated. Atagon’s Sun Shard Order is in tatters and the Radiant Tower was destroyed. Godhard and the Iron Company lost a great deal of troops at the battle at the Radiant Tower. The Nuge also suffered heavy losses, but made a good friend in the process. The Gnomes have overtaken the western keep and have plans to explore and grow in the art of illusion. Brigand’s were scattered and humiliated. Slither and his Goblin horde was eradicated. Guidon lives to see another day.
Excerpt from the DMs Substack post- read the full post at-
https://seeardstapa.substack.com/p/the-war-for-the-loc-nar
What worked
One thing that worked for me during the Slime War and that I carried over was Owlbear. It’s such a simple yet flexible virtual tabletop that made tracking orders so easy. I’m a very visual person, so seeing exactly where banners would interact was extremely useful. One thing that I did that I also found helpful was importing a blank version of the hex map into Owlbear and then adding the icons for the various locales there so that if a village was razed or a castle was destroyed, I could update the map in real time. I also added various faction banners (inspired by Mike’s Urf V campaign) that let me keep track of who was in control of what. We also ended up with a number of large (one-thousand plus man) battles with an average of fifty to a hundred figures on each side. Using Owlbear, I was able to keep track of these seamlessly. I’m a huge fan of theatre of the mind, but these battles were a great example of where TotM is lacking and I was very thankful to have a player-facing solution to the problem.
One thing that I learned from the aftermath of the Slime War was to keep better track of orders. I know Google Forms is at the cutting edge of orders taking (Joshua is using them to great effect in Spacestein II), but I went a little old school this time and just kept a document open in Google Docs where I pasted all of the factions orders that were submitted through Discord player channels. From there, I created a calendar of events and convergences that would happen throughout the week that really helped me visualize what was going on and when. Finally, for each minor battle, I created a new tab and kept strict records turn by turn that I could share with players. This is another thing that I regrettably did not do during the Slime War that really came back to bite me.
SeriousDM’s SEEN posts played a major part in the Braunstein. I really didn’t have to beg for these. Thankfully, the elite players were almost overjoyed to share what they had been doing in their orders, and they led to a number of great memorable events that wouldn’t have been shared otherwise.
What didn’t work
Regrettably there were some things that just didn’t work out the way I had intended to. One of those was scaling. I used some of Macho Mandalf’s guidance on scaling, and, to be fair, it works great when you’re fighting figure to figure in these mass thousand man battles. I used some fairly aggressive scaling during the braunstein to cut down on the number of figures and it really did speed up the bulk of the resolution. This may just be a skill issue, but whenever you blend spells or higher hit dice monsters into the mix that also have their own abilities and spells, it can get over-complicated fast. In the last battle, we had a host of high level PCs, planetars, devas, and even a solar face off against demons, a horde of crab-men, ogres, and fire drakes — not to mention over thirty figures of men-at-arms on each side! In the end, we just had to narrow our focus to the main actors of the battle in session and afterwards I zoomed out to resolve the mass combat. If you had a Saturday afternoon and a cooler of beers at an in-person session to game this out, it would be one thing. But packing all of this into a snappy two-hour discord session was just a bit much. Thankfully, the players were very patient with me as we resolved this, but I felt that regrettably not every player was as involved as they could have been just due to the time it took to resolve each round.
I understand the intent behind nine-sided alignment, but in practice it’s all just “good vs evil” and “law vs chaos” and that was very much reflected during the braunstein. While setting up the braunstein, Boldvay and I worked to make sure that just about every alignment was represented as a faction. I intended for this to lead towards a free-for-all for the Loc-Nar. Naturally, this didn’t work out, and the factions merged into the Coalition of Good versus the Axis of Evil. I really don’t blame the players. Our real world is very much black and white like this in many ways. Maybe having all eight of the factions at each other’s throats the whole time would have helped cut down on the number of figures participating in the four mass combats that we played out. And maybe this was just the result of bad refereeing on my part. Who can say?
Player Perspective- from the player who plays Trotter and ran Atagon’s faction-
What I did on my July-Stein Vacation:
I play in the Nappendixia campaign and like many other places in the summer of stein, we held a Braunstein in July to shake up the status quo. It began as a weekly-orders deal but quickly evolved into something closer to always on.
Report:
In our regular sessions I play Trotter R1 named after what Tolkien almost named Aragorn. We've been taking missions from Atagon NG C9 at the Radiant Tower, a cleric's tower to the SE of the largest safe settlement in the area, Ft. Dawnbreak. Mostly we've been delving a pyramidal megadungeon. But that all changed in July.
I took command of Atagon, his maybe 50 infantry and cav along with the militia of a small village nearby, Cowpens, loyal to the cause led by a F6 named Seth.
Real AD\&D is also a book club. I learned that the original patron player for Atagon modeled him and his tower after the same-named characters in "Changa Nor" a short story by Harold Lamb about Cossacks discovering a mysterious isolated tower in the steppes. It rocked. Never read Lamb before. Easy to see how he inspired Robert E. Howard. Here's the other piece of this. Learning what fiction other players are reading, be they friend of foe, motivated me to plough through this story because it would give me greater insight to the Secondary World we were playing in. And it worked.
Since I've observed in other steins that turtling gets you punished, I decided to be aggressive which was in character with Atagon anyway and seek out the evil brigand fortress to the west. I amassed troops, began plotting the assault and recruiting allies while trying to find a way to harass their supply lines and setting up contravallation to prevent them from sortie against us early.
The macguffin: I practically ignored it initially apart from casting Commune to try and find it. Other players were sweeping over hexes for it. What was it? The Loc-Nar, a la Canadian animated film Heavy Metal, which was spawned by a satanic giant space bear. Not good.
Late the following Tuesday my tower was greeted by a Bandit Raiding party. Yikes. They didn't test the fortifications (Motte and Bailey style) but they posed a problem for me communicating with my forces without.
I sent Gord, R6, out in the night. Fortunately was able to hire a MU5 just before this. We silenced and invisible him and then had him stalk the raider camp at night, killing those who were relieving themselves in the bushes in the most gruesome way possible. SEEN framed this as a vengeful spirit from the swamp and it worked. The raiders bugged out. For now.
We continue preparing the assault on the Brigand fort to the west, however the Brigands return a few days later now with ladders and more men to assault Atagon's Tower.
We elected to run this play by post. I need to reflect on our triage of battles to session docket vs play by post I think we mostly got it right but there was a deeper rhyme and reason for what worked.
Of course, a black dragon appears. My only hope is to slay it. The tower was meant to keep people out from the ground, not from the air, moreover, the villagers (120 laborers and tradesmen) were vulnerable in the bailey. My only real weapon apart from a few pot shot fireballs and an aging ballista is an artifact of Atagon's religion. Waning in power, but it just might do the trick. Just as the first sprays of chlorine gas start billowing down into the village, I blast the dragon sending its husk to the ground. As soon as I can I hit the invading brigands with Insect Plague and seal myself in a secret inner chamber with my trusted bodyguards. When we survey the damage later that day, most of my men and villagers are lost. We retreat by Lamasu (courtesy Godhard of Dawnbreak) to Dawnbreak.
Later in the week a band of goblins assaults Cowpens but my milita there holds them off! We capture several and question them learning not very much. Actually I think a couple of them might be tied up in a barn somewhere still now that I am writing this.
Gnomes (ugh) arrive at the siege camp and agree to help us dig. Atagon and retinue arrives at the siege camp and pays handsomely to have the gnomes forge a perfectly made B# tuning fork of silver. I wonder why?
We draw up battle plans to assault the brigand fortress now that, after our like 5th divination, we think we can take em. The fortress is huge but we have some tricks up our sleeve.
Speaking of divinations, the ref pointed out I was using them as often as Xenophon and that seemed right to me.
Key to the assault are some gunpowder bombs (gunpowder doesn't work in Amber but we're far from it, it seems) made by Kenny the MU, somehow.
We blast the doors and try to take the inner gate. I mistake I made in command that almost cost us the battle--but did cost us time as some of the mass combat slogged -- was not rushing some men, at the expense of free attacks from the brigands, to the gate to open it and allow cav to enter. A wind elemental appeared and wiped most of my light foot before I could Flame Strike it. At that point, the player controlling the evil MU leading the brigands bails and a mano-a-mano fight begins in the inner courtyard against one of their high level Lts. The forces of good prevail but at what cost?
We find later that laborers we left in our siege camp have all been killed by what appears to be dragon chlorine gas. Did the black dragon survive?
We pick up the pieces and return to my tower only to find it occupied by brigands! And an undead dragon!
And so begins a new mass combat session. This time scale adjustment helped prevent a slog in addition to realizing when the key elements of a battle were decided and the rest, which matters for unit head counts, could be gamed out by post.
I missed the very beginning of this one due to my children, however, it appears that Atagon and another Pelor worshipper prayed and their prayer was answered by a Solar!
These guys are insanely overpowered. But I had to play them to character. They arrived because the Loc-Nar was there and was a threat.
Actually... the only thing that makes sense is to destroy the very place where the Loc-Nar was being held. The Solar, who for some reason looked like Wolverine, started casting Earthquake (a 1turn spell!) on the Tower to make it come crashing down on the evil occupants.
Seth get's polymorphed (I can't remember how or why) into a Bronze Dragon. His exhilaration at flying through the air is cut short by (I think) a lightning bolt or something and he plummets to the ground.
In vengeance, the undead dragon gets made dead again by a power word.
More craziness ensues but we somehow get the bad guys to retreat and the tower comes crashing down on the rest. The Loc-Nar escapes us though. My tower is destroyed!
We roll to see if Wolverinius the Solar sticks around and he does. But I decide he's just going to loom in the air high above Atagon and daily gate in a Planetar until we have a host of angelic forces just silently hovering in the air like the trailer to Death Stranding.
I send Gord, who now has a cloak of Elvenkind to scout in the direction of the enemy. It appears they have another keep!
No mass combats and a schedule conflict so we decide to grab our level 1 characters and explore the area, especially looking for riches and unplundered-plunder. What we find turns out to be basically a hook from the Good the Bad and the Ugly but the Bad being played by Amazon women turned into giant green ogres. Yikes! I'm sure the Loc-Nar is to blame.
Gord returns to Ft. Dawnbreak, where we have all rebased, and reports that the enemy has a contingent of Crab People armed with magical arm guitar lasers.
Atagon gets a nice tan-- like Carry Grant, not like spray on. This was Wolverinius the Solar granting Atagon the ability to survive in the Positive Energy Plane... if it comes to this.
Gord heads off to find Ted Nugent, who is the leader of a ranger, kind of woods people camp to the west. He and the Nuge become fast friends and talk at length about responsible bow ownership and the virtues of armor piercing rounds. The Nuge and his retinue come to Dawnbreak as scouts start reporting a host approaching.
We prepare for a climactic battle as Atagon's trump card is finally ready-- the tuning fork, a very important material component in Plane Shift.
We set booby traps and what not around the fort. The Nuge hides a contingent of his men in the nearby market village on the hill.
The dragon reappears! And chases off our cav held in reserve. It turns out this was an illusion, but don't count on the Planetars to start shouting that down to you, they have bigger fish to fry. Namely the Crab People and Amazonian Ogres whom they begin Flame Striking relentlessly.
Meanwhile, Atagon and Wolvernius secretly go invisible and the Solar carries Atagon to the vicinity of Diana, Amazon Queen and Holder of the Loc-Nar. I imagine the Solar carrying my aged priest like Shaggy carries Scooby Doo.
The Solar attempts to psionically mass dominate Diana to get her to drop the Loc-Nar (he and his ken will not touch it or use Wish to do crazy things to it directly). But he fails!
A Type IV Demon Appears! And casts Symbol of Discord. This works on the Solar too.
The good guys for now, forget about the Loc-Nar and start bashing Chotic Evil heads.
Wolverninus Imprisons the Type IV Demon. --Hey guys, there's a Type IV demon buried at the foot of the hill where sits Ft. Dawnbreak... and that spell is reversible...
A choir of Devas arrives and telekinese the Loc-Nar into the air (for some reason it was flying away like Thor's Hammer). They hold it in place for Atagon to approach. He casts Plane Shift... but he has to touch it... will he be corrupted like the others? Naw Atagon is rock solid man. He resists and sends the Loc-Nar to the Positive Energy Plane-- my thinking here was if anything the positive energy might destroy it or at least all the beings there would be too Good to do anything but seal it away. I thought about other planes but they just seemed too high risk.
The Loc-Nar passes through a portal that opens. Atagon expects to be pulled in or to have to escort it. But it goes on its own. The portal changes color. The evil space bear makes a speech and the campaign landscape is forever changed.
We need to get the band back together and see where that portal goes!
There's still casualty reports coming in so this isn't even a clear picture of the ending.
So the Julystein has concluded, it went great, extremely well-run by an elite player. The Seen posts worked great, gave evidence of actions but kept mystery, and the difficult mass combat resolutions were well planned, scaled, and the visual aids were a huge help. I feel like 5 weeks was about as long as it could/should be sustained. There were a few railroad moments but the vast majority was player driven spontaneous actions that caused further situations to be attended to. The Loc-Nar developed powers on its own as it encountered play, our first rules for it were very basic, but by staying true to the film lore the Loc-Nar ended up being a very cool mcguffin. We changed the game landscape through braunstein play, and set up several hooks to be played with in the future. It was tiring, and I didn’t even do that much. We could have used a few more players to avoid some people running multiple factions, but we just don’t have the player base currently, and I don’t overly recruit this game, I tend to wait for interested people to come to the campaign on their own. That being said, do reach out here at the blog if you are interested in participating, either as a regular player, casual player, or faction player.
Treasure and XP- The Planetars get all the xp lol, treasure TBD.
Graveyard- 10x Gnomes killed by Guidon’s Brigands cavalry charge into the siege camp outside the western brigand Keep. (session 134)
109x Troops of the Coalition of the Good killed at the assault of the Brigands Western Keep (session 135)
30x Lt Foot, 180x H Foot, 30x Lt Cav, 30x med Cav, 15x Crossbowmen (Coalition of the Good troops), Zalde- M/U5, Seth F6 (raised/failed, permanently deceased), Foyt- M/U5 (raised) killed at the siege of the Loc-Nar forces at Atagon’s ruined tower. (session 136)
Pentagon the cleric killed by Brigands outside the gnomes keep. (session 137) (revived, 1 week bedrest)
