Campaign idea 1: Only War - Arkan 1st. Heavy Recon

I can't say I'm back but I am recovering, at least enough to attempt to pitch some campaign ideas that I've never ran or been unsuccessful.

So here is my first campaign, which was never ran due to players not being interessted in playing this sort of regiment and its been on the shelf for so long that I forget about it every time i have the chance of starting up a new game of Only War.

So lets get to it;

Arkan is a feudal world which have recently been conquered by the imperium, the population is a rebellious lot and there was quite a fight for the imperium to capture the planet and conquering its people.

It would have taken longer if it had not been for the Blood Angles chapter that decimated the majority of the military forces of Arkan, leaving the population with a built-in hatered for the space marine chapter.

The population is also a inventive bunch, which puts them at odds with the adeptus mechanicus for their almost heretical technology. (outwardly it looks very steampunk-ish but it not too far from "modern" tech, function over aestetics).

The Imperial Guard have recruited about 8 regiments of foot soldiers from this world before they finally were allowed to add the arkan walkers to its millitary assets, the Arkan walkers are a form for power armour that is too big and clunky to be a typical power armour, and it handles like a Sentinel Walker. It was mainly constructed to oppose the Blood Angles.

The population is split in two, its the common people, and the champions and nobility. In the regiments, the common people are outfitted with scouting gear and make exellent trail-blazers. While the nobility often make for the command roles, however, when the Arkan 1st. heavy recon was put togeather, it was only the nobility and the champions who were granted a Arkan Walker, while the rest supported these scouting vehicles.

It should be mentioned that champions are proven individuals, worthy of respect, these can be from the most primitive of the badlands raiders and still be viewed in awe by the noble court of the planetary govenor. This has a bit more to do with tradition than actual skills, but skill is still very important.

With the background out of the way, the regiment is sent to a ice world to fight the severus dominion, taking out a few outposts and flank in on supply-depots and installations while the majority of the enemy force is focused on the main IG advance (a few other regiments).

However, during one assault on an installation, they find a captures blood angle, or they assume so due to his lack of weapons, chains attached to him, no helmet and generally bad shape... but still beating up anyone in the installation.

This scene cause the majority of the NPCs in the regiment to feel the built in hatered of the blood angles and they open fire, unless the PCs can stopp them (they also have to do the test so that they are not completely free from their ancestral links, except certain support classes like commissars).

Depending on how this goes down, they can join the Severus dominion and fight back the imperial guard, then be stationed elsewhere in the Dominion, or disgruntedly continue to fight for the imperium while the regiments morale is becomming an ever increasing problem and shifts the focus of the game to internal struggles rather than external ones.

And that is what I had for this campaign, some loose notes is lying around somewhere and I can find it and refine the campaign if I were to ever run it.

Lack of motivation

I like writing these stories, but lately I've been struggling with depression so my motivation to do anything have severly dropped. I know that the majority of the causes for my depression will be solved before 15th of october, so hopefully I'll be able to start the stories back up after that.

When the stories are done, I have plans for writing campaigns that I've never gotten to run, or maybe share cool ideas that goes unused, maybe even keep an update for my current games (right now I'm running a Only War campaign). but we will see, need to get over this damn depression and get my movitation back.

Edge of the Empire: Modified arm of the Hutt - Episode 2

The PCs took off from landing bay Aurek, and was quickly detected by several tie fighters, since the HMRI was not installed yet, they had a fight on their hands.

So with Bucket and Arali'una working to fix the HMRI, Hannash at the helm, and It & Alex at the gunnery stations, they engaged the tie fighters.

It was expected to be a close fight, but the inexperienced Alex had some incredible luck, treating the space combat like a ground fight, and due to the tie fighters's lack of experience, it was more than enough to just lead the shots and take down the tie fighters. It managed to get some himeself but the majority was taken down by Alex.

As soon as Arali'una had fixed the HMRI, they set off with lightspeed, out of Tatooine's system.

Several lights appeared in the display and it was a clear indication that something was wrong, After dropping out of hyperspace, they set to work, figuring out what this was all about.

There was a strench in the ship, it was distracting for most but It had a stronger sense and was even more agitated than the others for some strange reason. There was also some horrible sound comming for some of the speakers in the cockpit, and 2 lights was flashing. All of this was in trandosian language, which none of the PCs knew.

Alex and It tried to find the source of the stench, and set out to explore the ship, while hannash and Arali'una tried to figure out what the signs ment. First light was fuel, there was pretty sure about that, and it was pretty low, no way they could fly anywhere with this small amount. The second light looked like some sort of cage, which could indicate prisoner? Arali'una went to team up with Alex and It for that part. Hannash would stay and struggle with what was later known as trandosian opera being played on the speakers.

The source of the stench was a hidden cargo hold which contained 4 wookie pelts, no wonder It was agitated, so they threw it out the airlock. While the area where prisoners was kept, they found one Twi'lek with a scorched Lekku, and another cage with some kind of marked shell inside it.

They never figured out what the genosian (or however it was spelled) shell was, and it did not come into play for the rest of the game. However, the Twi'lek was more interessting, after being let out of the cage and given water, he told the PCs about how he was captured, that he was from the planet Ryloth. As a thanks for being rescued, he offered to find a way to get their ship repaired.

Trex was put in the Twi'lek's cage and they set out to explore the rest of the ship.
Alex found a holochess and challanged the twi'lek to a game while they waited.
The others found a small repair shop with a droid in it, a quick repair brought it back up.

The droid introduced itself as Packetstorm, a new player has joined the game.

Edge of the Empire: Escape from Mos Shuuta - Episode 1

I guess it's time for a new game now, this one is a bit fresher in memory as I ran it over the course of last year and maybe a bit at the beginning of this year.

The group was highly varied in terms of people but we had some core players in this game, and the players were as follows:

It: the Wookie explorer scout
Hannash Randar: the human smuggler pilot
Arali`una: the twi'lek colonist doctor
Alex: the human bounty hunting assassin
Packetstorm: the droid slicer technician
John De Griz: the human outlaw technician (would be joining later in the campaign)
Vuko Vandap: the Rodian Exploring fringer (would be joining later in the campaign)
Virani: the Twi'lek Colonist doctor (would be joining later in the campaign)
Mordus: the human smuggling scoundrel (would be joining a lot later in the campaign)
Cynewolf Mozo: the human hired gun "no-mercy-nary" (would be joining a lot later in the campaign)
Voron Moorheart: the human outlaw technician (would be joining later in the campaign)
Jar'o: the chiss technician mech (would be joining later in the campaign)


They were running through the intense heat of Tatooine as a group of Teemo the hutt's gammorrean thugs were after them, seeking shelter within the local cantina, they would be able to avoid the scorching sun but it would only provide a small window that they could use to catch a break.

They had to find somewhere to hide, quickly.
- It sat down with a group of people trying to fit in,
- Alex did so too but none of them did it well and their cover would not work, but they had no more time.
- Arali'una ran up to a twi'lek dancing at the back of the cantina and asked if she could hide her, after a successful charm check, Arali'una was let in backstage (where she found a disguise kit).
- Hannash Randar sat down with a different group of people and managed to stay hidden.
- Packetstorm hid in a storage closet behind the bar.

When the gammorrean entered, they saw the wookie and the laminate armoured bounty hunter easily enough and started to move towards them.

The fight was done quickly enough... well, not THAT quickly, but the group survived without causing too much collateral damage or taking too many woulds, the gammorean however.

After the fight was over, the devaronian bartender approached them and told them that he heard about someone pissing off teemo, he figured that it was the PCs, so he dropped the hints that there was a spaceship in landing bay Aurek at the moment, but it was lacking a Hyper Matter Reactor Igniter (HMRI), that there was likely one at the junkshop, and that the ship was owned by a bounty hunter named Trex. After telling the PCs this, he said "now, get out of my cantina".

The junkyard was easily enough to find, it was just to follow the edge of the large scrapyard to a low pourstone building. Inside a man dozily notices then, then kicks a old R5 droid and snaps "you are supposed to tell me when we have customers, you rusted bucket of bolts."

The shopkeep Vorn turns to the players and says "welcome, what'cha buying", while the droid surly boops out into the scrapyard to do salvage work.

The PCs asks about the HMRI and learns that Trex is expecting it, and yes he got one, they fail to convince Vorn that they are there to deliver it to him and does have a lot of problems with haggling the price down. Meanwhile, the wookie walks out into the scrapyard (or sneaks rather, surprisingly enough for a wookie), find the droid and plays on his motivation for droid rights. He tells the droids that they are going to steal the ship and need the part, if he helps them, he can get a free ride, joining the ship. The droid accepts and would be known as Bucket, the ships minor-repair droid (any PC is considered to have at least 1 rank in mechanics as long as Bucket helps them, people who already have mechanics, gets a boost instead).

So the others learns that the droid will bring the part soon, and they finish up shopping with Vorn, getting a few repair kits and stim packs, before headding out to wait for the droid. And as soon as they get it, it is off to the spaceport control. They talked to Vorn about the details of the ship and he mentioned spaceport control had it locked down for administrative reasons, if they wanted to leave, they had to talk to them first.

Outside spaceport control, were a few droids but the door was open, so they made their way past and over to the control desks, the lady in charge had a quick chat with hannash about the ship but were not convinced, she just told them to leave, they could find their own way out. Hannash however, would have none of it, and hacked a computer that was just out of sight, since the people did not bother to pay the group much attention. They unlocked landing bay Aurek's controls and narrowly avoided triggering security alarms in the computer system.

Now it was off to the landing bay, however, they saw a group of 4 storm troopers making their way past the crowd, pointing at the PCs and shouting "there they are!", a second later, another group came into view through a side passage.

The group figured that fighting here would risk them hitting innocents and they needed to get the hell out of there quickly, so they rushed through another side alley, into a building, and thanks to Hannash's knowedge about the street, they made their way through a rundown gamblers den, where some of the PCs drew they weapons and said "please, stay seated" as they moved to the back door. However, one of the PCs, i think it was Arali'una, helped herself to the money on the table.

When they reached the back entrance, they got into another alley and followed it around towards to the landing bay. While the landing bay was guarded, they came to the side where it had a maintenance entrance. Cracking the security, they got in and snuk to the main entrance to lock the door, sealing anyone out, not being able to follow them.

The group split up here, 2 went towards the ship and another 2 headded to the controls for the roof. The roof was easy enough to open, the ship however... had Trex inside it. Trex was quite tenacious but he stood no chance against several shots of the wookie's bowcaster. And even if he tried to escape, Arali'una had a net which he threw over Trex, prevending him from escaping.

The group had captured themselves a bounty hunter, and a brand new spaceship, the only thing left was to leave this dirtball called Tatooine.

Iron Kingdoms: I'm a fool to not remember more - Episode 5: quick final summary

I only have sporadic memories of the rest of the game from this point, as Blaze the bloody and Spike the crushed was working with me in order to take over as GM. I was leaving the town and a new GM had to step in, so I spend the last 3 months or so, training/helping him to become a GM.

a few things happened since, including continuing into the new GM's game, so lets see if i can get some of the details down:

Solomon got captured by the fraternal order and blamed for the damage to the town, and suspected of being linked to the attack, so the player made a new character, a Stormknight, who I dont think played in my game.

I made a new character, a Iosan seeker / cutthroat on a mission to recover artifacts relating to scyrrah,

Everyone died at least once but Ichabod survived the long run.

The new GM ran us through a few quick missions:
- talk to a administrative noble suspected of corruption
- investigate a pirate den
- do some general business around town

and then I had to leave, the story continued but I was not there to learn what was going on about it.

Iron Kingdoms: Only Fools Come Back - Episode 4

Right, so it was time to return to Corvis, without a barge, they had to swim with of the hideout then along the river's edge until they could climb up on land and walk, wet and cold, to town.

When they arrived, they saw that the town was burning, the walls and gate were destroyed while the area around was filled with broken warjacks and corpses, the ground was also filled with ash, likely from the steam powered 'jacks, but this amount was strange.

Inside the gates, people ran around, busy trying to repair things and tend to the injured. In the middle of the first square was a huge pile of steamjacks. While the rest of the group went around gathering information and helping, Solomon climbed up on the pile of jacks and saw that it was more a wall around a person, who was emitting some sort of energy but completely froze. Solomon climbed down to him from the top of the wall of steamjacks and touched him, this activated something that sent him flying with incredible force, through the wall of broken steamjacks, through 2 buildings and into a broken shop, where he got injured that made him permanenty scarred (another -1 to social skills and +1 to intimidate).

However, because of the touch, he had seen through the eyes of the person, what had happened. Khador was attacking, the steamjacks emitting more steam and ash than normal, causing everyone go to into a frenzy, murdering everyone and destroying everything. The person felt an increasing emotion of anger, untill he snapped, somehow drawing upon arcane energies to telekineticly throw khadorans and steamjacks around like they were ragdolls, the energy was ever increasing and the steamjacks were piling on the person to stop him, but his power reached its peak where it exploded, leaving him an empty shell, as well as a statue.

The others in the group learned this through the tales of survivors, some said that the person had failed a ascension, while others say it must be a failed Scioning... both the brother morrow and sister thamar wanted him as their avatar but none of them got him, which left him like that.

After recovering enough to visit the charter house, they discovered that it was damaged and now had to find a new one, a few quick questions about the leaders of the charter they heard that they were connected to the attack and had ran away towards Llael. (so the PCs shut up about their affiliation with the charter).

But they had no money, so the best way to get some was doing work, The new guard lieutenant would likely have some work, and also give them any pardon to their links to the charter, so off they went to earn some money.

The sergeant from their first campaign (only fools rush in) met them and said that they had too much to do now due to criminals exploiting the situation, the civvies are panicing,, and plenty of the south-western wall of the town lies in ruins. But he believes that the former lieutenant might be involved or know something due to his corruption, so he lets the PCs visit the broken watchtower, where the corrupted lieutenant sits in the basement, in a jail cell.

The PCs easily finds the cell and ignores the other prisoners, however, through the bars of the cell, they see that the far wall is broken and there is noone in the cell... dammit, he had escaped. Quickly they followed suit and found a small shantytown, set up in the larger parts of the sewers, a few large buildings were here, a small rundown pub, beggars everywhere, and the general air that this is not somewhere they should be. People in poor places is desperate, and desperate people do easily make misstakes, which could cost the PCs.

Anyway, they ignored the people here and walked towards the pub. When they got close, they heard someone from the second floor shout "200 gold" to whomever get rid of these fools!". A fight broke out, The gobber, Goda Hoblock was standing on a small, thin pier next to one that was about to draw his dagger, So Goda poked him with the rapiere in the bum and made him fall forwards, into the sewage about 3 meters below.

The rest fought off the beggars and thugs with somewhat ease, When Ichabod put enough supressive on the former lieutenant to make him retreat, they followed him into the building, encountered one of the massive ogrun bouncers, but Blaze managed to tackle him off the second floor to allow the rest to pass.

They found the lieutenant in a small hook, who had just enough time to activate a bomb before prepareing to defend it, while shouting "you will never take me alive, I'll be sure to take all of you with me"... a few more cursewords is included but I cant remember what was used. Goda was here at the time, along with the dwarf stone sorcerer, while the dwarf used stonestance (all friendlies in his command range ignores knockdown), earthquake (everyone in his command range is knocked down), and pickaxe (boosted damage against knocked down targets), the lieutenant went down (but not dead) quickly enough, while Goda tried to disarm the bomb, when he remember... "No machine Goda knows ".

They all legged it, with everyone but 1 person being able to get far enough, it should also be mentioned that Solomon the flame sorceror at this time choose to run away from the party, to a different place in the sewers.

Spike the trollkin fellcaller (Blaze's new character) was too slow and knew he was going to be crushed by several tonnes of stone, Goda (the gunmage's new character) also failed, but Spike used his last actions to pick up Goda and throw him to safery, shouting something like "be save little one". Before being crused as the explotion brought down the pub along with supports, causing the roof of the sewers to collapse.

The PCs made their way back through the lieutenant's cell and out, where the guardsmen and sergeant was standing, quite annoyed at the situation but not suspecting the PCs. They did however notice some spells being flung back and forth across this large hole that had appeared in the middle of the docks, revealing parts of the sewers below.

Iron Kingdoms: Only Non-Fools Get Out - Episode 3

So, there were 4 players this session, Blaze, Ichabod, Solomon, and the Gunmage. And they were all imprisoned in the cages, in the very same room that they had fought during the last session. The thamarite was gone but in their place stood 4 people with improvised torture tools, like a heated iron poker.

Blaze managed to taunt the guy with the iron poker to him and take him out before being attacked by the others, the body of the first torturer fell near Solomon and the player was completely oblivious to all the hints that the torturer might have the keys to the cell. So I improvised a small action that caused the body to roll over to Ichabod, where he immediatly looted the key and got out... to what Solomon's player would say "I would have done that"... the other PCs just shaked their heads and we continued.

After dealing with the torturers and Blaze had again fallen victim to spitting blood critical... the group figured that he earned a new nickname; Blaze "Bloody" Heartly. Equipped with torture tool and stabilising Bloody, they explored the room, there was no way that they would survive if they ran topside, so everyone insisted on looking for secret passages in a slim hope that there was another exit.

Thankfully, I had planned this option because if the PCs were to completely steamroll the previous fight (they did not), a new bloated thrall would emerge from a secret passage. So the PCs found this and discovered a sewer complex.

With Solomon's fire spells and plenty of unlit torches around, they easily navigated the sewers, only having to jump over the sewage-water one time. However, they saw that something was following them in the water, and as long as they were not in it, they felt... safer?, anyway, they had nothing to fight it with at range, Solomon's fire would not penetrate the surface of the water, just heat it slightly.

At the exit of the sewer, they found that it led to a cave, however ,getting to the cave entrance required to walk through the sewer-water. So when the PCs jumped in, they managed to place themself in a formation which left Blaze open to attack from a crocodile of sorts. Blaze had earned his nickname well as he went down on spitting blood again, but got up and killed the crocodile with a impovised spear the had gotten.

So, it was starting to get silly now but they followed the path through the cave and got to a square room, there was an endless pit in the middle of the room and the PCs needed to cross it to get to the other side.
The pit was filled with floating, perfectly round, stones of sorts.

Solomon tried to touch one with his foot, it was pushed out of is place by the force, but floated back to its original possition when he removed the force he had applied to it.
The gunmage tried to jump from stone to stone, but failed and was hanging from the stone which now was dipped lower than anything else, so he had to be rescued. (the stones could only be pushed a certain distance out of its possition before it could not be moved further).

The PCs tried to come up with ideas by using various knowledge tests, but Solomon said he wanted to try to jump across. So 3 spent fatepoints later, he was hanging by the last stone near the end and needed help.

The other PCs tried variosu tests and only 1 succeeded, so as a GM, i wrote the word "slide" on a post-it note and handed it to the player.

Player: "guys, let me try something, I need runspeed"
Others: "you are going to die if you try to jump this"
Player: "Watch this... WEEEEEEE!"

the PC slid across the stones, moving the weight to a new stone quickly enough to continue the momentum, there was also no resistance so the speed got him to the other side in a matter of seconds.

... the look of Solomon's player at this stage... priceless...

The others followed suit and then rescued Solomon from falling to his death. On their way they went, untill they came across another room, this was more a hallway. in the middle of the room was a chest, and there was clear markings of a square on the floor around it. Blaze and the Gunmage wanted loot, so they rushed in and opened the chest, the floor gave in and they fell into a pit.

This new pit had a glazed wall so it was as good as impossible to climb out without help, and there was another chest in this pit.

Blaze: "I'm opening the chest"
GM: "gunmage? do you want to climb out?"
Gunmage: "naa, im good"

The chest was opened and it was another fall-trap, this time to many sets of spikes which was certain death, so this is where Blaze "Bloody" Heartly met his end? and the gunmage also catched his last breath.
This idea was inspired by a post on reddit, talking about interessting traps and twists relating to exploring.

Ichabod and Solomon just watched this happened, without rope or equipment, there was nothing they could do but continue. The door at the far end was also trapped (from reddit this one too), when Ichabod tried to open the double doors with the handle on the middle, the sides of the doors came loose and slammed togeather, squashing anyone who tried to use the handles of the door. Ichabod only took some damage and was disoriented, but alive.

Past the doors was a small cave with a river, it opened up into a larger area, it was deserted at first, but they saw a barge incomming. On this barge was several gang members from the first session (the bloody skiff gang), they had apparently taken prisoners, a trollkin fellcaller (blaze's new character), and a gobber investigator named Yoda (the gunmage, and yes, he talked like yoda all the time).

Waiting for the perfect time, they attacked just as the barge set out again, quickly taking out the ones guarding the prisoners, letting the trollkin charge and shoulderbarge one of the gangers into the water, it was quick business due to Solomon's spells and the trollkins shoulderbarging.

In the gangers den, they found plenty of equipment to restore what they had lost, but with no barge, they were forced to walk back to Corvis.