Nearing the end of the Advent(ure), I wanted to bring in a couple of characters from the older campaign: a rhinoman and a catwoman.
We are hitting the back end of this story though it was initially conceived as a series of scenes rather than a cohesive tale, it has turned moderately cohesive. Barston and Derron were wandering. They heard of a strange tower showing up. Tower turned up being an alien craft searching for ancient alien artifacts, of which Barston already has one. They knew from the ship that the second one was nearby. But while fighting off the alien invasion, as small-scale as it was, they met someone who told them that the object they seek might just be in a golden pyramid guarded by a Spider King.
All we know about the "quest" is that there was some old man who met Barston and Derron and said if they find a certain box, they will understand how to bring Astrid back to life.
Now we have a "three day journey" to get to the pyramid. Prior to that, and setting up a few other pieces for a longer, harder mini-campaign to follow, we are going to insert two characters.
These are both known characters to me in that they showed up two or three years ago. Before the blog was started and the Ick+Humb stuff was put on hold.
This is a little more backstory.
Chungly Borth, Rhinoman Priest of Usrel
Chungly looks ferocious. He's big. Intimidating. Strong enough to shove over a horse. Stands a head taller than most other rhinomen. Inside, though, he is kind and sweet and tries his best to be helpful. It's not quite his fault that is prone to tripping over his own feet and knocking things asunder.
At the age of 32, he is middle-aged for Rhinomen, but like other rhinos on Phillia, he has dedicated himself more to healing than violence. He is quite good with hitting people with an axe if absolutely need be, but rarely likes to take that path.
Doug's Note: In the previous campaign, all that was really known was that he had come from the East (where Barston is, currently) is and had been told about Humb and showed up there to help Alice + Lun defend Humb in Barston's absence. I'm going to say that they meet in Yewsforth since I never really went into detail about when he met Barston.
He has Skill 8, Stamina 13, Luck 7, and Magic 3. He naturally gets Rhinoman skin and horn (natural armor and a weapon), but requires double rations per day and gets -1 to Knowledge-based skills. He also is more prone to fumble.
He has the Robust (3 stam from eating, 5 from sleeping) and Fast Healer (+2 healing per day) Talents, so he regains health fairly fast. With a suit of armor on him, he'll be very tanky and big enough to block a lot of hits.
Nadya Kyarn, Catperson Thief
Nadya is an older catperson and very good at what she does. Mainly being doing whatever she wants. When young, her mother and her were traveling Phillia helping out explorers and treasure-seekers to find their prize until Nadya left her mother (Tarana Kyarn) behind and went her own way. However, when Sir Gracious Lynwood claimed Nadya had stolen relics that had in fact been in the Kyarn family for generations, she was put in prison. AFTER she tried (and failed) to steal them back.
Rumors had it than Lynwood had fallen in love with the older catwoman and that Nadya had rejected his advances (she cares little for men or humans, generally).
Barston and Derron intervened and managed to get Nadya free, making enemies in the process, and Nadya had again taken it upon herself to go her own way. Only this time, she gave Barston a gift of a shell earring with the power to hear underwater. If Barston ever needed Nadya's help, he was to send that trinket to her hut in the Morning Hills.
Doug's Note: That's a tad bit more backstory than the original. All we knew was that she had been a treasure hunter for hire who had been caught by Lynwood and imprisoned until Barston (and Lun Duncan) had set her free. There was some hint about the younger Lynwood being in love but Nadya having no care, but I didn't go into any additional details back then.
Her general skill set is "treasure seeker" (aka, thief) and uses her own claws and reflexes to do much of the work. She rarely gets in fights to harm, but is willing to bloody anyone to protect herself and her "children." She is largely retired now, only working for huge sums of money or to repay favors [though in the future we know she travels with Chungly to help Alice and Lun, partially because she is protective of Alice].
She has Skill 8, Stamina 12, Luck 10, and no Magic. She has a range of special skills, especially those more in the stealth/movement range. She uses her claws and dodging to fight. She is trained in the Tatsu School of martial arts (she gets -1 Damage, +1 Dodge, and +2 Dodge versus ranged attacks). She gets two attacks per round and can see in the dark.
She is fairly motherly in behaviour, sometimes condescendingly so.
The Timing Paradox, Slightly, and the Stock Art
In the post-Barston, Astrid, and Derron-era I gave some thought about how the game was going to progress. This would have been early 2024. A year (or more) prior, the campaign had started with Shellyton Bakersfield [he died] and then jumped ten-years later to Barston. Initially conceived as a slacker mage type, he was so bad at every roll involving magic I ended up meta-gaming the notion that he is basically anti-magic.
He met Derron (a stableboy good at street-fighting, later something of a traveling monk) and Astrid (a runaway Elf princess turned bard) and some other people and those other people eventually left and the three of them kept up a squabble-fight versus 2-3 clans of Warlocks.
A random monster encounter at the very end of the campaign, like the penultimate segment a half-scene before they triggered an explosive trap to wipe out the remnants of the warlocks, just slaughtered Astrid as I rolled the worst I ever have.
Since the next campaign planned had been something like "Barston and Astrid's kid, 30 years later," I was a bit stuck. I took some of the various side characters, Alice Hunter and Lun Duncan, and played with elevating them to the leads but added in a Priest to replace Barston [Chungly] and a Thief to replace Derron [Nadya].
However, I thought it might be nice to find a good visual reference for the two of them and so bought the two pieces of stock art, above. Only, the campaign was very slightly before the blog. This is why The GLOW is still the first one where I used paid stockart to help tell the story. The other was just art for my own collection.
Which I've kept on hand to one day use. Now I have.
Like most of my stock art use, I start with some keywords and then reshape the scene to have the stock art make more sense. Nadya went from a young, scrappy cat to an older, more regal person. Chungly went from a scrawny rhino to a bigger one.
The Timing Paradox, though, is that the Alice and Lun stuff used the above stats for Chungly and Nadya and I don't really feel like going back and rolling them to a previous set of stats.
Ah, well. It's ok.
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