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I, Jidi the hobbit-thief, and me mates, Ulfgard, a rather experienced dwarf with great hunger for sleep and battles, Seldorf, the mage of the group, but not the most intelligent and charismatic person, yet with a desire for money and power was walking down the dirty streets of Alrun Minral, a grand city with a grand name.
We checked in at the Screaming Wizard’s Inn, not the most attractive inn a mate could find, yet beyond the standards. But a group men, mostly rogues was stalking us. It could be our link to Anvar, that was their motive. One afternoon they entered the inn and while Ulfgar was cleaning his Battleaxe in our room, Seldorf me greedy mate had stolen a horse, I observed their entrance. I fled to our room, informed Ulfgar and climbed out ready to take our catch our stuff. But before I got it all a loud scream came from our room. It was Ulfgar. Suddenly Seldorf came riding yelling that they were coming. I got on the horse just in time to see five men in dark coming from another street on their horses.
We were hunted! Unfortunately there was a grand Festival in town. Great masses of people were in our way. But not to worry, Seldorf, the cold and selfish mage just ran down everyone in our way. Our hunters though wasn’t delayed greatly by this event but some weren’t talented enough to keep their horse on the road. They fell with their horse and died from their painful injuries.
But ahead of us was the greatest challenge of all. A caravan of vans blocking our path totally! But we didn’t realise it in time. Our horse fell in high speed and Seldorf landed somehow rather safely on the corpse of the horse. But when I had to make the manoeuvre to escape the horse I fumbled. In mysterious ways the horse landed on me, and I took so many hits the cleric was needed to raise me from the dead. Spectacular!
My Rolemaster moment was when I was attending Gen-Con UK one year. I had taken the time to remember to take my Rolemaster character with me, and asked the GM if I could use him in the game. He agreeded and let me play.
Now I was playing a Hobbit called Waza, as he used a Waz-rounder more commonly called the Morning Star. In fact he was quite good with it, and ok, so he was a thief. However the party got together and found what it was we were required to do. Introductions where given, Waza introducted himself as a hobbit adventurer and one character, I'm not sure what profession he was now, can't even remember his name, but we will call him Fred for now, he just got up and came over to Waza, and said "You keep yourself away from me, if you come near me, I'll kill you, you thief."
Waza just replied that it was ok by him, and left him to his own devices.
The party progressed through the adventure, and things worked out very well and the party managed to forfill the requirements of the adventure. In the last scene we came up against some creature which turned Fred to stone, he was just left there until we had achieved our goal. Then on our way back, Waza just happended to knock Fred's hand off, well these things happen, can't be helped can it.
Waza picked Fred's hand up, put it in a bag and went back to town, there was nothing that we could do for poor old Fred. Once back in town, Waza found someone who could, for a price turn Fred back in to flesh and blood, paid the gold, and also gave this good fellow, the bag, with the stone hand in, with a message to give it to Fred once he had been normal, with the message which went along the lines of, "I think you lost this."
Old Fred was returned to his old self, apart from the fact that his hand was missing, well in a bag and also still stone. I think Waza also paid for the healing of this arm, in as much so that poor old Fred didn't bleed to death.
Now the really good thing was, that Waza didn't even get the blame for this, Fred thought one of the other characters had done it to him.
He he he he he.
I had a brand new female Elven archer in a Rolemaster game that I was very eager to play. We were having a pre-campaign session with 3 of the PCs running through a small adventure before the main one.
I had decided that Caladia, my elf, was a haughty and scornful woman, who looked down on weakness in others, and treated most people as discardable tools. She was also highly skilled in influence, and had a silver tongue when she wanted to influence and/or manipulate someone.
We were exploring an island, along with a couple of the ship's mates from the ship we'd hired. We came across some various nasty slimy cocoons that contain these strange slimy creatures. We eventually realized that these creatures were humans who had been cocooned and transformed by this slime.
Well, after the final battle with the slime creatures, we noticed that one of the ship's mates (let's call him Fred) had some slime in the corner of his eyes. Caladia, who was not impressed with Fred's conduct in the battle, decided to err on the side of caution. Using her domineering personality, she ordered Fred clapped in irons and dragged back to the ship. There, she threw him to the deck, and related all that had happened. Then she insisted that Fred was in danger of metamorphosing into a slime creature.
Caladia argued initially for his immediate execution, but the captain was a little reluctant. In the end, they settled for burning out the slimy eye. So as Caladia and party went back to the island to clear out any remainders, they heard the screams of agony from Fred as the torch was put to his slimy eye. The GM then mentioned that it was only a drop of slime, which had hit Fred in the eye during the battle, and *not* evidence of an imminent metamorphosis.
So Caladia continued her work on the island, and ended up in a deep mine shaft. On her way out, climbing back up the long ladder, she accidentally closed her hand on a bat, hanging upside down on the branch. The GM decided that the bat would panic and attack, which sounded reasonable. The bat inflicted a 'tiny' A critical on Caladia. That didn't sound too bad. Then the GM rolled 100 for the critical. Result? "Amazing strike blinds foe" or words to that effect. One eye destroyed, and sight temporarily lost in the other. Caladia's extreme pain was matched only by the extreme laughter of all the other players at my expense.
I'd like to say that Caladia considered this a judgement from the gods, and reformed her ways, but she managed to get some organ-repairing herbs, and fix herself up to the way she had been. So she didn't learn. Her latest exploit was plugging a captain of a guard patrol (while his patrol watched in disbelief) for disturbing the party while she was on watch, and not identifying himself properly... but she's still alive. For now.
Turin, my Nightblade had been hired to go out with a rescue party to attempt to save another groupd of adventurers. We were hired by a Sorceress, who was the loyal retainer for a princess (Rogue) from another world. She had offered every member of the recue party 300 GP to all those who aided her in returning the first group safely to town. (remember that wording).
Two days later, the group left to rescue the other party, and half a day out of town, ran into them as they had escaped on their own and were heading back. So both groups joined together and returned to town. The mayor of the town (knowing that one of the returning group was a princess) decided to hold a banquet in their honor the following week. The rescue party then asked for their payment, since they had met the conditions of the contract. The Sorceress, saying that since the party did not actually rescue the other group, they were not entitled to payment, and the mayor being a friend of the princess took their side by declining to take any part in the dispute.
While upset and not getting paid, Turin knew that getting into a fight over it would be useless, so he gave the matter a little thought, all the while tailing the Sorceress around town and gathering information about her activities. It turned out that her princess has asked her to check around town to see if she could find a certain magic item, one that was rare and hard to find. Turin would enter a shop after she had left and would pay the shopkeeper for information on what she was looking for, and also paying him to keep his silence in case others asked about him. (note he did all of this while in disguise).
Once he found out what she was looking for, a plan sprang to mind, one that required a lot of help, but would get him the money owed him and get revenge upon the Sorceress and her friends at the same time. He quickly polished the details of the plan and arranged a meeting with the head of the local thieve's guild. When Turin outlined his plan to the leader of the thieves guild, the leader was overjoyed. He had been wanting to be able to hit such a fat target but had always been afraid of those mages who could find things from a distance. But, Turin's plan allowed him to hit the fattest target of all, and while he would have to leave town for a long while afterwards, the rewards more than outweighed the risks.....
All throught he week, the Sorceress had been checking out various shops in the town (a rather large town) and all without luck. The princess's other flunky was a Warrior Monk, and on the before the banquet, he was out drinking, and one of the thieves slipped something into his drink rendering him very susceptible to suggestion. This thief then led him to a drug den where he was kept out of comission for hte next day.
On the morning of the banquet, Turin used his spells and skill in disguise to impersonate the warrior monk, and then purchase some paper and ink and scribble a message saying that he found a dealer with the weapon that they were looking to purchase. The message directions and told the Sorceress to meet the shopkeeper at the shop at a certain time, late that morning. Turin then payed a reliable youth of the town to deliver the message...
The Sorceress showed up on time, and asked the shopkeeper about the item in question. The shopkeeper told her that while he did not have it on hand, that he could procure it and have it for her that night (and it had to be that night because the current owner was plannign on leaving town the next day), but that she had to bring his payment and come back late in the evening, or else the deal was off. He also told her to come alone, or the deal was off because his "supplier" would deal if anybody else was around but him and her. She reluctantly agreed and then went back to the hotel where the party was staying to get the money and inform her princess of the deal.
Now the banquet was formal, so everybody had to dress up, but nothing more than ceremonial weapons were allowed to be worn. Thus the princess was in an expensive outfit and had only a jeweled dager at her side (everything else being left locked in her hotel room). Both groups were there at the banquet, the first group and the one who had been hired to go after them. Turin even made a point of approchaing the princess to once again ask for the money that was due him (as he had done at least once every other day since they returned to town.
When the princess and the rest of the group returned to the inn where they were staying in the wee hours of the next morning, they found all of the employees tied up and unconscious. Upon further examination, the entire hotel had been ransacked, and every item of value from every room had been taken. The princess who had several chests filled with jewels and gold now had nothing more than the jeweled dagger and scepter that she carried to the banquet. She ended up having to sell these in order to pay for the Seer who attempted to find the missing items.
The Soceress was found later the next morning, beat to a pulp, but still alive in an empty shop, which she swore was filled with merchandise the previous night... The warrior monk was found a few days later strung out on drugs and sleeping in a filthy alley in the seedier sde of town, with no memory of anything of the past week....
The princess suspected that Turin had something to do with it, but since he was at the banquet when she arrived, and was still there when she left, and had been fully visible all night, she had no proof that he was involved.
Behind the scenes...... The deal that Turin made with the thieve's guild was perfect. In exchange for an amount of money equal to his expenses plus what the Sorceress owed him, he would plan and instruct the guildleader's thieve on pulling the biggest hiest of all time, and one that they would get away with since he would make sure that they could not be traced via magic (if they followed his instructions). In the week prior to the banquet, the leader of the thieve's guild imported the best gem cutters he could get his hands on, as well as others who could work a smithy for smelting gold and other precious metals.
The thieves guild hit the hotel shortly after banquet started, having acquired a large amount of a poison powder that cause sleep in its victims. They were let in by an employee who was well bribed, and then they quickly and easily took out everybody in the building. They then started at the top and worked their way down, ransacking every single room. Items from all the rooms (except for the rooms belonging to the princess and her flunkies), were loaded into a wagon and dumped in an empty wharehouse to be found a few days later by the local guard. The rest of the items (and the crooks got more from these three rooms than from the rest of the hotel) were sent to the witing workers, who quickly recut jems, took apart jewelry and smelted down precious metals into bars, for shipment out of town before morning. Nothing was left untouched. Items that could not be reshaped quickly enough were immediately loaded on boats and sent down-river and out of easy reach of the princess. The same was done for any and all magical items. Nothing recognizable was left in town...
During the breakin, all members of the thieves guild were either in disguise or under the influence of a spell that let them look just like the Soreress or the Warrior Monk....
Finally, to rub salt into an open wound, Turin even offered to loan (with a high interest rate) money to help her pay for a seer to find the missing items.....
One of my favourite Rolemaster moments was during my very first adventure using Rolemaster, about a lifetime ago...
My first character was a burly dwarf fighter called Gloin (wow, that's ORIGINAL!!). He was a little fella with lots o' brawn and very little in the grey matter department... His weapon of choice was a morning star, a weapon I have adored since seeing it in some drawing somewhere. Obviously, the high fumble range didn't impress or worried me a bit…… sic………
So, fully equipped, armoured, armed and dangerous (to whom is a matter of guess) I set off to adventure with my trusty companions, a moronic Grey Elf ranger, a shiny High Man paladin, a sneaky Human Thief and a surly High Man ranger…. Being all quite young and bad tempered, nobody wanted to try out a puny low level spell-user…
Our first mission was to relieve some orc marauders from the unbearable burden of their miserable lives… so, after some strategic planning (…) and serious considerations about the meaning of life and, mainly, about the risks of losing it at the edge of an orcish scimitar, we went for a stealthy intrusion in the orc nest…
Sadly, paladins and dwarves wearing AT20 aren't renown for their stealthy approach to problem solving, so we reverted to Plan "B"…
Barge in and kill them all…
Hehe, at last my little fella would be able to bathe his brand new Morning Star in black orcish blood... He started to swing… Howling all his hate he charged the nearest orc…
Have at ya, villain!! I rolled my attack……
01…………………
well, quite a good start…. But it happens…..
The fumble stunned me for a round… but I'm tough and quite well armoured, so the orc didn't kill me.
With hate and rage in my eyes I swinged again to put some respect in the sneering orc face the hard way.
03…..
and again I managed to stun myself… The sad thing is that I managed, against all the rules of probability, to fumble FIVE MORE TIMES IN A ROW!!! Never rolling more than a 04 on my attacks and ALWAYS stunning myself a s a result…
Luckily for us all, my misery distracted so much the orcs that they became easy fare for the rest of the party…
Needless to say, my companions, heedless of the fact that my tactical genius, my quick thinking and my acting talent (in faking the stun parade) obviously saved the day, renamed my dwarf FUMBLIN the bump-headed dwarf.
As for my part, I changed helm, developed the frenzy skill (as a result of the shameful experience) threw away the stupid Morning Star and began to develop the more elegant battle axe…
And yes, I was able to redeem myself… later… Much later…
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