"Operation Kipper"

Introduction

Foreword

From January to June 1994 an experiment was tried at Intercity roleplaying gaming. A single player in a remote city was pitted, secretly, against a well-established group of role-players.

The main group of players played on Sunday evenings so we called this group the "Sunday Mob". They were: Mary-Anne Mace, Clare Davies, Philip Daniel, Denise Cone, Karen Fee, Raewyn Catley and Kevin Fee. With special guest appearances from Martin Fastier, Bronwyn Mohring and Ian Luxton.

Unbeknownst to them, I got Tim Robinson, a friend of mine from another city of New Zealand, to play the role of the bounty hunter, Amelio Broachcask, tracking one of the party members for the murder of a Scabport Thieves Guild Militiaman which had happened years before in game time.

He called this campaign "Operation Kipper". This is that story.

Tim's whole campaign was conducted over email.

Problems

A few problems had to be solved at the outset. The first, and most troublesome, was how to handle the problems with time synchronization. Of course, when the Sunday mob is having a lot of battles on a particular evening, maybe only a few hours would pass in the game world. On the other hand if they are travelling quickly overland, many weeks could pass in the game world.

We finally hit upon the "Narcolepsy" syndrome. In the game world, Amelio Broachcask would regularly drop into a coma-like state from which he could not awake. This would happen of course if the Sunday Mob accomplished a a lot and a large amount of time passed. Luckily for Tim, this seldom happened.

The Sunday Mob players had a similar affliction which was invoked when one (or more) players didn't attend a particular Sunday night. This was handled in the game world by a syndrome called "Marmalade". The character would slump into a coma-like state, unable to do anything but shamble and drool. (The name Marmalade arises because they dribble and drool a sticky yellow substance, very much like chopped lemons, grapefruit and sugar, i.e. marmalade.) Drooled Marmalade was discovered to have curative properties, and thus it is often harvested.

The other problem for Tim was with the "Speed of Light". In name only, the Speed of Light is the speed at which information can move around the game world. In the Known world, the main conduit for information transfer is the Gnome Post.

There are two time frames of reference: the Sunday Mob's time and Tim's time. The Sunday Mob's time was chosen to be the Master Time and thus Tim's time needed to be synched to them. However, they only play on Sunday nights and Tim performs his orders during the ensuing week. The closest Tim's time can get to the Sunday mob's time is subject to the time that it takes for the Speed of Light/Gnome Post to travel between them and him. Thus if it takes the Gnome Post three days to travel from where the Sunday mob currently is to Amelio's location, his time can never get to within three days of theirs.

Tim got around this by having orders and contingencies attempting to cover all options.

At one time, one of Amelio's henchmen sent some information via the Wizards' Guild Telegraph. This information transfer is almost instantaneous. This is of course faster than the "Gnome Speed of Light", however, it was seldom used and the ensuing paradoxes never eventuated.

Amelio's Brief

You are Amelio Broachcask. You came upon the Group initially through a wanted poster in Scabport about eight seasons ago [ five seasons to a year ]. The poster was for : The fine print underneath listed as being travelling companions: They all had a reward of 200gp each.

The trail was many weeks cold, but the reward was good so you decided to follow. You followed the "trail of destruction" from Scabport through Sirensville. Here the party wantonly cut the cable of the Sirensville ferry (a cable-run boat to cross the large Siren river). Another reward, 3000gp, for this.

Through to the state of Two Frime. Here the party joined the Two Frime militia as auxilaries and ventured into the Kobold Hills under one Corporal Valeria [ Karen Fee ]. It was at this stage that you discovered, much to your chagrin, that your old "friend" Red Rikor [ NPC ], another Bounty Hunter, was also after the party. This news was further soured by information that The Blue Peridot [ NPC ] (yet another "friend") had joined him.

This tipped your hand and forced you to act more quickly than you might have liked. You planned and executed a chancey but successful raid into Corporal Valeria's redoubt capturing her and her troops, but due to the incompetence of your spies, the party had left two days before.

After a few hours of creative torture, Corporal Valeria told all and revealed where she thought the party was headed. It turned out that they had lied to her and you lost the trail. However, the party had become fond of the doughty Corporal so you began circulating rumours around Two Frime of the fact that you had her in the hope that they might reveal their presence.

After three fruitless weeks, news came in from the city of Spite Battle (eight day's travel away) from your Thieves' Guild contacts that Pitt the Other had made contact with the Guild there. So you packed up your entourage (and prisoner Valeria) and arrived in Spite Battle lickity split.

The party had left the morning of the day you arrived! They were headed for Spite itself, so you sent your fastest men and wagons after them that night. This allowed you to rest and recollect your wits. The next morning a runner arrived reporting successful news: "Capture!"

Your men had located them in the only inn in the town of Enroute (halfway between Spite Battle and Spite itself). The party had been awakened in the early hours by your men and had panicked. Several of them had leapt from the window (down two storeys), and Burnt Sienna and Roger had foolishly leapt off the roof of the inn - a three storey drop onto cobbles. They were all captured and spent the night languishing in chains and severely gagged in your wagons in the stables.

You headed off to Enroute to meet your victorious men. But when you arrived there was no sign of any of your staff. Questioning the locals revealed that your wagon had for some reason left for Spite instead of Spite Battle.

You arrived in Spite. No sign of anything. Worried you sent the remainder of your force to scour the road between Spite and Enroute. After many days of thorough searching you found a place where it looked like a wagon had left the road. The road from Spite Battle all the way to Spite is sealed (the Priest spell Stone Shape is used) and is raised to be above the surrounding swamp. The wagon had gone into the swamp.

You sent out searching parties into the swamp. After four days, one of them came across the bloated and half-eaten body of one of your men. You took him back to your temporary HQ in Spite and had a your Malechai (god of Hate) priest cast Speak with Dead on him - and the whole sorry story unfolded:

Your men had only captured Burnt Sienna, Roger, Rain, Exceta and Brandt. In order to avoid trouble and severely weakened by the fight, they left Enroute closely pursued by the remainder of the party. Tish, it seemed, grabbed hold of the axle of the wagon and hid underneath. For some brave reason, after an hour of tenacious clinging, she pushed her arm between the spokes of the wagon-wheel. It was instantly torn off, but her forearm bone jammed against spokes and the chassis, and caused the wheel to lock. Travelling at high speed, the wagon carreened off the road and into the swamp. Panicking, your men bundled the hapless prisoners into the two swamp boats, that they were carrying, and proceeded into the swamp to wait for things "to cool down". They were tracked down by the remainder of the party and a hostage situation developed. Knives were held at the prisoners' throats. Aria began to cast a spell. Knives flashed and Burnt Sienna, Exceta, Roger and Rain had their throats cut and all died. The clown on Brandt (the same one whom you had cast Speak with Dead on, incidentally) fumbled his cut. The battle was short, all of your men dying too.

You decided to try the Valeria trick again and planted some strategic rumours that Valeria was being held captive in Spite. And surprise of surprise the bait was taken. The party (minus four) was also in Spite! They probed interest in Valeria and agreed to swap Brandt for her. Expecting a double-cross, you covered every contingency - every contingency that is except for one, the one the party used. They somehow managed to get into Valeria's room invisibly where she was bound and gagged to a chair, with one man holding a knife on her throat, and two others with heavy crossbows aimed at her heart. Unfortunately for the party, they neglected your Invisibility Screamers and with a slit, twang! twang! Valeria died like the rest. The invisible ones fled, your men pursued scattering chalk dust as you had instructed. But they were eluded. When your men got back to the room, there was no sign of Valeria's body.

The trail went cold again.

Two weeks later your spies in Spite Battle informed you that the temple of Panadine there was going to cast four Raise Dead spells for some "vast sum". By the time you got a force down there, you discovered that Burnt Sienna, Roger and Valeria had been brought back to life, and were gone. They had once again left the town no doubt invisibly. Exceta's and Rain's bodies (which failed to raise) were never found.

A year has passed since then. Your grapevine has told you that in the interim:

Scabport has dropped all rewards on the felons except for Burnt Sienna's which has been increased to 7500gp. (Scabport takes the deaths of its militia very seriously).

However, just yesterday, a informer of yours in Zibrost has reported that a Shield Maiden relic had been stolen by someone who matched Burnt Sienna's description - she had evidently been expelled from the Shield Maidens.

Red Rikor has also told a "friend" of yours that he had spoken to the dwarf Pitt the Other on the road between Hackerton and Zibrost a few weeks back.

You are currently in Poger visiting a friend of yours, someone by the name of Toby Velcro...

Operation Kipper

Dramatis Personae

Sunday Mob

Several characters were lost and hence the same player name appears a few times. At no time did any player play more than one character.

Amelio's Lot

Amelio Broachcask (aka Lorenzo "the Cripple" aka Jeremy Craven)
A badly disfigured and exceptionally ugly bounty hunter of dubious morals. He was hit by a fireball many years ago and his face was very badly scarred by this so now he always wears a hood to hide his hideous countenance from casual observation. His vocal chords were badly damaged too and consequently he talks in a nasty rasp (think of Marlon Brando in "the Godfather"). His physical attributes are low - he is quite sickly and gets puffed and tired easily (low Constitution) and has no strength or dexterity to speak of. He makes up for this, however, by having a cunning and intelligence that is of almost supernatural proportions.

Requisites : STR 6 DEX 5 CON 4 COM 8 MND 19 PER 18

He is a 45yr old normal human with 4 hp.

He has the following personal magical items:

Main source of income is bounty hunting

He travels around in a magical black Coach of Cross Country Travelling (with white trim) drawn by four black mares (illusioned Nightmares).

Amelio's gang

Mercenaries:

Others

Onto Planning