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Part 5- Of Threads and Angels Gabriel was something I wanted to bring in for Lucy's character, whom I felt needed some more development. I always liked the idea of weaving in sub-plots, and remembering what a great character the angel Gabriel was in the movie "Prophecy", I decided to bring him in for my own needs. He began by appearing in Lucy's bedroom one night, telling her that she would eventually find a man that he needed, and he needed her to stay alive long enough to find him. Because Gabriel himself could not get at Hauptmann (without drawing undue attention to himself), he needed Lucy to do it for him. Hence his reason for freeing her and the rest of the group from Hauptmann's dungeon. As an aside here, I felt rather bad about killing off Bruce, especially since Zero had just come up with him only a few sessions before. However, I needed to send a message to the rest of the players that a) yes, you can and WILL die in this game, and b) Hauptmann was very serious about what he would do to the rest of the characters, and that they needed to escape in a hurry. At any rate, the group soon whisked themselves off to Celaeno, drinking their Space Mead and heeding all the warnings that they'd read about before. Apart from meeting Laban Shrewsberry and learning the spell Barrier of Nach-Tith, this went pretty smoothly. Luckily for the group, because there were plenty of nasty surprises laying in wait for them. The next two chapters, the Sands Of Time and Mountains Of The Moon, also went rather quickly, with nothing really remarkable occurring. Dr. Sothby got to shine a bit during the Sands Of Time scenario, since it took place in Egypt. Also, Zero introduced a new character, named Hakim. To this day, I'm still not sure whether Hakim is a good guy or not, or what his agenda is. Which only goes to show how good of a roleplayer Zero is. During the time period between these two scenarios, however, something major happened. Again, playing with subplots, I engineered the disappearance of Hayashada. Duane and I had talked at great length what Hayashada's history was exactly, and I wanted to run a session or two that dealt with that. Basically, what happened was that Hayashada's past came back to bite him in the ass, with the Keui Jinn kidnapping him in the middle of the night, and taking him to San Francisco. With the group in hot pursuit, they discovered the Keui Jinn's secret lair, freed Hayashada, did battle with agents of Keui Jinn while Hayashada, now made immortal, had an epic duel with his longtime rival, Kenji. Running this little side adventure enabled me to do several things. First, it gave me the opportunity to write and run my own scenario, based on some ideas from my players, something that I had yet to do. The second was that I wanted to have a way to explain Hayashada's past, but to Duane and to the rest of the players. I'd found that focusing on one specific player, to give him or her the spotlight once in a while, makes things more interesting for everyone involved- giving players a chance for their characters to grow is vitally important. Lastly, it gave me a chance to bring back Thomas Brand, even if just as an NPC. It worked out fine, however, since he was living in San Francisco, and since the group a) had never been to S.F. before, and b) they were dealing with Asian cultures, Brand proved invaluable. In fact, credit goes to the group for using him so well as a resource. |