NoddSoc

Greasy pizza down, mental recovery done, it's time to tell you about my evening...

NoddSoc: Not only dungeons and dragons society.

Pile a shed-load of geeks into a large room with tables and chairs, assort them according to preference of game, give them a game master and watch them spend the entire evening laughing, joking, rolling dice and doing generally epic things.

Me? I joined a fantasy world, in a game that was created by a group of NoddSoc members. It's called Starstorm, and in a few years time when it's bigger than D&D remember you heard about it first from me.

I played a Satyr creature, who basically was a fighter. Imagine a hairy humanoid, with horns and a goatee. This is the guy I played, with a spear.

As these things usually start, we were in a tavern. An NPC bursts in and declares to the barkeep, who is also the village mayor, that the village mystic has vanished, and runs off to tell the chief watchman. Meanwhile, five people pour out of the tavern and suddenly introduce themselves to each other, they're off to investigate.

Arriving at the mystic's house, the group has a look around. The town guard is not around, so Ragnar, the Satyr (me) hangs around outside to talk to them when they arrive. The others have a cursory glance around the inside of the hut, where a fight has broken out, there is scorch marks, and parts of the thatched roof have been cut, and the mystic is no-where to be found.

A Tinkerer, an alchemist of sorts, a humanoid with the features of a phoenix, finds tracks outside. Our Kelpie, Hourk (I think), a huge figure carrying axes and buried under several tonnes of fur and leather (not literally) follows the tracks, eager for a fight.

We follow the tracks, which lead into the territory of small creatures, a sort of mix between badgers, imps and bats. Not cute by any stretch of the imagination, but not aggressive either. At night we camp, where these creatures are watching us, and discover a small fragment of paper that refers to a knifeling, blood, and a knife. Further scrutiny reveals that the blood the paper refers to may involve the innocent, or even child's blood.

We arrive at their home, and I try to talk to the creatures, there's no common language, and they seem anxious at the presence of our Kelpie, who is looking aggressive, and drawing their attention. They are building themselves up to a fight, which we avert by getting him to stand down.

The elders of the creatures come out to talk to use, and draw us a crude diagram of two men, one with a broken leg, whose blood was along the path we were following, and a cage of small creatures, the children of the creatures. The creatures, Groundlings, point us in the direction that they went in, and offer us a reward for bringing back their children.

Following the path, we come across a marble ruin, a summoning site, where we can see the missing mystic, a missing blacksmith, and several Groundling children. We try to begin to rescue the children, but are repelled by a barrier.

We try to break through, but the barrier keeps us back. Thankfully, the mystic is outside of the barrier, and the Phoenix tinkerer wakes him and enlists him to help us break the barrier. After a round, our Kelpie is standing on top of the barrier, which is roughly cubic, above the sole occupant, a member of a race called Cerberus, taunting him... or more specifically, mooning him...

A round or two later the barrier is beginning to give, and so, I try something; I try to force my way through the barrier, exerting both mental and physical energy to do so, and succeeding. Unfortunately, I am the only person inside, and I've used up all my actions, and the Cerberus is next in line. He panics, grabs a crude ceremonial blade, and kills one of the children on the altar, summoning a demon, and causing the barrier to pop out of existence. The Kelpie falls on the Cerberus, but misses. The Phoenix throws fiery dust in it's eyes, and our healer, belonging to a Race akin to hydra's runs in and rescues the two remaining children on the altar.

The demon that was summoned is pissed, and it attacks everyone in range. The Phoenix gets lucky and its mimic is damaged, the Kelpie shrugs off the damage, and I, the Satyr shrug it off too. We were lucky that round.

We have one more member of the party, an unmarked, which is the easiest to describe because it looks human. He steps in to try and rescue a number of children caged nearby.

The Kelpie rages and beats the Cerberus into a corner before coming to help me with the Demon. In my annoyance that it had been born from the blood of an innocent, I set about impaling it with my spear. Fate was with me, and I scored a heavy hit. The Kelpie drew it's attention though, and once again he shrugged off all but one of the blows, which hit heavily.

The Phoenix tinkerer saved the day though, by planting a throwing knife between the eyes of the Cerberus, causing the demon to lose its ties to our realm and vanish.

We rescued the Mystic and Blacksmith. We burn the dagger and the body of the Cerberus, taking back it's head to the village of Groundlings. We rescue their children, and I take back the fallen child.

Victory, or at least something close...

So, Noddsoc. That was it.

It was the first thing I've been to as Lilith that I had previously been to in boy mode. What made it for me though, was someone I recognised and new introducing themselves to me, without recognising me at all. Then again, the whole evening was quite magical, as I got out and did something reasonably social as a woman and accepted as a woman.

It was good to get back to it though after the summer break. I had missed it! There's also the possibility of joining a second game. This session was a taster, but I am going to create my own character and join in a few weeks time (I have plans that will cause me to miss the first two sessions.) The second game will involve me playing a superhero character though, which will mean I will need to come up with an idea of powers or a theme that will enable me to have something to build a character around.

It was a good night out, looking forward to being able to do it on a weekly basis.

That's enough for now though.