The God in the Dark, Part II After taking note of the empty carts from the caravan, which have been abandoned near the Eastern entrance to the city, our heroes slip inside the building, where they find themselves in a long, featureless hallway that apparently circumnavigates the domed structure. The sun has set and it's very nearly pitch in the hall, so Lukas lights his bullseye lantern to provide illumination. They creep along the hall, alert and ready, until they come to a break in the hall--whether this break was once a door or gate, or whether it is just the result of walls crumbling with age they cannot tell. But the opening leads into a vast city under a dome. The rest of the city, though shadowy and dark, is not as pitch as the hallway, due to gaping holes in the ancient dome, which allow some moon and starlight through. They send Lukas and Valder, their two most silent, into the city to find somewhere they can set up shop and take stock of their surroundings. The two...

So it was pointed out to me after fairly extensive playtest that the corruption rules in my Age of Conan books are B.R.U.T.A.L. By the time a sorcerer hits second level, he's almost guaranteed to already be irredeemably evil and has so many penalties that it's pointless to try save against corruption anymore. It's true, too. If every time you fail a save you rack up a cumulative -1 penalty to future saves, it takes only three spells to wipe out the Sorcerer's +3 to save vs. Spell Magic when making corruption saves. Three spells. That's rough, even for Conan. Thus, I am tweaking the corruption save rules as follows: For every three levels of corruption gained--that is, every time the sorcerer would ostensibly drop a rank in alignment (regardless of whether he actually does drop)*, he suffers a cumulative -1 penalty to all future corruption saves. *Remember, if a Sorcerer begins play as Neutral (Unaligned), he still has to fail 6 saves before he would drop to Neu...

The God in the Dark: Part One The PCs awaken on a smoldering battlefield, their heads aching, bloody wounds covering their bodies. They groan and pull themselves to their feet, then take stock of the mess. It was Picts, dozens of them...but this far East? How did they get through the Aquilonian frontier without being beaten back, or at least detected? And when did the Picts get so organized? Regardless, it happened right here on the Road of Kings itself, barely a day over the Aquilonian border. They took all of the treasure, nearly the entire caravan sent by King Milo of Argos as a tribute for King Conan II of Aquilonia. They took all the horses. Many of the men are dead. And Merhotep's apprentice is missing, also taken as a treasure by the Picts. As the group works to nurse the few remaining guards who are still alive, the sound of hoof beats reaches their ears, and five cavalry bearing the standard of Poitain, the southern county of Aquilonia and King Conan's greatest ...

In sessions 7 and 8 the characters continued their investigation, shutting down the assassin training facility with the help of the city guard and eventually making their way into the sewers of Redboots, where they faced Rolovincio, down one of the leaders of the cult, and captured him. During his questioning they discovered the identities of all the plotters, and managed through deduction to figure out exactly where they all were. However, time was too short for them to make an effort to assault the keep where Zuthelia (the leader of the entire ring) was camped out, so they opted to set up during the Day of the King's Ear to prevent the assassination when she and/or her agents showed themselves. During their planning and investigations, it came to the attention of Prince Cassio that Decimus is an agent for the Aquilonian throne, working for King Conan II. While they planned, it came to their attention that Rolovincio had tried to escape and been killed...when this happened he chan...