Shadows Over Stonard Warcraft
Setting: Shadows over Stonard is a campaign set in Azeroth on Horde side, six years after the founding of Durotar and about a year before the Burning Crusade. It will emphasize grittiness and paranoia, a bit of mystery and a hefty dose of action, the first part taking place in Swamp of Sorrows just after the spring caravan has arrived with new supplies, reinforcements and people seeking their fortune or trying to avoid those whose fortune they have already got.
Rules and sourcebooks: The World of Warcraft RPG, obviously, and the Horde Player’s Guide. Due to a few, ahem, gaps in my WOWRPG library, expect a few homebrews whenever I need something that is not in any of the books I have, especially when it comes to items and equipment, both mundane and magical.
Characters: I am aiming towards 4-6 players. You will start at lvl 8, stats is 28 point buy. Starting gold is 27 000 gp, no more than 25% of which can be spent on a single item. Races allowed are all of the horde races (orcs, tauren, trolls and forsaken) including the ones from Horde Player’s guide (ogre, forest troll, half-ogre and half-orc), as well as goblins. Classes, prestige classes, variants and alignment is basically up to you, but try not to make anything too weird or antisocial; after all, you are supposed to be someone a down-to-earth and honest orc like the commander of Stonard can feel he can trust;)
The player characters will have arrived in Stonard with, or at the same time as, the spring caravan from Grom’gol. Their reasons for it can be tailor-made to suit each character and their background, but at least one of you should be known to, and trusted by, the commander of Stonard, Ruag.
And as for my credentials as GM… I have ran a few PbP games, although none on Mythweavers, so I am not yet familiar with all the tricks, but it seems easy enough. As a GM and player alike, I tend more to the “storyteller” type than the “rules lawyer”, and my background in gaming is mostly GURPS and 2ed D&D; to me, the 3.5 rules are still new-fangled, and I haven’t even looked at the 4e yet. With those few words of warning, I think I should be able to handle it.
I will not decide on a set amount of posts per day, no maximum or minimum, at least not yet. But I do like things to get somewhere, so be prepared for about five posts per week, at least. I hope to start the game, or at least have the group ready and characters made, by November 21 (giving me, and presumably you, some time to enjoy the WotLK expansion…).
Well, I hope that covers the essentials. Welcome with applications!”Shaman, are you sure we were not followed?” Grunt Bolk looked warily around into the foliage surrounding the little clearing. Kharak Stormdancer sighed and stopped sifting through the remains of the camp where, if he were any judge, four of commander Ruag’s best raiders had perished.
“Once again, Bolk, we can not be sure of anything now. It does happen all to often that the Swamp takes our warriors, but an entire squad of raiders? And old Makhro was one of the best. And what is even more disturbing… who, apart from the commander knew what he and his men was really looking for out here?”
The old shaman leaned on his staff and surveyed the clearing, and the brownish, rotting trees that surrounded it. The silence made him uncomfortable. No birdsong, no crickets or chirps of insects, not even the ever-present mosquitoes. And, while it was clear that raider Makhro and his men had been here, and very likely died here, where were the bodies? Surely the raiders could handle the wildlife, and the Lost Ones, and in any case, there was not enough blood…
He looked up at the darkening sky and turned to the two grunts that had been sent with him.
“I think we will have to stay here for the night. I am tired and need to regain my strength for tomorrow. But then, I shall be able to ask the spirits exactly what happened here.”
The grunts Bolk and Burlog did not look pleased with this, but it was a long way to Mistyreed post, and they had already spent several nights in the stiflingly hot and humid swamp. They set up camp on the side of the clearing, on one of the few patches of dry ground, and lit a fire, the flames turning blue from the salt that encrusted all of the driftwood this close to the sea.
It was well into the night when Bolk heard someone, or something approaching through the splashing mud. As he hastily waked up the others, he could just barely make out the outline of an orc on a wolf. Bolk grinned of relief.
“Raider Makhro? You really gave us a scare, big guy! Hey what…”
But Kharak, now wide awake, had just pulled him back towards the fire. His totem glowed a sickly green, and the shaman stared at it in horror.
“It is not Makhro! Grunts, prepare yourse…”
When the little bird returned to Ruag with a small note tied to it’s leg, the commander of Stonard knew that he had foolishly sent yet more of his best men to death, to no avail. Apparently, Kharak had lived long enough to scrawl this simple note and send it with one of his animal servants, and the simple message confirmed what he had already suspected. It also confirmed that there was a traitor in their midst; someone must have knew of Kharak’s mission.
Ruag leaned back in his chair, not hearing the festivities outside as the townsfolk celebrated the arrival of the spring caravan from Grom’gol. What to do now? Who to trust? And, more importantly, who to trust with something like this? He glanced once more on the message from Kharak, scrawled with blood in crude, fingerpainted letters. Only one word.
Scourge
