Our heroes embark on their maiden voyage on the Enterprise, a modified Kieran Cutter type Schooner (from 50 Fathoms). Several days are typical and boring. the crew functions well and our marines (rangers) drill and get their sea legs.

On day 3 the lookouts spot smoke in the distance just before dark. Proceding cautiously a notice check is made to see a Galleon of the Fae nation being accosted by 3 Schooners. the Galleons masts are down, but the elves are raining heavy fire on 2 of the pirate ships. the third turns to engage the approaching Lanthorian ship and a boarding action is initiated by our marines. after a fairly bitter fight in which Harry the familiar is almost killed the heroes manage to capture the enemy ship including it’s mage. The Galleon has sank 1 other ship and seeing that, the 3rd ship flees.

Next week, the gratitude of the Elvish nation!

While we are waiting for our ship assignment, we’ve been hanging out at the Flying Dutchman, a bar right by the shipyard. One of the cute little barmaids has a HUGE crush on Reginald (she calls him Reggie, which he hates) and is constantly trying to get his attention. She told him the other day that the Red Store, a group of local smugglers, were bringing in something illegal and training in a compound on the northeast side of town. After some discussion, we decided we should tell our boss, Lieutenant Dan, about this. When we did, he gave us his unofficial official support to look into it and take care of it if we could.

Over the next couple of nights, we sent Mordecai and Harry scouting to find the compound the barmaid told us about. They were both convinced they found it, and Harry even came back ranting about a huge beast with horns! We were pretty sure nothing like that should be in this town, so we set up to take it down.

A very entertaining fight happened that night with highlights as follows. The flying elf broke his bowstring first thing but redeemed himself with some excellent shots later on. Harry the pixie flew over the wall and somehow opened the barred gate by himself. (Not sure how he did that.) A real, live MINOTAUR stomped out and fought with Ogre. We killed all the guard types while Harry taunted the minotaur and a wizard into quaking in their boots. (REALLY not sure how he did that.) Eventually we killed them all, and then we had a look around the place, praying we were at the right one.

We found poppers, a seriously addictive and very illegal battle drug, all over the place, and the minotaur corpse had a black, evil axe on him. The authorities arrived shortly thereafter to check out the sounds of fighting, so we turned all of this over to them. Lieutenant Dan turned up, too, and promptly took credit for our success. The black axe was immediately melted down, and we all received medals for valorous service.

Just after that, we got our ship assignment: the Enterprise, the flagship!!

After all the hubbub died down, Harry and I worked on getting some extra training. I convinced Harry that if he wants to be a warrior, he will need armor, so we got a local armor smith to start on some for him. It will be ready before we ship out. I also learned the darksight spell, which will be super useful since everyone but me sees in the dark. There is more training to be done, but we will be leaving soon, so it’s back to the Dutchman to live it up!

Time off. Train to fight better. Learn much. Try to learn more about battle, but not understand.

Elf mage hear rumor about bad things at warehouse. I smart. I say tell Lt. Dan. Lt. Dan tell us find out more. Flying elf & pixie look at warehouses and pixie finds horned beast. Flying elf says beast called mini-tor and is very bad. Next day wait for dark & kill gards on wall. pixie open gate & I run in. Human try shoot me with bow and I run right up to him. Human enemy swarm around and try to hit me, but no can hurt Ogre. Then mini-tor join fight. Not understand why called mini-tor, this thing big and tough! I sweep to kill all humans. Mini-tor sweep too. Good battle. I hurt mini-tor some and he go crazy. Seem even tougher. Need to learn that. Group kill other bad guys and help with mini-tor. Then we go after wizerd in warehouse and catch.

We heroes! Think about taking magic weapon from mini-tor, but everyone say very bad. Think about taking some of drug from warehouse. Help fight better, but do bad things too. Not understand bad things enuff, but don’t take weapon or drug. Trust team know best. Get money as reward. Next time try buy better sword..

The team has a nice bit of time off (while we wait for my wife to come home from a viewing, a friend of hers passed away :( )

Reginald Learns a new spell: Healing and increases a skill.

Ogre learns to fight better but miserably (double 1’s) fails to increase her knowledge of battle.

Mordecai fails at having his bow enchanted, but learns to swim (almost drowning in game 1 is powerful motivation!!)

I ran Elaine and Harry’s the next day, Harry partially learns to fight (+2 to next attempt) and fails to learn the bolt spell. (He does get some teeny partial scale made for himself). Elaine Learns the See in Darkness spell (she’s the only human so this will be very useful) but fails to learn anything else.

Reginald drew a Joker which granted him a contact/plot hook. Cute little bar maid named Elise who works at the Flying Dutchman (a naval Bar that the Coast Guard attends) She calls him “Reggie” and slips him free drinks and also tells him of interesting things she hears the locals talking about. This time it’s that there are some things called “Floaters” being moved into one of the warehouses and that some sort of armed force has been heard training in the area.

Ogre makes a successful Knowledge: Battle (close enough to military knowledge) and thinks they should report this to their Lt. Daniel Smith (Lt. Dan to his friends). Lt. Dan sees an opportunity in this to get hiself promoted and his team some needed recognition so he suggests they handle it themselves.

Mordecai does a fly-by and narrows it down to a few locations. Harry goes out at night and finds what he is SURE is the right place because he saw a huge guy with horns walking past a balcony window. Elaine forces him to check out the other 3 places even though he says it’s a TOTAL waste of his valuable time.

The group questions some local drunks and are fairly sure this is the place. They are concerned that if they hit an honest warehouse that is being guarded by normal security that it will cause issues (it would!!) Harry stamps his feet and says no, there’s some kind of demon in there!!! Mordecai makes a Knowledge roll and thinks it could be a minotaur….

The group waits for darkness, snipes the two archers on the walls and Harry, showing his fearless edge, fly’s over the wall and lifts the bar on the gate (how a 12" tall Pixie, even with Brawny can do this is beyond me, Yay exploding dice!! :) ) The guard manages to let of a yell and enemies pour into the courtyard. 4 archers, 4 sword and boarders, some kind of magician who lurks near the windows, and a 12’ tall beast with horns!! Ogre and minotaur smash on each other with the minotaur eventually going berserk. Mordecai gets shot at, a lot, but manages to put down most of the archers with help from Elaine and Reginald’s well place bolts. Harry manages to turn the air blue with his taunts, shaking first the Minotaur (before it went berserk) and next the mage. Shaking the mage allows him to be taken out before he cal flee. Ogre manages to hold the Minotaur long enough for the group to gang up on it though Harry takes his first wound ever from a sweep of a Blood Iron axe and many lantern archons were destroyed (Reginald summoned a couple).

Next week, awards and ship assignment!

Sign up and put in some service, it looks good they said.
There was drinking involved in that discussion. I’m fairly certain the only person who looks good is the recruiter who made his quota. A few weeks mostly consisting of no sleep, clean this, march there, and hurry up and wait culminated in a ceremony that was more of the same: run, swim, boat, fight. A Graduation should be: speech, fling silly hats, drink, and then drink some more. At least that’s how it’s been in the past. Not a total loss though. I learned that even when magic is being extra slippery, and it was on graduation day, that my squad can actually handle a number of equivalently trained thugs while I contemplate just how damned fickle magic is as my mistress.

Train done. Now grad… grad… test.

First run. Others cheat. One turn to dog. One fly. I run fast but cheaters win.

Then swim. I win. Not know if others try cheat, I so far ahead.

Boating. Pixie win. Need to get pixie. Guess human girl with pixie win too.

Now fun part. FIght!!! Team start bad. Flying elf get stuck in net and humans gang up. Wizerd try spell and fall down. Me and pixie take out human. Need to get pixie. Go to finish and no humans left. No fair! Want fight more, but they only humans so not last long.

No no more train. Fight real.

Graduation Day—the day we’ve been working towards since we joined up here. Somehow we assumed that the day itself would be rest and celebration. I realize now that no one actually SAID that…

The first treat today was the wake-up call going off even EARLIER than usual. Sarge quickly let us know that before graduation, we were going to be given the OPPORTUNITY to test ourselves against both our own teammates AND the other team training alongside us. Also, he announced that Reginald (our Eldakar) was being promoted to Private 1st class (brown-noser).

The tests would be: Running (or Flying, as the case may be), Swimming, Boating, and Team Mele combat. Doesn’t sound so bad, but the other team of 4 immediately assumed they had the wins already in their pockets. (They think they are so superior. I guess we showed them. We took all four contests… but I digress.)

Mordecai, our flying elf, handily won the running (flying) contest. I suppose it was fair since they made him fly twice as far as we had to run. I got second, after creatively shapechanging into a cheetah. You should have seen the looks on their faces!! Some of the other team could really run, too, though, so it wasn’t an easy contest.

Next contest was the swimming. Sarge let me know before it started that if I transformed into a fish, I would get latrine duty for the rest of, oh, FOREVER, so I decided against that strategy. (Even though I would have transformed into a dolphin, which is technically NOT a fish. Based on Sarge’s words, I decided not to push it.) When the whistle went off, Flyboy Mordecai jumped gamely in the water and then almost drowned. (He had to be rescued.) Our ogre (her name? Ogre, I guess, she’s never called herself anything else…) won this one. The other team’s best swimmer was neck-and-neck with her until the turn, when a sudden, mysterious, HUGE splash of water overwhelmed him. After that, Ogre pulled ahead.

The boating contest was third. Many people did very well on this, but Harry (my pixie familiar) helped me lots, holding ropes, steadying the tiller, playing lookout, etc. I won this (ok, Harry, WE won this) with no problem.

The final contest was the team mele combat. The arena was set up to level the playing field (so to speak). It was a netted dome 12 feet high in the middle and 7 feet high at the sides. Ogre had to hunch down a bit at the sides, and Mordecai could never fly high enough to get out of reach of our opponents. I summoned a soldier to guard me, and Harry hovered around to provide our team healing as necessary. The other team tried to gang up on Mordecai and Reginald right at the start, but we eventually kicked the other team’s butts. In the process of the butt-kicking, I was very impressed with Harry’s taunting skills. That little pixie turned the air so blue with what he had to say that the guy he was taunting just stopped and stared for a moment. Amazing.

SO at the end of these exercises, our team had won ALL FOUR of them. Woo-hoo!!

At the end of the day, the graduation ceremony was actually fairly moving, if only for the looks of grudging respect that our instructors gave us. The ceremony was followed by drinking (lots!) and partying (lots!). Not a bad start to our careers, if you ask me!

The first part of the session is spent learning the slight differences between Shaintar and other Savage World products. Our group is one of the graduating classes and they are the motley remnants. All the other Ranger groups are human, male, 16-20 in age, etc. etc. Our group consists of: Reginald, an Eldakar Mage/Priest, Ogre, an Ogre….., Mordecai, an Aevakar, and Elaine a human Druidess with her familiar “Harry”, a pixie.

In our first installment the budding Rangers are about to undertake their graduation exercises. Private Reginald has earned a promotion due to his schmoosing and becomes Private First Class (barely beating out Mordecai, it’s good to have +2 racial charisma!).

The new recruits will have to successfully complete 4 tasks.

1) a 5 mile (10 mile for Mordecai as he’s an Aevakar) combination of movement dice based on pace. Elaine, our druid, “cheats” and turns into a small speedy cat using the extended casting rules. There are 4 other participants, all experienced human rangers. Mordecai handily wins with Elaine a reasonable second place.

2) a swimming sprint (Elaine is told she cannot transform into a fish, she makes a very good intelligence test and realizes should she transform into a dolphin (not a fish!!!) she would be on latrine duty for a month!!) Ogre wins this one, we surmise by smashing a wave onto the human speed swimmer.

3) a general boating test, any skill deemed appropriate could be used to modify a boating roll. Elaine wins this one by creatively using her familiar.

4) the 4 v 4 fight. The arena has netting stretched across the top in a dome shape 12’ at the center tapering to 7’ at the edges (Ogre has to crouch at the start and Mordecai won’t be able to get totally out of reach). Elaine summons a bodyguard prior to combat. One of the humans gets the first go and rushes the aevakar dazing him. Elaine has her bodyguard engage another human. Reginald gets in a bit of trouble as 2 of the humans press him. Ogre engages with the bodyguards assistance. Familiar Harry disobeys Elaine a bit and taunts one of the humans shaking him. Mordecai goes defensive and flys up to the 12’ section. While it’s a good fight, magic triumphs over muscle and the newly graduated Rangers win their first battle! Drinks are provided and they eagerly await their ship assignment.

Wondering how to get started? Here are a few tips:

1. Invite your players

Invite them with either their email address or their Obsidian Portal username.

2. Edit your home page

Make a few changes to the home page and give people an idea of what your campaign is about. That will let people know you’re serious and not just playing with the system.

3. Choose a theme

If you want to set a specific mood for your campaign, we have several backgrounds to choose from. Accentuate it by creating a top banner image.

4. Create some NPCs

Characters form the core of every campaign, so take a few minutes to list out the major NPCs in your campaign.

A quick tip: The “+” icon in the top right of every section is how to add a new item, whether it’s a new character or adventure log post, or anything else.

5. Write your first Adventure Log post

The adventure log is where you list the sessions and adventures your party has been on, but for now, we suggest doing a very light “story so far” post. Just give a brief overview of what the party has done up to this point. After each future session, create a new post detailing that night’s adventures.

One final tip: Don’t stress about making your Obsidian Portal campaign look perfect. Instead, just make it work for you and your group. If everyone is having fun, then you’re using Obsidian Portal exactly as it was designed, even if your adventure log isn’t always up to date or your characters don’t all have portrait pictures.

That’s it! The rest is up to your and your players.