Alright, so about once a week I get together with some old friends to play D&D. Weve done a plethora of campaigns, from a scrap-it-together prison camp motiff, to an all-wizard, governmental sector 5 high-level nutter.
These days its pretty interesting. Theres 3 of us: Nick- the bat-man type race Rogue who uses a rifled, scoped, nastyily uber X bow to drop people from preposterous distances. Unseen, unheard, the bat knows all. ME? Im a walking plot device. Im a half human, half-fey (we all have wings, or flying capability), Rogue mostly, with a HUGE penchant for treasure hunting. Ive got the bullwhip, a resevoir of esoteric knowledge, history, geography, you name it. Im a tomb raider lora Croft and Iniana Jones WISHED they were. I also have a nasty whip designed to kill just about anything living. Combined with this, his highest skill is ALCHEMY. Hes a professional glass blower as well, keeps the costs down. Ryan is taking central role in this campaign currently because its easy. Hes this almost-dragon, half dragon...thing... Oh, and hes a Dragon Shaman prestige class, or something. Hes very dragon.
So, we work for this rogues guild. "The Guild". Mind you, theres other guilds like ours, but its your general run of the mill cross-regional, multianational entirely too wealthy, expert-filled guild. Anyone whos ever watch "LA Femme Nikita" knows what Im talking about. We might as well be Gov't funded.
Part of our mission was to scope out this isle, used by various independent nasties as a base. Scope it out, neutralize or reign in any and all freelance actors in the region. Its an isle maybe the size of Martinique's or something along those lines, at least as I can call. So we go.
We land on a part of the isle inhabited by Lzard men tribes, 7. So, Ryan being lizardy like he is, and a shaman of sorts, pretty proclaims to be dragon jesus, and goes about getting most of the tribes under his sway, through either miracles or showing off physical or tactical prowess. Slays the king, becomes king of the 7 tribes.
This is where it gets a little nuts.
These lizardmen ride giant wasps for their Air Cav.
I do the math.
Giant wasp poison has a market value. It also has rates for how often a wasp can deliver a dose. I do more math. It turns out that, with ONE wasp, working a 40 hour work week with its milker (fairly gracious of us, Id think), can in a year make enough poison to sell EVEN AT 1/4 MARKET PRICE enough poison to garner 520 MILLION. gold. (For anyone who actually wants to see the math, I can do it...)
The 7 tribes constitute maybe 10% of the isle.
The game quickly turned from hack and slash to policy politics and fiscal spending. I love it!
What I love more though is now, with some experts form the guild being sent from abroad to help us out, various ads posted around the mainland city we're based from and abroad thanks to the guilds network bringing in even non-guild experts to help has vastly improved our chances of some nasty R&D, research and development. Theres a lot of powers, nasty independant outlaw types on this isle. The other day we had to storm a plateau and neutralize a giant balista battery made by a hill giant clan. Nasty stuff.
OK SO WHATS THE POINT RADISH HAT?!
R&D! Thats what!
You all can help represent some of my great engineers, masons, metallurgists, techies, etc. My character is not only in charge of finding new temples to raid to increase our wealth, but also the tactical or at least buedgetary/logistics of our military. Ill do a follow up post and show you what Ive got so far and give you a sense of our technology. Its Forgotten realms, so its high magic, but Im all for some steam punk alchemy.
I thank ALL of you for anything you add! More to come!
