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  Simon E. Phipp(Geo Cities)
  Simon E. Phipp(Work - Birmingham)

"Dorastor Campaign" Copyright (c) 1997 Simon E. Phipp
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# Dorastor Campaign

When our campaign was multi-GM I often set adventures or scenarios in Dorastor as nobody else would. This meant that I could develop a framework which was not disputed or interfered with. When I took over the running of the campaign and converted it to RQ3 I stayed with Dorastor as the location because I could work with it and provide a challenging campaign for High Level characters.

As all the characters were prima-donnas, each used to getting his way and sulking if they did not, I had to find a way to encourage inter party co-operation. After all, members of the campaign had previously sold each other into slavery, killed each others family, stolen each other's Holy Items and even sacrificed party members to gods. This was not a party used to co-operating all of the time.

I hit on a cunning plan, simple in thought and bold in execution. Each PC had a series of dreams from their gods telling them of certain tasks which needed to be done, certain magical items which needed to be brought back to the cult and certain people who needed to be killed or befriended. Each person knew some facts which affected the other PCs' targets. That way, all the PCs would learn to co-operate and the campaign would go smoothly.

How naive I was.

The party immediately suspected each other of having ulterior motives as they never told each other what they were doing. "Why don't we go here" one would say, "that way we could help you defeat the enemy of your cult". What he did not mention was that he needed to find something which was defended by the person the other PC had to defeat. The party quickly descended into rampant paranoia and began working against each other, befriending various factions within Dorastor.

However, I soldiered on and played on their paranoia so that at least I had a good time. In fact, the sessions we had in Dorastor were, in my opinion, the most enjoyable I have had while roleplaying.

Oh yes, there were also the Sub Plots.

Each of the factions in Dorastor had its own agenda and plans for the land and each saw the PCs as the perfect agents to execute those plans. Thus, they tried to manipulate the PCs into doing things for them, generally successfully, until the PCs realised what was going on.

The best plot was that of the Vampires of the Tower of Lead who wanted the PCs to destroy the Giant King of Neverdead, kill the Lord of Thunder Mountain, weaken the Cacodemon cult in the Seven Hills, publicly embarrass Ralzakark and a few other things. Their plans worked so well that they even paid the PCs something like a million Lunars each afterwards as a reward for their services and warned them to leave Dorastor as it had become dangerous and they could no longer guarantee the PCs' safety. After all, the Vampires had helped the PCs in the shadows many times, even going so far as to HeroQuest in support of the PCs. However, the party took this as a threat and decided to destroy the Tower of Lead. After Questing for various things, but failing to find a Lead Cross, the party attacked the Tower of Lead and succeeded in bringing it crashing down - invoking the power of Maran Gor at the bottom of a Tower tends to have bad effects. The Queen of the Tower, a former Angel known only as The Mistress of Light, Guardian of the Fires of Heaven, managed to persuade one of the party members not to kill her and to promise to try to free her from her Vampire Curse. Solarus Skywatch, for it was he, was so terrified of the Queen that he would swear anything to get her away from him, so he agreed that he would free her of being a Vampire if she betrayed the Tower. This she did and let them into the Secret places beneath the Tower where they found a Grisly Portion - part of Gbaji. They turned back here, though, being afraid to venture onward unprepared.

Later on, the Mistress of light, Guardian of the Fires of Heaven appeared in Balazar, in Solarus' Palace at Dykene and demanded, with an entourage of 7 angels, that he uphold his bargain and let her live again. Well, you never saw anyone run around like a chicken without a head. But, to his credit, Solarus pulled in many favours and asked many very powerful creatures for help and managed to restore her to life. In fact, he used the same techniques as Derak used to bring Uzarl back, but that is another story.

Anyway, I digress.

Dorastor was basically a set of kingdoms just ripe for exploiting and for the PCs to expand from their own Self-centred attitudes into thinking as Heroes should and acting as heroes could. This worked up to a point. Some found great delight in revelling in their own power, others worked for the good of the people even if it conflicted with their own personal goals and others just muddled along in their own way.

All in all, a good time was had by everybody.

The PCs started off by using a huge armoured Cart pulled by 4 Zombie Bison, until the Sword of Humakt realised that the Bison never ate and had pulled the Cart day and night for 3 days, even under water. There was a sudden flurry of violence and the party had to pull the Cart back. They gave up with the cart as soon as all of them could fly. They began by attacking small things but went up to Kings, Spirits, DemiGods, Heroes and Godlings. They seemed to enjoy themselves.

Eventually, the PCs either killed or befriended all the major NPCs in Dorastor, even Ralzakark. They did not meet with the Mad Sultan as I had forgotten he was there. If only the Dorastor Pack had come out when I was running the thing. Anyway, the PCs still went back occasionally, so I could have fun. After all, I had used Cwim and cacodemon a few times and needed more juice to Zap the PCs with.

The following is a series of rough write-ups from my Dorastor Campaign. They are not necessarily complete, nor do they reflect exactly what went on in the campaign. Quite often I have added details or removed details as I have seen fit. Also, the Dorastor Campaign finished some 4 years ago and my memory is not good at the best of times. Foolishly, I did not keep a Campaign Log to remind me of what happened. Also I am writing this in Moscow, several thousand miles from my campaign notes.

Hopefully you will find things here of interest, people to visit, things to kill, places to run away from. I have not included statistics for most things as they are foolish at the best of times - either they are too strong or too weak or too unbalanced and always have to be changed by the GM. Anyway, I am thousands of miles away from my notes and cannot remeber the stats. The write-ups are best used as background or as sketches to base encounters and NPCs on. That way, you can tailor this Dorastor to your own version of Glorantha.

Enjoy.