Bladestar

After the adventure of The Sentinel the group returned to The City of Greyhawk to celebrate a mostly successful conclusion. Raven in particular, rather pleased with himself since he had acquired the eponymous item and is now the proud wielder of the magical glove.

In Greyhawk City the party will encounter the adventure of
Bladestar, written by Louis Prosperi and published as part of the Treasures of Greyhawk collection originally in 1992 in support of TSR's ongoing development of The World of Greyhawk as an official AD&D 2nd edition setting. The plot hook of the secret message intercepted by the party in the denoument is the signpost to the next series of adventures when the party will explore Sean K Reynold's fascinating Star Cairns which will be the core of the campaign adventures run by me in the next few years but until I manage to reconstruct the message from the depths of the RPG Files we continue with the detective mystery set in the streets and alleys of Greyhawk City… Bladestar.

Featuring…

Simon as Andrea
Andy as Astra
Malcolm as Hemegretham
Dave as Alvin
Karim as Raven
Alex as Zeppo

Brian Parker, February 2023

Pre-Bladestar - One Winter's Night

At this point in late 1998 the Clarshh's Sepulchre group were encountering The Sentinel (UK2 TSR module) courtesy of Dave as the DM so I was getting a chance to play my newly rolled up first level druid, Keswick. From memory I was convinced that the next adventure would be me running Bladestar, which sows the seeds for an ongoing narrative and campaign based around the characters first rolled up for Clarshh. After rummaging through the RPG files it turns out that Dave must have taken a break during The Sentinel since I have a one shot adventure (2 sessions) with new characters run by me at the end of November 1998. So before Bladestar, I present a short seasonal incident featuring newly rolled up characters, One Winter's Night.

Featuring…

Talon played by Simon
Blok played by Andy
Ozone played by Alex
Bumbletum played by Karim
Academius played by Malcolm

Brian Parker, February 2023

Clarshh's Sepulchre completed

Bruised and battered the adventurers staggered back to The City of Greyhawk, loaded down with loot and amazingly all of them made it, although it was a close run thing for both Alvin and Raven.

Re-reading and editing this years later I was surprised to be reminded of quite how awful 1st level characters in AD&D 2e are at fighting in general. Given basic armour and protection spells, they are not too bad at resisting damage but they are quite terrible at actually hitting anything, the illusory troll in the village being a prime example and even 25 years later I can still recall laughing rather too much at their frustration in this encounter.

All in all we had sufficient fun and I got my feet back under the DM's table again and warmed up enough to be a tolerable DM after having had quite a break from the experience. I would however be taking a bit of a break from DM'ing to play instead since we were lucky enough to have a few DM's in our group so if I remember correctly Dave took over with the same characters for his next adventure, The Sentinel which is one of the excellent TSR UK modules. It would be 1999 before we would finally start my next game, Bladestar, an urban adventure in The City of Greyhawk.

Brian Parker, February 2023