Tag Archives: Dungeons and Dragons

An….Intermission….and…Update!

Posted on by
4

Oh…..hello there!!! Were you expecting a continuation of Aden’s journal? Hah! Well…as a DM…I fooked up! I had a player, my business partner Mr. Jonbar, writing a journal of his character’s adventures. Something that maybe any DM would hope for….but you see….the dice determine things..right? As a DM, you got to go by the dice!! No fudging…no bullshit…otherwise, things are cheapened…..at least, that’s my opinion, right??? and sure…. others may play differently–the gods bless their souls…Is Aden dead then? hmm…I’m not sure to be honest…perhaps you can all gather around and tell me what you think should be this Sun Priest’s fate……..but for now, I’m taking over the updates of this perilous journey as the party makes their way through the Icicles of the Cryoptera, found in the Coming of Winter: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/473203/the-coming-of-winter

Ok…you see…the party had arrived at the Icicles of the Cryoptera!! An enormous frozen waterfall, riddled with caves within the cliffs and treacherous, slippery paths, as well as huge icicles dangling from the frozen waterfall…thus, its name…..and well, perhaps you know of this already if you have followed Aden’s journal as they attempted to infiltrate this fortress, mostly with a hard-headed dwarf in the fore to destroy this area quickly….so they attempted to cross this 80′ long ice bridge….

But as you can see…from the great artistry of Del Tiegeler….the party met some frozen banngiests that impeded their journey….as well as a few patrols of cryoptera…but let’s refresh yourselves from Aden’s journal:

“We chose to retreat carefully back across the bridge, to find a place to heal and recoup for everyone was wounded and well spent. I advised that we do something with all the bodies, but no one wanted to bother.”

HAH!!! Part of the enjoyment of being a DM is when the party is at odds with one another….they mess up!!! Right?! They are assaulting a fortress but don’t bother with being sneaky??!!….no hiding of the bodies?! DELICIOUS I say!!….

Within a few hours….cryoptera patrols located the battered party and immediately sent someone for help….to arouse the entire hive!! Because….at this time, they are nurturing three elders…hoping they emerge from their icy cocoons to become demi-gods to lead them to glory! Any type of distraction is UNACCEPTABLE!!!

The party fought off the cryoptera patrol but realized they had pissed off the whole hive!! The cryoptera would have their vengeance!!!!

Swarms of cryoptera attempted to cross the ice bridge to tear apart the party…..Schlomo used his magical wand and blasted the bridge with Lighting Bolt. The whole bridge shuttered, but was not destroyed,…only cracking of ice leaving a weakened pathway. The party fought those that crossed as well as spell-casting insectoid men that threw harmful spells from their rune-engraved wings! Schlomo then gave the party some time, by unleashing a Solid Fog from the wand upon those on the bridge…blinding and slowing the enemy.

The battle continued…with Sonny, the powerful half-orc priest and fighter, being levitated and dragged through the air by a winged opponent to finally be ‘released’ to fall to his death to the icy river below…..but Sonny prevailed, barely surviving the fall, landing in the river and pulling himself from its icy clutches….he started to make his way towards the cliff where he felt he could maybe climb out of the chasm.

The mysterious gnome, Izzy, the murderous dwarf Mudreck and Valbryn, the leader of the party became holed up in one of the tunnels, trapped by vaporous fog, and a horrendous icy spike growth that impeded their movement. They watched in horror as Sonny fell….unable to do anything! They waited with baited breath as the gnome tried to rest enough for PSP’s to get them to safety with his Dimension Door ability. The enemy seemed to leave them alone…for now….

Meanwhile Schlomo and Aden fought off the enemy on the slippery slope leading out of the chasm….they howled in victory as eventually the ice bridge groaned and cracked…finally weakening enough to fall into the icy crevasse taking several of the enemy below….Most died upon impact, but some proved hardier, emerging from the icy river and started to trail Sonny…

The two priests fought valiantly against overwhelming odds and finally Aden fell. Schlomo became ignored as he was successful in casting Sanctuary upon himself. He managed to heal the heavily injured Aden before the cryoptera flew his body across the chasm. The cryoptera seemed excited, recognizing Aden’s holy symbol and clothing…perhaps Aden could provide some answers to some of the symbols and runes they found upon icy doors of this Shrine of Ardennor, Aden’s chosen deity….

The party eventually escaped and returned to the camp of the Beaver Clan. Gaining reinforcements in Wilma and Dayrll, both a warrior and ranger and a powerful archer named Skooz…as well as a mysterious Raven Clan shaman, Evara.

They went back to the fortress, eventually following a white manticore down its access point behind the waterfall…..

They fought it off, but it still survives, licking its wounds…its young unmolested for now…but most of its treasure stolen.

The party has explored this new area of the fortress, more like a tomb….but perhaps stumbling into parts of the ancient shrine of Ardennor…Their intention is to save the sun priest Aden…but hell….they had already forgotten his name!! LOL!….and now they stirred the lair of some sort of white snow pile….a white pudding!!!. Will they figure out how to work together to survive?

And Aden….heavily injured, barely clinging to life….wakes momentarily to see the insectoid creatures thrusting symbols of his god in front of him…but he can barely understand…the buzzing of death overtakes his mind….and yet…later he sees a face of a wild, crazed Verloren asking if he is ok!….but he passes out. Somehow…that grizzled face gives him a little hope and strength.

But that sense of dread lingers…perhaps the cryoptera will sacrifice this sun priest in an attempt to give power to awaken their sleeping elders—who may be the only ones powerful enough to waken the sleeping ice-devil, demi-god…the one known as Gwerendok!

Should Aden survive or be sacrificed? Post your vote below in the comments (no Jon…I’m not counting your comment)!!!

Beware the Cannibals…..!!!

In other news, Ray Weidner “Edgewise”, author of Peril of Olden Wood, is hard at work on an exciting adventure for Beware the King of the Cannibal Cult!. A huge city adventure for high level characters that surely will challenge their mettle! Keep your eyes and ears open in the next few months as we wait for art to pile in so we can attempt to bring this exciting adventure (100+ pages) to life…its fruition will need a successful Kickstarter attempt for the rest of the art pieces!! Ill sneak in some of the initial art pieces soon….they are amazing!! (Shh..don’t tell Ray.) We could really use your support to get this adventure out there so keep an eye out and we will be throwing in some deals for Merciless Merchant adventures into the mix!

Do the Gods even care?!

Need some flavor for your campaign??! Jonbar and Malrex are working on the Pantheon of Yulara, a book of the deities in the world of Yulara which includes the Dragonback Mts and Vermilion Sea. Each deity has a specialty priest and there are several new spells to explore and use for your own campaign! Coming soon to DrivethruRPG!!!

The Bone Toilers Return!!!

Malrex is slowly working on a Part 2 of the Bone Toilers of the Tar Pits! This 7-10th level or so adventure has the party competing with others to enter a crazy, dying dimension to find out where the bone toiler threat comes from…and perhaps save a goddess?

The Green Light….

I’m also giving Jonbar the green light to take a break from the HUGE Coppercore campaign and come up with a new adventure of his choosing. Yes…we are still working on the Coppercore campaign and WILL release it, but still play testing it…tweaking it….etc….will be throwing out the nets soon for a series of artists soon to help get this project done. It’s been like 7 years in the making so far, and still needs work….This is a very exciting project and has soaked up most of our time. Curious? then check out our stream every Wednesday! https://www.youtube.com/@TheMercilessMerchants-yx8pd

Deity Contest is Closed….

Posted on by
3

I wanted to thank everyone for their deity submissions! The judges will be checking out the entries and discussing/deciding the winners soon. Will hopefully post results this weekend!

Artist: Enmanuel Martinez “Lema”

Random

What else is going on? It’s freakin hot outside and its melting my brain! And human rogues just have a huge disadvantage over demi-human rogues…mainly in the case of infravision. How is my human rogue supposed to sneak ahead and scout if I can’t freakin see?

This is what my character…Dubs Bollocks faces right now deep inside the War Tunnels under Coppercore. We got trounced by numerous goblins, kobolds, and even 1 troll. We had a little help from an NPC party of dwarves, but it was a slugfest–and we survived. But now we aren’t sure what to do…if we rest where we are at, we will probably get attacked. If we rush for the surface, we have to go through the kobold tunnels again and they always have some ambush/trap going on….and we all have 1-2 hp each.

So the decision was to have all the Level 2-4’s stay put and send my 1st level rogue and one of the sneaky dwarves off to find this crazy dwarf who has sealed himself off from all the danger…and attempt to ask him if we can stay inside his little domain or if he has healing potions…or something…..what’s the worse that could happen? Not many in the party trust the dwarf, and some don’t like him at all, but Dubs is also a river fisherman and that seemed to click with this ol dwarf, as they had discussed fishing stories so he is hoping for the best. But of course…he has to make his way over there safely first.

The sneaky dwarf is fine…he can SEE. So he can be all sneaky and whatnot…but not my guy…and since he is a fisherman, he has self-proclaimed his new nickname for this venture as “Bait” as he lights a torch. I’m not sure he is going to make it or not, but I do know that he would try. Not because he cares if the party lives or dies (they are a bit of a snotty lot, don’t ya know…I think I can get away with saying that as none of them read this blog, I don’t think?…) BUT, because the party has picked up a bard or skald in the group and he can’t go back with his tail between his legs—the bard would destroy his reputation with his stories! So off he is going….

So cheers to the human rogues out there….they live a tough life! You can bet 5 gold on Dubs living…he’s good for it!

Kickstarters?

Beware the King of the Cannibal Cult!: I just got another email from Ray…author of Peril in Olden Wood. He is ready for another round of editing….he also claims he has 3 pieces of art so far and he is trying to get a few more before the well is dry and we go for some support. Ray has been working diligently on his new adventure–Beware the King of the Cannibal Cult! It’s only about 218 pages so I guess my next few weekends will be busy….and it’s for high levels! Level 10-12 for OSE. I must say–it’s quite good and I’m excited to see it go out there. It’s a city adventure with a ton of things going on that will test any high level group. I’m sure Ill be talking about this more later on.

Slyth Hive: A few people have asked if a POD will ever come out for this adventure, which is currently just a PDF on Drivethrurpg. I believe Prince is adding to the adventure a bit and hoping to do a Kickstarter for more art at some point. But I’m waiting on him to make the call. This is also a high-level adventure…levels 14+ for OSRIC.

Exclusive

The Merchants had a discussion about being exclusive with DrivethruRPG. There are a few benefits of doing so. We have had a few of our adventures up on Lulu and Itch.io, but they haven’t received much traction. For example, with Itch.io, I think in 5 years we have made about 20$ in sales. I thought about expanding to Amazon and a few other places, but we are such a small, mostly unknown outfit, that I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. And it’s a ton of effort to put our stuff (33 or so adventures) up on multiple storefronts. So we may only have our stuff up at Drivethru in the near future, fyi.

That’s it for now…stay tuned for the Deity results coming soon!!!!

The Best—Slyth Hive

Posted on by
1

The PrinceofNothing, master of word and prose, has received ‘The Best’ from Bryce Lynch over at the 10 Foot Pole: https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=9160

There are not many high-level adventures out there….actually…GOOD high-level adventures. Usually I see instead of 1 dragon, they add 3 dragons to make things more difficult. While that can certainly make the situation more difficult, I always felt it took away from the awe and savagery of the dragon–I guess I’d rather see a ramp up of a single dragon’s abilities and power rather than just slapping in 2 more.

Another challenge is why are the characters going on an adventure when they are that high of level? Wouldn’t they be defending and ruling their own keeps and they send their minions to do the dirty work? Do all high-level adventures have to involve saving the world to make it feel epic? I think setting up a good adventure hook would be challenging.

Personally, in all my years of playing D&D, I’ve never really played a character much pass 9th level or so. I think it’s because I like the struggle of the low levels…the danger…and once my mage gets fireball at 5th level, for whatever reason, I feel like I won the game or something. So there are a bunch of spells and abilities I’ve never used except maybe by the monsters as DM. So I don’t want to appear like I’m bashing published high-level adventures out there–I think they would be very challenging to write, but I do give a sigh when I see the usual (adding more monsters of the same kind, preventing spells/abilities from working, etc.).

Anyways, I didn’t write Slyth Hive but I did work on the layout. I remember one of the first encounters is a shitload of animals and I thought, here we go again–just adding numbers to make something more dangerous for high levels….but as I delved deeper into the adventure, I became pleasantly surprised. Complex environments and interesting foes as well as ever-changing/adapting enemies to keep players on their toes…(sorta rhymed there…). I don’t know if as a player or DM, Ill ever run through a high-level adventure, but if I did, I would be down for going through or running Slyth Hive as it has the type of challenges I would be looking for with a high-level character. Another would be Geir Loe Cyn-crul by Andrew Huso. It’s a bit combat heavy with some additional monsters–but I liked the vibe when I read it.

Anyways, you can purchase Slyth Hive at DrivethruRPG. Prince has hinted at a Kickstarter to get more art and at that point we would offer a POD version (buyers of the PDF now would get the updated PDF).

Deity Contest

We have had a few submissions trickling in….the deadline–June 4th approaches!!!

Final Version–Entering the Ice Troll Cave

Posted on by
2

I wanted to share the final version of Del’s art for the party entering the Ice Troll Cave. The more I type that out, the more I want a real name for the adventure….ugh..it will come to me. But check it out!!!:

I love how it came together. The dark inks remind me of the art in the old school first edition D&D books. I know most newer gamers like the colored fancy art, but the black and white brings back nostalgia for me.

Anyways, back to editing. I have finished Winter’s Grasp and we are starting to get some art in for that by Eric Hunt, which is looking pretty sweet. And I’m about 95% of the way finished with Ice Needles of the Cryoptera, but I’ve decided to add another level to the dungeon, so going to bust that out. Also going to use ScorpyDesign for the art in that adventure. Once Ice Needles is done with editing and new areas, I’ll do some thorough editing through Ice Trolls and we will be good to go.