Tales from the Emerald Pentacle Issue 1

Welcome, all readers. This is the first of a series of chronicles regarding the adventures that were had in Talislanta by the junior members of Halesowen Boardgamers. Hopefully Gordon can find room on the website for it.

Some background: Talislanta was created by Stephan Michael Sechi in 1987, and went through a succession of publishers. It is a world totally different to normal fantasy games; it has two suns and seven moons, plus a range of flora and fauna unheard of anywhere else. The game system is simple; relying more on the rich culture and background of the different races you can play.

The works of Jack Vance and Lord Dunsany very heavily influences Talislanta. One reviewer said “ it is as if H.P. Lovecraft had written ‘Alice in Wonderland’ with Hans Christian Anderson and William S. Burroughs.” There are Men here, but not the ones commonly found in the pages of fantasy literature. On Talislanta there are no cows, sheep, horses, oxen or goats; instead there is a range of interesting and unique creatures. Oh yes, and there are no Elves.

The first adventure went like this: -
Daniel was playing a Thrall; a magically created warrior race; all Thralls look identical so they are covered from head to foot in unique tattoos. Jon was a green-skinned Cymrillian warrior-mage; able to use wizardry and a longsword, and Ben was a Blue Aeriad, a humanoid race devolved from birds; having lost the power of flight they use their vestigial wings coupled with Bracers of Levitation to fly.

7th Ardan 620
They started in the city of Cymril, capital of the Seven Kingdoms, on the 7th of the month of Ardan (the Purple moon) and were engaged by the wizard Gennaro to collect 6 drams of Crag Spider venom for him (a Crag Spider is a 12-legged 15' long monstrosity). Heading north towards the Durne border they approaches some rocky crags and spotted a Crag Spider. K’kree (Ben) shot it with his tri-bow and the spider retreated into the cave. After throwing a few rocks into the cave, they tried to lure it out using some Provender Plant but without any luck. Finally Grave (John) cast Invisibility on himself and scouted out the cave, spying the spider lurking round a corner. A tactical plan was discussed which involved charging in and killing it! They actually succeeded in doing so, killing two of the things eventually. They also rescued a Ferran thief named Fixx (Ferrans are small rodent-like humanoids from the Wilderlands of Zaran; not liked by many people). As a defensive tactic they can release a skunk-like offensive stench; something that the PC's found out after Stoopod (Daniel) threatened to slice his head off following an attempt by some bandits to steal the collected venom. Now they are back in Cymril, they delivered the venom and were paid 100 gold lumens for it, now K’kree is trying to get a tailor to make a cloak for him out of the Crag Spider hide that they carried back with them (no, I have no idea why he wants this, but it does kind of make him unique and people -will- point him out!)

So ended the first adventure