The CF weekly - Vagrad's Backstory

So, seems like our group is getting the saturday roleplay back in action after a rather odd summer. As you might have read in The Tale of Five, Hate is running a new AD&D campaign set in his own world. Sadly I wasn't able to join the first sessions, but I was there the second session and made my character during a long time of trying to get any good idea!
And finally came... Vagrad.

Just barely more than a century ago, another Dwarf was born. This locally joyous occasion might seem unimportant to the great machinations of things, and fate has yet to sho whether that's true or not. Whichever the case, the newborn was named Vagrad.
Vagrad was born in the Thunderpeak Mountains by parents of the priesthood, and especially his father was a prominent member in the religious caste of the Thunderpeak Dwarves. As common practice by the Priests, he sought the blessing of the gods upon his child. He took his newborn up to the peak of the mountain and, after rigorous and long ceremonial preparations, called out:
"Oh, Spirit of the Mountain, Father of Dwarves and our Sacred Ancestor! I call upon you to bless this child! Give him the constitution of a--"
However, he was promptly interrupted by the thunder, seemingly striking from nowhere. He flinched a little, but kept his eyes closed as he used to during prayer.
"-- of a guardian, the wisdom of a sage and the strength--"
Another lightning struck.
"-- the strength OF A BRUTE!"
A third and final lightning bolt came down, much closer than the other ones. The priest and father opened his eyes only to discover that an immense lightning storm had gathered around the peak during his prayer. A nearby patch of snow, dangerously close to the ceremonial circle in which his son laid, had melted during the last lightning. He hesitated... this had not gone as planned. He did not want his son to recieve the blessing of The Thunder God. Hurriedly he grabbed his son and ventured back inside the mountain. Another lightning struck.

His father never spoke of that day, and Vagrad grew up as a slighty taller, well-built, hard-working and ,most importantly, short-tempered dwarf. In fact, his temper was so short that it came to no surprise to anyone when he chose, much to his parent's dismay, to join the Battle-Ragers. For a few decades he lived on the border of the Stronghold, recieving training as a Battle-Rager and protecting the Thunderpeak stronghold. He was taught the customary battle-songs and recieved the tattoos and piercings. The high-ranking members in charge of the defense of the stronghold used him and his brethren as a point-and-click way of destroying insurrections of goblinoids and such, though only when in dire need. For a short-tempered dwarven youth, this was almost a dream coming true. He did not contact his parents at all during this time. All he cared about was the ecstatic rage and killing. That was all he lived for.

But no mindset is eternal, not even for a stubborn dwarf. Eventually, his rebellious period came to pass. For a long time he felt hollow, and slaughtering didn't help filling that hole. If anything, it only made the hole deeper. Eventually he realized that he had to seek out the only ones he knew he could trust to help him: his parents.
So began his trek to back where he began, all the while his temper and rage gnawed at him, screaming at him to brandish his axe, even against his kinsmen. It felt like a herculean effort to suppress the urge, but he managed to do it. And finally, he reached his destination.
His parents were surprised to say the least, seeing their son now covered in blue tattoos, rings in his lips, ears and nose and having dyed his hair a dark shade of red, seeking reconciliation and wanting to ask them if there were more things in life than violence. Naturally, being priests, they gave him the religious answer... however, after much hesitation, his father decided to tell him more than that; he told him of the day he sought blessing for Vagrad and how the lightning answered. He was ashamed to accept that his son had been blessed by The Thunder God, but it was the truth and so should not be kept a secret.
Vagrad, being the short-tempered and hasty character he is, immediately decided to seek purpose in life from The Thunder God. He asked where the closest temple lies, and, after a short break home, continued his trek to the nearby mountain peak on which it was constructed.
He told them his story and his wish to become a full-fledged priest of The Thunder God. They reluctantly accepted him, but only at the request of Tular.
Tular saw potential in young Vagrad, and remembered what it was like living with the rage. Tular was a retired Vindicator.

During decades, the priesthood taugth Vagrad the theoretical and practical parts of their religion. The prayers, customs, blessing and virtues were slowly imprented into his mind, and he accepted it. They also taught him which gods to respect, which to despise, and which he should smite at sight. They told him a great deal about the evil God of Thunder, how to recognize his followers and customs and rituals of that religion, so that he might recognize it and eradicate it wherever he went. He dropped the piercings, and altered the tattoos in honour to his deity, but kept the dyed beard as a reminder. All the while Tular acted as his mentor, teaching him how to control the rage and focus it against evil and the enemies of The Thunder God. He taught him how to survive alone, how to tend to his wounds, and some human customs. In short, everything he had learned as a Vindicator he now told Vagrad.

Eventually, after all his training and preparations, he was ready to ascend into full priesthood. Upon his 100th birthday, he stood atop the highest part of the temple, bellowing out to the thunderstorm that raged on the very same day:
"OH, GOD OF THUNDER, SLAYER OF THE WICKED AND FORCE SUPREME! I CALL UPON THEE TODAY TO ACCEPT ME AS YOUR FOLLOWER! FOR A CENTURY I HAVE BEEN YOURS, ALBEIT ME UNKNOWING! BUT I CAN SEE IT NOW! I HAVE BEEN CHOSEN BY YOU! CHOSEN TO BE YOUR STORM WHERE YOUR LIGHTNING CAN'T REACH! CHOSEN TO BE YOUR AXE UPON THE EARTH, TO SMITE YOUR FOES AND ERADICATE EVIL! TO BRING DOWN ALL THAT IS WICKED AND UNWORTHY! FROM THIS DAY, AND EVERY DAY FORTH UNTIL THE END OF THE END HAS COME, I SHALL BE YOUR VESSEL OF DESTRUCTION!
FROM THIS DAY FORTH, I AM YOUR VESSEL OF DESTRUCTION!"
The storm answered with lightning crackling across the sky, thunder booming all around him. At his side stood Tular.
"You know what must be done, Vagrad. I am proud to have taught you the lessons I learned as a Vindicator. Now it's your turn. Go forth... Be his Vessel of Destruction, Son of Thunder."
All the preparations had already been made, equipment has been donned, axes hanging at his sides, the tools for survival in his backpack.
That day Vagrad left the Thunderpeak Mountains.

So, that's his little story. I hope it was inspiring to ya'll.
Look forward to hearing of his epic adventure... or his imminent demise.

Hail!

I have been very busy lately, so I haven't had the time to write anything here. There has been a lot of things I wanted to write about here... But now they all seem outdated. But, today I have a day off so I decided to write something. And what will that something be? A review of a 13 year old game. Yep.

I remember when I played this as a kid... I was really terrible at it. But this time I got the hang of it. I actually had to rebuy this game on GOG because when I installed it from the CD I own it said something about my video card being bad... In any case, it was 6$ well spent.

The game is a Might and Magic first person party RPG adventure. It's actually the first Might and Magic game that I've really played, I've only tried out MMI and MMII... They were a bit to confusing (to say the least...) for my taste.

The game starts off with party creation, you create four adventurers aspiring to become mighty and magical in the name of blood and honor. I personally ran the basic knight, thief, cleric and sorcerer. There are a good amount of options here, I just choose to run something very basic. You can pick classes like: monk, ranger, archer and druid also. You also pick their race and name them. Sadly, naming them is about as far as the roleplaying goes in this game... In any case; I made a goblin knight, human thief, dwarf cleric and elf sorcerer.  

 

The first thing that happens in the game is that your characters are competing in a contest on a little island called Emerald Island for the fiefdom of Harmondale. Of course, my characters won the competition! ... Just to find out that the castle they won was ruined, bummer. Also a tribe of goblins had moved in. "Aha! I will talk to my goblin brethren!" Hate, the goblin knight said. But as they moved in to their castle they noted that the goblin tribe felt more inclined to trade throwing axes with the party rather than words. The new lords of Harmondale made sure that not a single goblin woman nor child was alive after the encounter, otherwise the butler wouldn't tell them they had finished their task.  Then the butler told the party they had to seek out the dwarves, they were the only ones who could fix their castle. And so they did....

Well, as I mentioned earlier, naming your characters is as far as the roleplaying goes in this game, which is sad. I would have liked more roleplaying aspects in the game. I would have liked if your goblin character could have tried to talk to the goblins infesting your land. But, sadly that is not the case. Instead, all you really do is ask people which dungeon you should enter. Then you go there and exterminate all it's inhabitants.

Later on in the game you will get to choose between the path of light and the path of darkness. So you can choose the path of rainbows, kittens and friendship or the path of misery, pain and assholishness. I hate when games do this. It's nearly as stupid as Fable. It is sort of explained in the end why you had to pick a side like that, but meh. It just feels dumb and forced.

The story works out pretty well. I like the added sci-fi which apparently is a big part of the Might and Magic games. However, the story isn't that intresting, it just works out well. It could have been way better if they would have added roleplaying options like asking questions and such. Becuase, all you do is blindly following the orders of some guy you don''t truly know who it is until the end. In any case, I really love the ending. It feels truly mighty and magical.

 Hate the Champion with an artifact platemail and a blaster rifle...

The core game mechanics are simple, yet complex enough to be intresting. Whenever you level up your character, he will gain a number of skill points, five skills points the first few levels. Then you have a couple of skills you can add them to, like sword, water magc or stealing. Every skill starts out at one, and to advance it to the second level you need to spend two skill points, three skill points for the third level and so on. Once a skill has reached level four, you can start searching for an expert trainer, to make you an expert in the said skill. At level seven you look for a master trainer, and level 10, a grandmaster trainer. This system works out really well, and once your characters become grandmasters in skills you feel a great sense of accomplishment. Sadly, there is something really annoying as well.. You have to promote your classes. The knight turns into a cavalier, the sorcerer becomes a wizard and so on. To promote your characters you need to do some promotion quests. And this is where I got stuck when I played the game as a kid, the wizard promotion quest. You're supposed to build a golem. Sounds easy enough. But what you have to do is search exactly every area in the game for golem parts. This time I had internet as aid (don't know why I didn't do that last time...) so I actually was able to finish this quest. Without that promotion you pretty much can't beat the game, so that really sucks. Class promotions are needed to become master and grandmaster in skills. I don't like this system of class promotions, but they are needed for game balance, but still, meh.

The soundtrck is actually really good, the only downside is that the soundtrack resets whenever you enter a house, so when you're looking for a trainer among the houses, you'll hear the intro of the song quite a lot...Also, the voices are terrible. Seriously, you'll start hearing "It's just a scrath, but I need it fixed!" in your head with that annoying female elven voice. It will haunt your nightmares. It will haunt your everyday life. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE FROM THE TERRIBLE VOICE ACTING!
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Ehm... To sum things up...
I liked the game a whole lot in general, not one of my favorite games, but it was fun. I love how mighty and magical you become in the end. One of the last things I did was entering the Titan Stronghold and pretty much fought all of the titans and dragons in there at the same time without dying. That's mighty and magical for you!




The story is forgettable. But the gameplay and audio (NOT THE VOICES) is actually really good, and it makes the game very playable and enjoying. Allthough, you'll have to keep in mind that the graphics are pretty terrible by today's standards, it doesn't bother me, but it might bother you.

I think I might do a review of Arcanum in the near future. Stay tuned.

Ave Victoria!
/Hate