The most memorable encounter I ever had in a game was not one that I
was playing in, it was one that I was the GM of. Back in the mid 2000’s I was running an
AD&D campaign that had been going a few years, the players had had chance
to get around the world for a while and they’d been recently hired on to
provide caravan support for a merchant running goods into an area where other
caravans had gone missing in recent times.
In this particular group, there was a reasonably amount of conflicting
personalities, didn’t help that at least two of the group were going out with
each other and that everyone else had their own issues, but of conflict is made
great drama, so there they were, inspecting the things that were being
transported by the caravan when they came across something unexpected.
A long limbed blue skinned creature that would never be found in an
AD&D monster manual, the eyes were those of an intelligent creature, but it
had the poise and attitude of an animal. The lock had been scratched in various
places, and on the ground, as one of them approached, it scratched in the
ground.
“One of Us...”
It covered the markings up before anyone else could see what was going
on, but it was clear that what they had here was an intelligent creature that
had been caught up against its will. It
made the same markings every time one of the characters came past, being
careful to cover things up before anyone else could see them. The master of the caravan pointed out that
the creature had killed a number of people before it had been brought down, and
that when it was finally caught, it came quietly, just laying down and waiting
to be chained. It escaped three times as
the caravan moved on through its drops, each time being recaptured within a
short while, each time not giving any resistance as it was put in a better
cage. The last two cages had been
magically sealed but it had still found a way to break out of them.
The interesting thing for me was that the person who had the strongest
reaction was the Mage, and a little background story is needed here to put this
in context.
The mage had a name, I forget it now, because no one ever used it, his
name to all of us was...
Excellent...
And we called him that because a truly excellent mage will stand in the
front line of any conflict, he will use all the powers at his disposal to make
sure that his colleagues are protected and safe, an excellent mage will stand
for the right and true cause every time...
And that explains the difference between a truly excellent mage and
this one...
Excellent the Mage was in it for himself, he didn’t give a damn about
anyone else, he’d sell everyone out given the choice and make sure that none of
them knew that he’d sold them out, something he’d done before, something he’d
certainly do again. The thief used to
look at him as the example of what happened to people who fell too far from
grace...
So what happened next could be considered out of character for him...
Excellent decided to go freeing Slaves, the rest of the group were
divided in their opinion of what they were doing, some of them figured that it
was a in a cage for a reason, some of them figured that nothing intelligent
should be in a cage. In the end,
Excellent went wandering in the night and let it loose...
So off it went, there to vanish into the night, leaving no traces
behind as to where it had gone. The
reports of a village being attacked came back within a day and the characters
were asked by the caravan owner to go out after the creature and bring it back. Not a slow creature and not one to let itself
be caught when it didn’t want to be, it fled to the high passes where the rocky
ground would cover its tracks more efficiently than any amount of intelligence.
But the players played well, for once all of them working as a team
rather than following their own disparate goals, they hunted it down and got
close, wounding it and bringing it to a halt where it crawled into a cave at
the far end of a valley to wait for them.
At the entrance to the cave, it had again scratched “One of us...” into
the ground.
It was at this point that the ranger realised that they weren’t alone
anymore...
Not a few, but dozens of the creatures were lining the top of the
valley and looking down towards the cave.
One of them came down the hill with hand raised, pausing before the cave
and scratching the word “Not” before the other words.
It was then that everyone realised what had been breaking the creature
out, the only problem that its own people had was that it knew they would kill
it, so when it knew that they were getting too close, it let itself be
captured, as the creatures would not risk getting themselves noticed by the
rest of the world.
What made this the most memorable encounter for me was the level of
involvement the players put in to it, they were focussed on what this thing was
and what it was doing, they wanted, needed
to bring it down, and for those five hours that they were chasing it, everyone,
myself included, was completely in
the game.
I can’t claim the creative grounds for the creature, and a little more
background is called for at this point, I read a short story some years
previously. It was called ‘Killer’ and
it ranks as the single most interesting short story to this day that I’ve ever read.
It was about a creature, looking remarkably like the thing the players
had found in the cage, and the hunter that went to hunt it down, not realising
what it was that they were chasing down.
All I did for that session was recreate that particular encounter.
I enjoyed that session most of almost any game that I’ve ever run, not
because of the level of involvement I had, but because of the lack of
involvement I had, it was like watching a film unfold before my eyes, and I
liked it so much, that in the end, one of the creatures in my upcoming game was designed
around the blue creature and pictured at the top of this page and at least one of the scenarios that will be put
forwards for the game will be that scenario, in the hopes that others can get
something of the experience of that Saturday so long ago.
Sessions like that don’t come often, but when they do, you remember the
events, you remember what people were wearing when they turned up, they become
amongst the most memorable times that you have, because your characters were
doing what they were supposed to be doing...
And isn’t that what games are all about...?
