Escape From Athens

I started a new Savage Worlds Campaign with the kids today. We’ve been planning it for some time, but just never seemed to get around to kicking it off. Hopefully now that we’ve got it started we’ll find time to sit down and play a bit more regularly.

Finnegan is playing Dionysophenes, a place guard in the court of King Aegeas of Athens. Keira is playing Athis, a daughter of King Aegeas who was raised among the Amazons.

Queen Medea was fiercely jealous of the young princess and plotted to kill here while King Aegeas was away. Dion happened to be the guard she ordered to do the deed. He could not and told Athis of the plot and offered to help her escape from Athens.

I gave the kids the option of simply stealing away alone in the night and by passage on some merchant ship to wherever it was going or trying to recruit some friends/followers to go along with them. I told them if they recruited enough they could steal a war ship… To recruit guards required a successful persuasion roll. Raises would recruit additional guards. Three failures (or a bust – rolling one on the persuasion die) would mean Medea was on to them and they would have to flee at once.

Now Athis had only d4 persuasion and Dion was completely unskilled at such things (and so tried at d4-2). Athis however being a Noble had +2 due to her charisma bonus and quickly recruited three followers. Dion in that same time failed three times and they had to steal away in the middle of the night.

The assasins were a bit better with the noticing than they were with the stealthing so as they turned down the last dark street in Piraeus that lead to the waiting ship their way was blocked by some of Medea’s men…

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

Some of Medea’s men called on the other guards to give up the princess – telling them it was futile to go against eh queens will, that she would track them to the ends of the earth if need be…. This was an attempt to intimidate the hero’s followers into leaving or rejoining them. I’d said if they got TWO raises on the intimidate roll the followers would switch sides again.

The one trying to intimidate the archer with Dion and Athis just kept acing – ending up with a total of 17 (6, 6, 5) – looked like he might be switching sides right then and there and shooting someone in the back! Then Finnegan rolled for the archer (6, 6, 6, 4) – “nothing doing” says the archer and let fly with an arrow at one of the would-be assassins….

The rushed those blocking their way to the front, two others rushed the archer taking up the rear.

Athis took out the first of the assasins with a spear to the throat.

The archer was doing well – he’s only gotten one shot off (which wildly missed it’s mark in the dark street) – he didn’t even have time to draw his sword before two attackers were upon him. he held them off for two or three turns..

The skirmish raged on – things going progressively worse for the archer – shaken…

Eventually the archer was overwhelmed and taken down.

Around that time this finished off another of the attackers and Dion had knocked down one himself.

They rushed the other two attackers (that had been fighting the archer) and took them down as well. When they checked on their archer friend they discovered his wounds were not grave and so helped him down to the ship and were away before first light…

A Good quick introduction to the campaign and refresher of Savage Worlds for the kids (it’s been a few months since we last played).

Coming soon on Savage Timmy’s Playhouse:

The Saturday Savages will, hopefully, be beginning their campaign in earnest this week. With any luck we shall see Dion and Athis in action again shortly as well!