Defeating the Spider or any Awnshegh

Dungeons & Dragons The Royal Library
1

Hi All,

I’m starting a new PnP campaign with a small group of players, it’s the first time I’ve run BR, so thanks to Travis Doom for his 3e conversion. I’ve previously started the PCs at first level in the other campaigns I’ve ran; Dragonlance and Planescape, but we’re starting with 5th level characters this time round.

I was looking through a few old discussions, particularly regarding the Spider, as our campaign starts in Medoere, and I was wondering if anyone had ran a game previously where the players were able to defeat an Awnshegh and destroy them? Just getting to the Spider looks tough enough and even then he has invulnerability so I’m not sure how the PCs would go about working out how to destroy him permanently.

I have a few of the old TSR adventures for Birthright so I was also looking for a bit of advice or people’s experience on running them. Sword and Crown seems fairly straightforward but Sword of Roele is confusing, what’s with this monkey king malarky?

Anyway, happy gaming to all and good luck to the 3e team, looking forward to seeing the official conversion!

Regards,

Jericho

2

In a message dated 1/11/03 11:29:10 AM Eastern Standard Time,
brnetboard@TUARHIEVEL.ORG writes:

<< I was looking through a few old discussions, particularly regarding the
Spider, as our campaign starts in Medoere, and I was wondering if anyone had
ran a game previously where the players were able to defeat an Awnshegh and
destroy them? Just getting to the Spider looks tough enough and even then he
has invulnerability so I`m not sure how the PCs would go about working out
how to destroy him permanently. >>

It should be a MAJOR campaign objective, with months of preparatory

adventures and events. The Spider especially has zillions of minions to get
between the PCs and him.

<< I have a few of the old TSR adventures for Birthright so I was also
looking for a bit of advice or peoples experience on running them. Sword and Crown seems fairly straightforward but Sword of Roele is confusing, whats with this monkey king malarky? >>

Sword of Roele is crap.  I picked out the few bits that were worth

keeping (NOT the Monkey king), and introduced them as “history.”

Just my 2cp,
Lee.

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3

> Sword of Roele is crap. I picked out the few bits that were worth
> keeping (NOT the Monkey king), and introduced them as “history.”

Loud round of applause

That adventure is pure crap. I can not stand the thought of the Sword of
Roele being in the hands of some prankster monkey king from the beast
lands… Hell I`ve run better adventures off the top of my head when I
was stoned.

Take that book and go find the nearest paper shredder.

As for the PCs defeating the Spider. That sounds like a huge campaign
objective which should take months of real play time if not a year or more
to set up. Just gettting through his forest and his minions would be a
huge rolling battle and despite what some tyrant overlord PBeM players
think, I believe if you through 10 units into the spiderfell, they would all
perish. I`ve always run the spiderfell as being deadly similar to the Dark
Forest of Mirkwood from Tolkien. Stray off the path and you will never
come back.

-Anakin Miller

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4

Technically, I think anyone trying to attack the Spider, especially in the
Spiderfell (I have heard of him being lured out before), is tantamount to
going into, say, the 1st level of Baator, and facing down Tiamat, or Bel,
the Lord of the First. Suicide is not a term to be used here, as it is too
light a term!

Of course, if you somehow were to be an adventuring party, consisting of
characters with the level of, say, High Mage Aelies, El-Arrasi, Roele, Eric
Danig, and a few others of the most powerful people ever to walk Aebrynnis,
save the gods (old or new) and those that are evil (Black Prince Raesene),
you might have a slim chance…

And dont ask about facing the Gorgon... Hes akin to at least the Lord of
the Sixth, or Gra`zzt…

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5

Hi. First of all, good luck with your game. Birthright can be a challenging
system, but it can be very rewarding.

I`ve participated in the slating of three Awnshegh as a player (Spider, Warlock
of the Stonecrown and Ghuralli the Big Cow). Of all three, the Spider certainly
was the most difficult and the most fun to go after. The truly crazy ones always
are.

Our DM (Christiane Langlois for those who know her from the False Hopes PBEM),
devised a procedure to kill the Spider permanently. It involved rapidly burning
each limb in a fire fueled by some rare woods. There were also other components
to acquire (among them pixie sweat) to make it work. So the trick was to destroy
the Spider`s army (five domains participated) to flush the Spider out of his
lair, then bring all the stuff necessary for her destruction down into the caves
where he hid. Kill the thing, then barbecue it.

Of course, once youve destroyed it, theres the question of what to do with the
Goblin populations of the Spiderfell. In our game, they were shipped to Thurazor
after priests of Haelyn failed to convert them. And of course, who gets the
Spiderfell itself. A look at the map will make you realize just how strategic
this location is.

Good gaming!

Robin

----- Original Message -----
From: jericho <brnetboard@TUARHIEVEL.ORG>
To: <BIRTHRIGHT-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM>
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2003 11:15 AM
Subject: [BIRTHRIGHT] Defeating the Spider or any Awnshegh [2#1203]

| This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
| You can view the entire thread at:
http://www.birthright.net/read.php?TID=1203
|
| jericho wrote:
| Hi All,
|
| Im starting a new PnP campaign with a small group of players, its the
first time Ive run BR, so thanks to Travis Doom for his 3e conversion. Ive
previously started the PCs at first level in the other campaigns Ive ran; Dragonlance and Planescape, but were starting with 5th level characters this
time round.
|
| I was looking through a few old discussions, particularly regarding the
Spider, as our campaign starts in Medoere, and I was wondering if anyone had ran
a game previously where the players were able to defeat an Awnshegh and destroy
them? Just getting to the Spider looks tough enough and even then he has
invulnerability so Im not sure how the PCs would go about working out how to destroy him permanently. | | I have a few of the old TSR adventures for Birthright so I was also looking for a bit of advice or peoples experience on running them. Sword and Crown
seems fairly straightforward but Sword of Roele is confusing, what`s with this
monkey king malarky?
|
| Anyway, happy gaming to all and good luck to the 3e team, looking forward to
seeing the official conversion!
|
|
| Regards,
|
|
| Jericho
|
| ****************************************************************************
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| Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
| To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
| with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

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6

The one thing I always reminded my players about certain Awnsheigh was this
simple fact: even at the HEIGHT of Anuirean Imperial Power, the emporers
never destroyed such as The Spider, The Elf Manslayer, or the Gorgon. And
it was the Gorgon after all which delivered the death blow to the Line of
Roele.

The one player that ever went after the Spider Failed; but it wasn`t for
lack of trying. He was the ruler of Roesone, and after repeated raids by
spider riding goblins and their foot-kin, he decided to get rid of the
Spider; AND the Spiderfell.

Working with the realms of Endier (who supplied only some coin) and Medeore
he constructed several units of Artillerists. Moving these with units of
Archers, Knights, and Pikemen to within Catapult Range of the Spiderfell, he
began bombarding it with Flaming Pitch. It didnt take the Spider very long to react; but with allied forces of Medeore everything the spider sent out of the Forest got smashed or forced back. The thing that stopped him was Gavin Taele of Ghoere who didnt like all those soldiers on his borders; and
so moved a large force against the border of Roesone. Needless to say there
was a short war that was only usefull to me as a DM to thwart Roesones plans; but the fellas Artillerists were HELL on Ghoeres Cavalry (we used
the old Battlesystem Rules in our battles instead of the war cards…table
top battles with lots of minis are more fun). After all this the only thing
that happened was that no raids came for years afterwards out of the
Spiderfell (and the only reason they did before were because of the
increasingly large population of goblins in the wood).

So if your players decide to take on the Spider or another Realm-Lord
Awnsheigh, be sure to really fight hard and maybe even kill the players.
Those guys arent meant to be messed with unless your players have REALLY got some power (like several realms under their thumb); and even then I dont think the likes of even Darien Avan really has the strength to take
down something like the Spider without making his holdings so weak that Eric
Boeruine could just march all over him.

Only with some serious magic in the old style of a high power party could
they penetrate the Spiderfell and tackle the Spider. Just my opinion
though.

Tony Edwards

----Original Message Follows----
From: jericho brnetboard@TUARHIEVEL.ORG

Hi All,

Im starting a new PnP campaign with a small group of players, its the
first time Ive run BR, so thanks to Travis Doom for his 3e conversion. Ive previously started the PCs at first level in the other campaigns Ive ran; Dragonlance and Planescape, but were starting with 5th level
characters this time round.

I was looking through a few old discussions, particularly regarding the
Spider, as our campaign starts in Medoere, and I was wondering if anyone had
ran a game previously where the players were able to defeat an Awnshegh and
destroy them? Just getting to the Spider looks tough enough and even then
he has invulnerability so I`m not sure how the PCs would go about working
out how to destroy him permanently.

I have a few of the old TSR adventures for Birthright so I was also looking
for a bit of advice or peoples experience on running them. Sword and Crown seems fairly straightforward but Sword of Roele is confusing, whats
with this monkey king malarky?

Anyway, happy gaming to all and good luck to the 3e team, looking forward to
seeing the official conversion!

Regards,

Jericho

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7

Hi,

Thanks everyone for your input! Anuire seems pretty well balanced, so that it would need some major league hero intervention to greatly change the current situation. Anyone defeating the Spider and taking the Spiderfell would get access to a level 9 source, but IIRC Caine owns some of these source holdings. Looking at it initially I thought, why doesn’t someone just cast Warding on the province? I guess because Caine would try and block it.

I’m not too sure about keeping the Spider’s invulnerability, it looks a difficult enough task as it is. Plus I’m not sure how you would research how to kill a one-off creature permanently, it just doesn’t make sense to me…

His invulnerability could just be a legend, for example one of the Anuirean emperors might have led a campaign against the Spider and been turned back simply because the Emperor wasn’t powerful to beat the Spider one on one. He then retreated after agreeing with the Spider to spare him as long as the Empire did not attack again. The legend could have arisen that even the Emperor couldn’t destroy the Awnshegh permanently to cover for the fact that he couldn’t beat him in battle. I think this is what I’m going to go with, especially as one of my players already has a bunch of BR stuff, including Blood Enemies.

The PCs can then gradually discover the truth of the matter, plus the Assassin mentioned in the BR material might help them evade the Spider’s troops and confront him directly. Still it would be a fight beyond most BR parties and something I’ll save for a few months down the road

As for the Gorgon…well even if you don’t give him his Wizard levels, he’s still pretty much unbeatable by non-epic characters. I agree that the way to go is to have the PCs face off against some of the lesser Awnsheghs, like Ghuralli and the Ogre from LoTHK. The one thing I should add is that one player is Sidhelien and another has the Long Life blood ability at major level, so they can afford to be fairly patient.

The Wizard PC has the Long Life ability and is pretty pleased with it, but I was thinking of how he would be treated by other NPCs. The High Mage is able to wait out most human mages as he’s immortal, but I guess he may see the PC as a potential threat, given how humans are supposed to be more driven. Plus I can’t imagine that the Awnsheghlien would particularly want a potential rival with plenty of time to advance in level.

Cheers for the advice on Sword of Roele, I remember thinking that it was a good plot idea reading the back of the (sadly) plastic sealed book…looks like that’s all it was. I couldn’t figure out how the PCs are supposed to go wrong, they can pick up the Sword of Roele, get rid of the three brother mages for the Chimaera and help the 3 brother mages get to their portal. It looked like they were trying to fit Birthright into the whole Planes link up and shoe horned some Planescape bits in where they didn’t fit properly.

I might try reworking it with a thief from the Shadow World, which would better explain how he got into the Gorgon’s treasure room. Hmm, better get some beer to help with that!

Cheers,

Jericho