The Journeys of the alqizam al'ahmar

We started the campaign with the assumption that the crew's ship would be stock vessel selected from the core Coriolis rules. The reason being that it would give us minimal lead time into the game and, as everyone was new to both the setting and rules, we removed the risk of making uneducated choices when designing our own ship that we might regret later down the line. The players agreed on a Class IV mining vessel (fitting in with the group's Explorer concept) and we were set. ....then we had a well documented set of delays in actually getting the game off the ground, accompanied by a lot of conversational emails about the characters, setting, campaign concepts etc. Now, at the end of the second proper session of play, the crew have boarded their ship and set off. As the ship hasn't really entered play, and we as a group understand things much better now and have a fair idea of where we are heading with some of this, it was suggested that we do a minor retcon and take ...

Here we go (finally!) after a few real life hiccups we managed to get back to playing last week with our second regular session. We were joined by the fourth player in the group (playing Aleph, our Zenithian pilot) and continued our story from where we left off... Captain Yusuf meets up with Aleph in the cantina where the crew have agreed to rendezvous.  The pilot has been busy prepping the ship for their scheduled mission to Arara; a small, hot, world close to the star, Dabaran-A. Yusuf explains hat has been happening with their search for the statuette and the pilot is stunned by how much trouble they seem to have gotten into in such a relatively small space of time. After evading his attacker Karim soon joins them. He explains what has happened, possibly to Aleph's increasing amazement. Shortly after this Dastan also enters, with the merchant and two surly looking "employees" in tow. Dastan has the Artificer power and so I ruled that he felt the pull of the artifac...

Yusuf sat alone at Rickardo’s, a low rent dive he'd visited a few times when he was in this part of Coriolis. Rickardo’s wasn’t so much a place where everyone knows your name, as it is a place where no one even asks because that sort of information can get a man killed... or worse. Yusuf began to ponder the mounted animal head that passed for decoration here, trying to work out its planet of origin and just how many limbs it had before it became separated from its body. “I reckon six and some sort of tail” he mumbled to himself without realising and the bartender grunted something indecipherable that could have been a confirmation or he could have just been asking if he needed a refill. He did He'd been nursing his fire kohol for the last 15 minutes and couldn't make it last any longer. He took one last gulp and signalled for it to be filled again. Yusuf didn't normally drink alone, but he wasn't in the mood for company today. Sure he'd usually start the ...

The Astir family, like all true Zenithian dynasties, can proudly trace their lineage back to the original generations who boarded the Zenith.  The family's hereditary duty aboard ship was the security of the vessel and its crew, from the safety of the ship from potential outside threats to the internal policing of the crew themselves. They ensured the security of the ship's officers and supported their maintenance of discipline in the ship's crew. They were also responsible for drilling for, and preparing to lead, any combat that the crew might have to engage in throughout the Zenith's voyage. Many believe that over time, after their arrival in the Third Horizon, the family slowly shifted focus and evolved into their current state as masterminds of the Zenithian secret police. The truth is simpler and, some might suggest, much more calculated and arguably more sinister. When the Zenith arrived to discover the prevalence of scattered existing, isolated, Firstcome civ...

“Well, what do you think?” Karim slipped down the outside of the metal ladder and landed firmly onto the grilled floor with a solid ring. He stepped back thoughtfully and wiped away grease and sweat from his face using a band on his wrist. Youssouf leaned forward in to the light that was being cast down from the hole in the ceiling directly above and opened his arms wide in a gesture for openness. “Really?”, Karim answers, “You're actually intending to be serious about this?” Youssouf pulled a face, “Why would you even ask such a thing? If your poor father could hear you speak now! Surely boy you can see all the potential here?” Karim walked around the central spur of the engine room shaking his head gently and rubbing at the back of his neck. “It's insane, that's what I think of it. I think you have finally lost your senses, that is what I think.” Again Youssouf pulled an insulted and shocked face as though the very suggestion from Karim was some form of great out...

Well now....here we are...another roleplaying campaign begins and so does another blog. I was in two minds about starting this as historically they have added a fair overhead onto the work I already put into the game.  However that makes me sound like a grumpy old grognard (which I can neither confirm nor deny to be true...) and in balance they have helped serve as a record of the game during and after the campaign, and possibly settled a few arguments. So here we are. If you are at all interested previous campaign Blogs for our... Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader RPG , The Firefly RPG , and Fading Suns RPG ...can all be found in the above links. Our group meets fortnightly (and hopefully this blog will be updated at least as regularly) and has five regular players ranging in age from 16 to 42 (at time of writing). We have been playing as a regular group for about six years now but some of us have been gaming together for much, much longer than that... Over the years we...

(And so we begin our first foray into the Third Horizon...sort of... Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond our control (i.e. real life) we were down to 3 out of our usual 5 players. As I didn't really want to start the campaign "proper" without everyone present I decided to run a reworked version of the mini-adventure from the back of the core book.  As this is heavily influenced by the published adventure and I don't want to spoil anything for other groups, unlike future write ups, this one will be quite slight on detail but hopefully it will still be worth a read...) Captain Youssouf and Karim find themselves in a local bath house in Dabbah on the planet Dabaran, arranging a deal with a local merchant. He is aware that a young man has arrived in the city recently and the merchant believes that he has an artifact of value that he would like to purchase.  The crew agree to locate the fellow and either obtain the object, allegedly a rare statue of the Dancer, o...

When we were looking at starting to play Coriolis I sent out a bunch of emails to our group to try to explain a bit about the setting and also try to gauge what people wanted to play and the concepts for the campaign itself and our crew of characters. I'm an increasing proponent of running a "session zero" at the beginning of any extended game; a session where you don't expect to "play" as such, just set out what you want from the game.  It allows everyone to get on the same page and means you have a collaborative, co-created campaign from the off. Hence a lot of stuff about our new campaign was discussed and arranged via email, text and face to face conversations before we even sat around the table. By mutual agreement we decided that our crew would be an "Explorer" group, and a core concept one at that.  Inspired by "Indiana Jones", "Uncharted", "Tomb Raider", "National Treasure" and "The Librarian...