And here we go with the third episode of the Pulp Alley campaign called Perilous Island, this particular scenario is "at death's door" and is set in Greece.
I have played it alone without making many changes to the original scenario, I have simply changed Perilous areas and Plot points and instead of them I have used some plot point markers (or points of interest) that when checked by any character we check a chart (dice roll), and the result can be clues that help the investigation, events, small scenes, enemies, reinforcements ... and even nothing!
I hope you like it...
PERILOUS ISLAND - SCENARIO 3
AT DEATH´S DOOR
(aka at death's door)
The characters, members of the Carlyle expedition, after a boat trip arrive at the port of Athens, once there they look for the friend of the famous archaeologist Lord Donovan Darrow, according to his daughter this friend could have clues about the whereabouts of her father.
Once they locate the archaeologist's friend, they find him seriously injured in a hospital, apparently he has been attacked by unknown persons.
When they visit his office they find it completely ransacked... everything that could be of use has been stolen, so the daughter of the missing archaeologist and our characters leave the office without having any reliable clue to follow.
And it is just at that moment, when they are leaving the office, when a messenger appears bringing a notification to the archaeologist's friend.
This notification is a letter from the Greek Customs Service informing that there is a package sent from Cairo by Lord Donovan Darrow himself to his friend in Greece.
When the Customs Service is contacted, the characters are informed that the package is in a specific warehouse in the Greek capital but that it can only be picked up by the owner (Lord Donovan's friend)
Given that the owner is in a hospital, it is impossible to recover the package sent by the missing archaeologist.
So the only option left for our heroes is to plan a night raid to the Customs warehouse, locate the package and retrieve it without being caught by the guards.
And with that plan in mind, they go to the Customs Service facilities under the cover of the darkness...
The warehouse is guarded by a guard with his flashlight, and we will have 6 Plot points inside the warehouse. We will also randomly decide where the characters will deploy.
In the event that a character is located by the guard and enters the range of his flashlight, that character will have been discovered and will be taken out from the warehouse immediately, it will count as ko and won't be used during the rest of the scenario.
After quietly entering the dark warehouse, members of the Carlyle expedition deploy to check nearby Plot points.
When checking the first plot point, a second guard appears near our heroes, who inadvertently watches over the area.
A second plot point reveals a clerk that is going through the warehouse packages and doing bureaucratic paperwork.
After being pressed by our protagonist, this clerk gives to Roger Carlyle the location of the package that Lord Donovan Darrow sent to his friend.
(Until they reach the package, we do not perform the skill test to pressure the clerk to know if he has given us the true location of the package or if he has given us a false location and what we find is a guard)
After reaching the point where the clerk has located the package, this information turns out to be true, so our heroes seize the package, fleeing in a hurry through the same door that they entered.
A little reference to a mythical film series in the pulp genre... Let's see if you guess which one...
Once they flee the warehouse, they go to their hotel where they review the package to have new clues to follow.
In the package they find photos, maps, field diaries, annotations... And everything about the recent discovery of the missing archaeologist.
Apparently, while conducting excavations and investigations in Cairo, Lord Donovan Darrow found data and clues about the location of a forgotten city swallowed by the sands.
According to legend, Irem, the city of a thousand pillars, was located on the lower Nile, and was rich and prosperous, but they were seduced by false deities who promised them unlimited power, so they decided to build a temple to the Black Pharaoh, obtaining a great "force" that would help them to subdue all the country.
But turning their backs on the true gods caused them to rage, and they buried the city in the desert sands.
According to Lord Donovan Darrow in his diary, he would have found a way to find Irem and recover the immense power they discovered before disappearing under the sand.
In the last entries he comments that he has found a local guide who will take him and his group through the desert to the city of a thousand pillars, that he is organizing the expedition and that he is nervous about the discovery that could make him world famous.
In his diary, Lord Donovan Darrow specifies that his safest and most reliable contact in Cairo is Steve Mayers, a British archaeologist who works at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo on the work of cataloging and restoring the tutankhamun treasure discovered by Howard Carter in 1922...
So with this new information, the members of the Carlyle expedition set out for Egypt in their search for the archaeologist Lord Donovan Darrow, wondering if he managed to find Irem, the city of a thousand pillars...
Don't miss the next episode ....
Post gameplay opinion:
The game was very fun, at times it reminded me of the pacman, fleeing from the guards through the corridors, the events have been very good and I have been quite lucky with the dice rolls.
One thing that I like about this campaign is that it is not the usual in skirmish wargame games, since I have played the last two games without fighting, although they have been really fun.
I see that the scenarios are balanced between combat, stealth infiltration, obtaining objectives... And I like that...
