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OUR INSIDE MAN

        This occasion was during our first adventure playing Earthdawn, I cannot recall what characters everyone was playing although L was GM`ing, I was playing a T`Skrang Thief, R was playing a Wizard, and C was playing a Troll Fighter. The purpose of the adventure also remains cloudy, although we were using it as a reason to explore the game world a little, and get to know the rules.

        After a short fight in a forest, where I discovered that T`Skrang had tails they could use to deadly effect in combat (often commemorated by my call of "Bloody hell I've got a tail"), we ended up following a group of slavers as they progressed near the area known as the Blood Wood, the slavers had captured some people from a village and we had decided to free these poor villagers.

        At this point in my tale I have to explain a phenomena we call "Group telepathy", this ability has formed in our role-play group and allows us to know what each other is thinking with the merest glance in their direction. In reality its probably because we are close friends who have known each other for over 10 years, but sometimes this ability is quite spooky (like the occasion recently when K and me were talking about films and I said "I like that old film" to which K responded "The Day the Earth Stood Still", neither of us remember discussing this film before, but he was exactly right).

        Anyway our Group Telepathy seems to have selective rules, and also seems to have an exclusion mode, which was working full time during this Earthdawn adventure, in this case we excluded C from the Telepathic link.

        So, there we were, trailing these slavers trying to come up with a plan, when someone turns to C.

?1: "You can be our inside man."

C: "What?"

        At this point the telepathic link started to form, and everyone else began to cotton onto what was going on.

?1: "You can be our inside man."

?2: "Yeah, we'll let them capture you, and then you can surprise them."

?1: "No, we'll sell you to them, so you don't get wounded, then when we attack, you'll be behind them."

?3: "Yeah, they'll never expect that."

?1: "It's the perfect plan, we get to see them close up, and plant our inside man at the same time."

?2: "Okay C, give us your armour and weapons, we'll sell you to them, and then when we attack, you break free and we'll throw you your weapons so you can attack them."

C: "Errr, okay then."

        This seems sensible enough.

        However, what the telepathic link had actually communicated between us was "We can sell the Troll for a stack of cash and then piss off with our ill-gotten gains", and also "We can sell off his equipment for some pocket money as well."

        This plan was indeed perfect, for everyone except C, we got some money, and the slavers got a slave without having to stage an attack on a village.

        However the plan didn't count on one thing.

        The Slavers were greedy.

        You see when we turned up at their caravan with a Troll tied up. The slavers didn't think, "Heres a slave", they thought, "Heres a group of slaves", and they attacked us as negotiations were barely started.

        Result, 15 dead slavers (out of 20), and total party kill. Oh well, I still think it was a good plan :-)