We sasquatches are playtesting Primeval Thule like mad. Here’s a summary of what’s happening during our Tuesday night playtests.

As I type this, the PCs are desperately trying to escape the decadent elven city of Imystrahl. They were brought here as slaves, but they’ve managed to escape the gladiator-prisons. Unfortunately, escaping their captors is just the beginning. They’re now hiding in the shadows of Imystrahl, trying to get out of the city before they’re killed, recaptured…or worse. How did it come to this?

Jesse, Milton, Rich, and Warren at the gaming table.

The PCs met each other in a small chamber within Cirinthi Coliseum, an arena used both for gladiator spectacles and ritual executions. (As you may have guessed, the elves who rule Imystrahl are cruel, arrogant, and dissolute.) The party quickly surmised that they were about to be herded onto the arena floor as prey for some monster. It wasn’t going to go well; Imystrahl’s gladiator matches are rarely “fair.”

But the monster in question, a purple worm captured from jungles to the east, burst its bonds and started rampaging across—and underneath—the coliseum. One earthquake and a collapsed wall later, the PCs had overpowered their guards and grabbed weapons and armor. They were free!

Dave’s DM notes: I used this first fight to accomplish three things.

• Give the players an immediate goal—escaping the coliseum.

• Get them gear appropriate for 1st-level characters. How convenient that among the dead guards’ gear was all the stuff the players picked for their PCs!

• Provide some key hints about how the elves of Imystrahl operate. None of the coliseum’s guards are elves—Imystrahl’s elves are too refined for that. Also, the PCs realize they all have glowing runes tattooed to their foreheads. They’ll soon learn that those runes are marks of obedience, a low-powered version of the mark of justice spell that the elves use to discipline their slaves. The PCs now have a medium-term goal: getting those marks off their foreheads.

The elven crowds were in full-fledged riot, panicking as they tried to escape the purple worm. But as guards rushed onto the arena floor, the players opted to flee through the catacombs beneath the coliseum. The PCs helped free another slave—Guridna, who knew the layout of the chambers beneath the arena. “We could try to escape through the beastmen warrens—they breed beastmen in captivity for the arena,” she said. “Or we could flee through the prisons—shorter, but perhaps better guarded.”

The tremors shaking the ground had the players worried that the coliseum would collapse on top of them, so they opted to flee through the prison.

Dave’s DM notes: Either choice would have been OK with me, and either way would have revealed more about the world. Had they chosen the warrens, the players would have encountered Thule’s beastmen for the first time—along with some other denizens of the jungle the elves captured for the coliseum.

As the players explored and fought their way through the prison block beneath the coliseum, they discovered that the elves of Imystrahl generally don’t use long-term incarceration. Criminals are simply enslaved, fed to a monster in the arena, or ritually sacrificed. The key exception is political prisoners, mostly noble elves with enough political clout to keep themselves alive and somewhat comfortable in prison.

Dave’s DM notes: The PCs didn’t tarry too long talking to the prisoners, but they had one memorable exchange with an elf noble who was growing orchids within a rather spacious prison cell. The prisoner explained that the elves of Imystrahl drug themselves with a narcotic extract from the orchids called “black milk.” Those who partake of black milk sleep deeply and have vivid, pleasurable dreams.

This flips a known fact about elves (they need only a few hours in a trance) on its head. In Imystrahl, the elves sleep more than everyone else. Many spend as little time awake as possible.

The PCs reached the entrance of the prison block. They could see daylight through the last doorway…and then a halfling hunter riding in a backpack atop a trained girallon (Master Blaster style) blocked their path. Wounded and low on spells after all their previous battles, the players tried to bribe their way past the girallon-rider with money they surreptitiously stole from the political prisoners (money those prisoners were presumably using to bribe their guards).

The girallon rider was tempted and ultimately agreed to the deal. As the PCs worked out the logistics of the exchange, another purple worm-induced tremor caused sections of ceiling to collapse. The PCs sprinted for the door, scattering the cash on the ground.

Dave’s DM notes: A halfling atop a girallon isn’t the most realistic thing in the world, but it’s super pulpy, so I couldn’t resist. This might be the only halfling the PCs ever meet in this campaign—we’ll see. (And we’ll explain more about how we’re handling the various races of Thule in a future blog post.) I was surprised that the players tried to talk their way past the girallon, and doubly surprised that it worked!

The last they saw of the girallon rider, he had climbed out of his backpack and was scooping up coins as the ceiling fell around him. Did he survive? Will the players ever encounter him again? Mua ha ha ha!

Next: the players start their trek through the streets of Imystrahl, and DM Dave explains how the city is basically “a dungeon with better street signs.”