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A Bounty for the Orc King
The recent discovery of gem deposits in the Stone Mountains has led to a push for mining expeditions, however, the most accessible path into the region is Orc Canyon, the long time residence of the blood orc king, Olgrinn Battlehammer. A remote military outpost, Fort Eisen, lies at the base of the canyon to protect from possible invasion, but until now the orcs had kept to themselves due to a centuries-old treaty. Some greedy nobles, eager to mine the mountains of the north, have offered a reward of 25,000 gold pieces for Olgrinn's head. Bounty hunters and mercenaries from every corner of the realms rush to Fort Eisen to make a name for themselves. Most who venture into the canyon never return. And now Olgrinn knows there's a price on his head...
Single player only
Character Level: Any
Requires CEP 2.4
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 a_bounty_for_the_orc_king.zip (873) | 986.45 KB |
Hey, I enjoyed that! Very smooth, nicely placed cut-scenes, and was over way too quickly!
Looking forward to Part 2!
Thanks for taking the time to post your comments, Neilyum. I'm glad you enjoyed it and as always, any and all feedback is appreciated. I posted this as a Beta version because for the most part, the only person I have to playtest anything is myself. Any suggestions for the final version will be take into consideraton.
I also enjoyed it very much so far... the areas are well designed and I found no bugs.
*SPOILER*
My only issue is: the orcs are not hostile and roleplaying my character I can't think of a reason to attack them. Maybe some event could trigger the whole conflict so that starting a war didn't feel so inappropriate... don't get me wrong, I understood right away that it would be a hack and slash mod, but the cutscenes seemed to suggest there was a different path to finishing the mod... after all why putting a cutscene there in the first place if not to give the player a chance to go back and try for a different solution?
I agree with this, perhaps instead of having the Orcs attempt to intimidate you into leaving, they could just point to the dead bodies as bounty hunters and go more along the lines of this is the last straw and you're dead. That way it provides a basic reason and serves the purpose of turning them hostile.
Alternatively, an opportunity to mend the relationship between the Orcs and the Humans? That may not be what the story has in mind though being bounty hunters and all. I did find myself wanting to learn more about the people who setup the bounty to take out the Orc King though.
Any plans on updating this module, Troy?
Hey thanx for the feedback guys. Yes, I do intend to update this. I've done a little work on it already but real life is taking up a lot of my time atm. This started out as a side quest in my Lord of Fire campaign but I decided to make it into a hack n slash to run thru when I was bored. Now that I've got some input from you guys I think I may add some more areas and make it a little more roleplayable.
Not much of a story.
Pretty good! The story was not too thin at all - just about the right amount for the playthrough (about 3 hours maybe). The end scene was very well done and gave the mission a reasonable amount of closure. Nicely done.
A strange little mod, replete with some combat, and a story that was doomed from the start. No way around a confrontation, too bad. The cut scene was impressive, just wished I could have participated in it!
UPDATE 21/12/2024: Very good module indeed. At the moment the only reason to start the war is for the bounty. It's your choice if you gonna finish the module or not. I would prefer if the Orc King will give me that choice in the future through dialogue.
Celestia's Module Testing 2025
Wastingzaman summarizes pretty much my opinion :-) . Maybe I should add that imo this mod is not suitable for lawful and or good player characters (as others mentioned), since there is no alternative storyline. However it was a nice moralic dilemma for my monk :-)
This may well be wishful thinking, but I'd love to see a Pulp scenario where the PC can take the Orc side, defeat the humans, and marry the Orc princess (Burroughs pastiche). Or one where the PC kills the Orc king and seizes the throne (Howard pastiche).
I like your references to two great fantasy authors of yesteryear!
Sorry, not one of my favorites, felt like I was the bad guy.
Gave myself a bit more gold to get better equipment.
**Spoilers**
-The forest spiders were too much for me, their Attacks and DC 26 Poison was a tad too much for this level 5 character, without magical weapons. So i completely ignored those areas.
-I think I got lucky because when I was at the border, I drank a invisibility potion I found on the corpse and was able to bypass ALL enemies up until the very end. I got promptly defeated in 1 round of course.
-I restarted but gave myself a ton of gold to update my weapons to +3 and also gave myself a few levels. This time 'round I could not bypass the Blood Orcs at the border even when drinking a invisbility potion + Stealth. They see and attack me as soon as I cross.
-Wasn't expecting the big bad last guy to be my last opponent but the cut scene was cool.
Would have continued playing if there had been more modules.
But, this is not for Lawful characters and not for Good ones either, unless you have a role-playing story as to why you're doing this (The war has been over for centuries and even a treaty signed so they can't be that uncivilized).
I got an error at the character export, "Can't Open Movie: some_movie.wbm. Movie must be in wbm format, and have the suffix .wbm" The thing is that there is no movie file in the download, so this isn't a file format issue but an issue where it is looking for a non-existant file.
Anyway the module is really problematic for good aligned characters. Even if you're playing as an elf, which is a race that outright hates all orcs everywhere in every possible campaign setting, there isn't reason to go around starting wars between orcs and humans. Even a lawful evil character would have alignment issues as the lawful part of that alignment would want to honor the treaty.
edit -- Forgot to vote. This is an otherwise well done module. I'd add that it is most suitable for Chaotic Evil, Neutral Evil, and perhaps Chaotic Neutral.
Just played this for the first time. Started with my favorite paladin and quit immediately because my paladin would never have accepted this quest. So I switched to a NE elven ranger/assassin. Much better suited from a RP perspective.
New characters are auto-leveled to level 5, but no fifth level character with standard gear is going to manage the combat. The spiders are leeches are tough, the spiders are nuts, and that's before I even got to the orcs. There's an NPC who can upgrade weapons like Rizzolvir from HotU, but the prices are the same as HotU and there's no way a fifth level character can afford the upgrades to what would be completely overpowered gear for someone at that level.
So instead of a fresh character, I used one who had gotten to level 6 (ranger 5/assassin 1) in another module and had decent, but not overwhelming, gear. That got me through the combat, enough to finally get to the orcs.
Once I was set up to survive, the module was surprisingly short. Go through a couple of wilderness areas to get to the orcs, then kill some orcs. I don't mind short modules, and the brevity made some sense here. But not a lot of payoff in terms of experience, gear, or plot development after all the hassle to just build a character who could survive the wilderness.