The PC's departed Karak Tor aboard Captain Tornear's
Rat Bastard once more. The dwarves sent them off with great thanks for their service and happily paid Tornear's (outrageous as usual) fee for their passage to Opkhar and points west.
Once they were away the party informed Tornear that they wanted to make a stop at the small plateu where they had fought Blackbreather and planted Melora's Tree of Life. Tornear grumbled only a bit at the unscheduled stop, knowing that he'd been well paid. He changed course slightly and consulted his charts.
But before they could arrive at their destination they found themselves beset by an enemy airship that swooped out of the Mist below them. In a flash a pair of bat-like men had swooped aboard and several grappling hooks were pulling them closer to a small but fast vessel brimming with Hobgoblins. A hail of arrows rained down on them from the bowsprit of the enemy vessel.
Had they suffered this sort of attack the first time they sailed with Tornear the PC's would have been easy prey. But veterans of many battles now they quickly reacted and took the battle to the enemy. Astavian moved along the railing battling back the enemy boarders, aided by Zanne and Mialain. Eshik leapt the railing onto the enemy ship and was soon working his way out the narrow walkway where the archers attacked from.
Within moments the battle turned from an attack to an attempted retreat on the part of the pirates. Once Eshik had felled the archers he turned and aided Astavian in directly attacking the Hobgoblin Captain as Zanne continued to hurl her deadly magic at the remaining crew. Mialain patched up the few wounds they had suffered and stood ready to assist Tornear with handling the ship given her command of the winds.
Once the Hobgoblin Captain had been dispatched his remaining three crew members all surrendered and the party let out a hearty "Hooray!" with Eshik adding, "Free Ship!!"
The prisoners were transferred to the Rat Bastard and Thierastra went aboard the pirate ship to help steer it as Tornear towed it along with them. Thus they made their slow approach to their destination.
They spent that night camped beneath the leaves of the Tree of Life having eaten slices of its delicious fruit with their supper. They felt well rested and at peace for the first time in quite a while. In the night a bird flitted down from the branches above to land on Mialain's shoulder and whisper secrets in her ear of how to get small animals to deliver messages for her should she wish.
As they prepared to depart the next morning Thierastra timidly approached Mialain with a request. Seeing as how she had betrayed her people she felt that she could no longer safely walk openly as an Eladrin. She would adopt the guise of a normal Elf but she also felt it prudent to adopt a new name. As she was now in the presence of the High Priestess of her goddess and in the most holy of Melora's places, she asked if Mialain would rededicate her with a new name.
Mialain was not used to having a "follower" and was a bit embarassed but the request seemed reasonable. After some thought she performed a short ceremony that she made up on the spot beneath the limbs of the Tree of Life wherein she dedicated the Eladrin to the service of Melora under the new name of Llyra. With that done they set off for Opkhar with the PC's helping Llyra pilot the pirate ship and Tornear flying as an escort nearby.
Arriving in Opkhar they attended an audience with King Klo who treated them to a lavish dinner and private coffee afterwards where he longed to hear of their many adventures. It seemed that the aging King was living somewhat vicariously through them.
They told him of their journey into the lands of the Arcanon Confederacy at the behest of the Dwarves and of the treachery of the AC Wizards who had violated the fortress of Old Karak Tor. They decided to keep quiet about The White Queen's demands that they "cleanse" The Dweller, patron deity of Opkhar.
In turn King Klo shared with them that Lord Rhazul had been put to death at his order for his treason against Opkhar. The death by strangulation had gone as planned right up to the point where Rhazul was pronounced dead when suddenly his body vanished in a blinding flash of light. The PC's looked at each other knowingly, thinking they might have an idea as to the cause of this, but kept mum about it.
King Klo also shared that his scholars and informants believed it possible that the strange female assassin made of bugs that had tried to kill him might well be part of an old order of assassins based in Zulhura, a plateau now part of the Arcanon Confederacy. This lended credence (in the King's mind at least) to the notion that the AC had tried to have him killed in order to add Opkhar to its domain. Zanne encouraged him to seek an alliance with the Empire of Vond at his earliest opportunity in order to make the AC wary of any further moves against the King. Klo agreed that this was a good idea and would send an ambassador immediately.
The group spent another couple of days in Opkhar enjoying the luxuries of the palace while their new ship was refitted and repaired for their planned journey to Enmurinon to the northwest. Tornear was only too happy to let them go on without him as there was still lucrative tranport work to be done between Opkhar and Semma with the bridge still under repair.
*******
So, just to put things in perspective, this all happened in the same session that started with them meeting The White Queen. As you can see and I mentioned before this part was very heavy on roleplaying/diplomacy. And I hadn't really planned much in the way of combat but the session reached a point where I felt like it really needed some to kick the pace up a bit.
So I did what I usually do at those moments. I went to the bathroom.
This is one of my better GMing techniques where, if I reach a point when I'm not sure quite what to do next I call a break in the action, go to the bathroom for two minutes and think, "What would make things awesome right now?" Plus I probably needed to go to the bathroom anyway. I drink a crapload of Diet Coke on game nights.
In this instance when I asked myself what would be awesome right now the answer came back the same as it usually does. "Sky Pirates!" This was one of the rare times when Sky Pirates was not only the answer but also appropriate. So I thought quickly to myself about what stats I could yank from the Monster Manual on no notice to use for my pirates and decided on Hobgoblins.
So I went back to the table, flipped open the
MM and ran the combat above, which turned out to be a bit of a cakewalk for the PC's. But that's fine. My games probably need more of those anyway because I tend to have a lot of combats where the players are thinking, "We're all gonna die!" right up until the moment they win, just as I suspected they would.
Everything was totally cool right up until Eshik's player said, "Free Ship!"
Ah unforeseen consequences. Aren't they grand? I seriously hadn't considered that OF COURSE if they beat the pirates they would grab their ship. The isolation of the different plateaus and rarity of a means of transport has given me a lot of narrative control over this game thus far. And suddenly the players can go wherever they want whenever they want, all because I went to the bathroom and thought of "Sky Pirates!"
But you know what? That's cool! One of the things I like best about GMing is when things suddenly change in ways I hadn't expected. And honestly it doesn't really mess very much with the (minimal) prep work I'd done for the upcoming sessions since they pretty much plan to go where they were already going anyway.
In terms of relating this to
4e as a system, I'll just say that it was a breeze to go from vision (Sky Pirates) to concept (Hobgoblins) to execution (flip open
MM, glance over the monster's powers and run the game). This has been my experience throughout but this reminded me that it works quite well on the fly too.
Linear Mode
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