Gears of Revolution: Notes on my campaign

Agreed. My players have begun taking separate notes and sharing them afterward to ensure their recollections of what happened match up.

*bows*

See, on the other hand my players are too paranoid. Back in the first adventure, when they saw Lya Jierre in the RHC headquarters, one of them assumed she was mind controlling Stover Delft and trying to start a war. Even before they'd had a chance to hear the mission parameters, the PC assumed that was the only explanation for why they would be sent to attack other Risuri citizens.

Like, I'd planned for treachery and tricky stuff later on, but at that point everyone is actually on the up and up.



Good on you for the horrifying and tragic death of an innocent young woman. Soon your journey toward Rat-Bastard-DM-ery will be complete.

Session 11: Meeting with a skyseer

Session summary

[sblock]While their companions paused to ponder what had just happened, Tok and Wilheim sprinted down the switchback to the crushed carriage. The changeling clambered into the wreckage and began lifting shattered timber from the pile, soon uncovering the body of the carriage’s unfortunate occupant. Tok pulled the woman from the clutter and laid her one the ground, practised fingers moving to her neck and finding a weak pulse.

Tok immediately commenced CPR, but had little success. When Wilheim arrived, the deva surveyed the scene for a second. Then he reached past Tok and jabbed the woman’s chest with two rigid fingers. She inhaled sharply and jerked upright with a scream. Her eyes were momentarily wild as she looked around, then calmed as she saw the woodsman rushing toward her. Wilheim smiled at Tok. “Pressure point”, the monk said.

Once he was sure that his love Morena was safe, the woodsman Renard turned his fury on the captured pistoleer. He explained to the constables that Lorcan Kell’s criminal gang had been pressing into the Cloudwood. When Renard and “the men who valued his opinion” refused to pay off the thieves, Kell had sent cronies to kidnap Morena. RT3 had wandered straight into the situation.

Renard urged RT3 to set Kell’s pistoleer free, and to allow him just one shot at her. RT3 refused, but Erik convinced Renard and Morena to make statements about what had happened. Although he knew that neither would appear in court to give evidence, the statements allowed him to take the pistoleer into custody, which defused the situation. Renard happily guided RT3 the rest of the way to Nevard’s henge, dispatching Morena and his wounded compatriots into the Cloudwood as they travelled.

The skyseer camp was located in a small clearing high in the hills surrounding Flint. A large marquee tent dominated the clearing, and it was into that tent that RT3 was shown. Nevard Sechim, once one of the most prescient and respected of skyseers, was now feeble and bent. His eyes were cloudy with cataracts and the smell of age was deep on him, yet when he talked the wind itself seemed to quiet in respect.

Nevard confirmed that Gale had come to him several times asking for guidance. She hadn’t listened to his urging to eschew violence, but the last time she had visited she had said that she had followed his advice, finding a mutual threat that even the people of Flint would take seriously. Nevard agreed to arrange a meeting between Gale and RT3, but first he asked a favour. He wanted RT3 to arrange passage to - and an overnight stay at - the peak of Cauldron Hill so that he could seek one last good look at the stars before he died.

Once the den of a coven of witches that terrified the Flint area, Cauldron Hill was still steeped in dark magic and the supernatural even though the witches were destroyed long before. Access to the hill was restricted, and RT3 wondered whether it would be better to seek permission or to secretly climb the hill. They agreed to Nevard’s request, and the skyseer made plans for his departure. Erik offered Nevard a bed under his roof that night, and the skyseer and his retainers happily accepted.

RT3 returned to Flint in the mid-afternoon, leaving Nevard and his retainers to follow at a more leisurely pace. Once back in the city, Erik , Tok and Wilheim asked around town for ways to gain access to Cauldron Hill. All replies were the same; only the mayor of the Nettles, Reed Macbannin, had the authority to grant access. Aware that the sun was soon to set and that they wanted to climb Cauldron Hill the next day, RT3 hurried to Macbannin’s manor.

As they climbed the lower slopes of Cauldron Hill, they realised that the only serviceable road on the hill led straight to the Mayor’s manor. It would be difficult – if not impossible – to climb the hill without being discovered. They were received by Mr Creed, mayor Macbannin’s butler, who went to announce their arrival. While they waited, a courier named Doro joined them, musing aloud about the chaos of life in Flint and how it could be assuaged. After Doro left, Thornt commented aloud how much his thoughts matched those of Rutger Smith, captain of the RNS Impossible.

Mayor Macbannin was at first reluctant to grant RT3 access to Cauldron Hill, warning them that it was still a place of darkness and danger, but Tok swayed him by referring to the possible boon to the city that Nevard’s vision that could be. Realising that being associated with such a boon would bring him glory, Macbannin agreed to grant RT3 passage. He insisted on two conditions; that RT3 pass though his manor on the way up the hill so that he could ward them against the dangers on the hill, and that they pass through the manor on the return trip so he could check them for possession. RT3 agreed, and after Macbannin and Tok exchanged subtle innuendo about political life, took their leave for the night.

RT3 quickly made their way down Cauldron Hill in deepening darkness, splitting up once they reached the Nettles proper. They agreed to meet at Erik’s house in East Bank first thing in the morning.

Wilheim returned to RHC headquarters, where he surreptitiously filed a report outlining the deal made between Renard, Tok, Erik and Thornt.

All others except Erik went directly home. The sergeant passed by RHC headquarters on his journey, and discovered a note from Heward Sechim waiting for him.
Erik folded the note and kept it in his pocket, then headed home to find Sara busily entertaining Nevard and his retainers. During the evening, Erik took the sksyeer aside and detailed Sara’s recent behaviour. He asked Nevard to do a reading on his wife. The aged man replied that he was not a clairvoyant; he could not read people, but he agreed to watch the stars that night and see what he could discover about the Pride family’s future.

In the morning, while the Pride family entertained Nevard, his retainers and the rest of the RT3 team, Erik again took Nevard aside. The skyseer confirmed that he had had a vision; of Erik and Sara standing with a baby in a circle of light. A musical voice asked something the skyseer could not hear, and Erik shook his head. Then shapes moved in the darkness and – as Nevard’s vision ended - Sara screamed.

Across town, Wilheim was woken in the middle of the night by a rapping at his door. He cautiously went to open it, and found a note and a parcel waiting for him. Opening the note, he read it.
The deva unwrapped the brown paper, discovering inside a bizarre mirror made of gnarled wood. Instead of glass, the frame was filled with a sheet of running water that stayed put no matter how Wilheim tilted it. The Deva surveyed the road outside his residence a final time, then returned to bed.

After breakfast, Sara left RT3 and their guests in privacy to prepare for their day’s activities. Nevard and one of his retainers, an orc shaman named Pazamu, asked RT3’s assistance in a ritual that would make the journey easier for the aged skyseer. As Pazamu laid a scroll and ritual components out on the table, Tok recognised the Bond of Forced Faith. The bard’s extensive education meant he knew full well the horrors of how the ritual scroll had been created, and that it would link Nevard’s health to their own, effectively fortifying the skyseer with his charges’ own vitality.

Wilheim noticed Tok’s pause, and Erik demanded an explanation. The bard complied, and Nevard confessed that he knew of the horrific creation of the scroll. “Better that it be put to good than wasted,” he said and RT3 eventually agreed. They bound their health to Nevards, and then set off for Cauldron Hill.

As agreed, they passed through Macbannin’s manor on their ascent. The mayor and a blue-robed acolyte cast rituals of warding over the journeyers, and provided them with rusted iron amulets that would protect them against possession. Then he gave them four kegs of goats blood and directed them to paint a ring around their campsite as a misdirection of the terrors that might approach.

RT3 made their way to the peak of the hill and settled in for the night. They built a small fire among a ring of fallen hengestones, circled their camp with the goats’ blood, built a small hide and then used tent canvas to screen the area from prying eyes. As a supernatural cold descended on the area, Nevard turned his eyes to the stars and they settled down to wait.

It wasn’t long before the terrors of Cauldron Hill arose. Mad screams and laughter rode the wind, drilling into the constables’ sanity. Spooks swept across the sky, and creatures made of madness – a legless skull-faced human that dragged itself around on its hands, a serpent-maned lion and a bent and misshapen hag – emerged from the darkness and began to circle the ring of blood. RT3 crouched within their prepared position, hoping to avoid the notice of the creatures beyond.

Then a velvet curtain manifested in the middle of their camp, and Nilasa Hume stepped from it. She placed a finger to her lips, then pointed into the darkness. “The man who killed me. He is coming. His face is scarred, so he hides behind many faces.” Then she raised a featureless black mask to her face and vanished as the air filled with the stench of burnt engine grease.

Then RT3 saw the stars overhead streak into lines, and then to the north, down by Parity Lake, a building caught fire with dreamlike swiftness. Suddenly they found themselves standing between two factories, and two tongues of flame leap from one to the next, like burning dragons. Screams erupted from the people trapped inside. The flames consumed the factories, and the charred buildings collapsed to reveal the sunrise. A blackened sign sat in the ash, “Sechim’s Alkahest & Etchings.”

The vision ended with a snap, and RT3 was back in the bitter cold at the peak of Cauldron Hill. Nevard looked skyward, and pointed out that Jiese, the plane of fire was brighter than usual. Then he noted how the light reflected off Parity Lake. He turned to the constables and asked “You saw it didn’t you?”

The night stretched on interminably, with RT3 crouching behind the stones as gibbering horrors cavorted just beyond. Then, just after midnight, Thornt’s keen ears picked out the crack of a sunrod. The nearby peak was suddenly awash with light. RT3 and the horrors of Cauldron Hill turned to look. A humanoid figure held the sunrod, its body inhumanly angular, its skin featureless and black like a silhouette. It sprinted to the near edge of the other rise and then hurled the sunrod. The glowing beacon arced toward the center of RT3’s camp, and Cauldron Hill’s denizens watched its passage with inhuman eyes.[/sblock]

Comments

Another great session, and I sowed some seeds of distrust by taking Erik and Wilheim aside (ie. into another Ventrillo channel) to handle their personal activities.

Everyone loved the tension buildup on Cauldron Hill and is looking forward to the fight to come.

Oh, and as for Morena, guess I still have along way to go before I become a true Rat-bastard.

Session 12: Fall of Indomitability

Session Summary

[sblock]The sunrod landed square in the middle of RT3's camp, and Wilheim immediately moved to scoop it up and cast it back into the darkness. Even his fleetness proved insufficient and the semi-transparent crone circling the camp swept up into the sky with a cackle, from where she could clearly see the investigators sheltered within the ring of stones. The sudden light and the crone's insane chattering drew the attention of the other horrors, who abandoned their mindless circling of the ring of blood and began to push into the hidden camp.

The serpent-maned lion roared with the force of nightmares and chilled blood rooted RT3 to the spot as the beast bounded through a concealing sheet of tent canvas and moved to attack Wilheim. On the opposite side of the camp, the legless horror dragged itself toward Cassi. It's eerily glowing eyes drilled into her mind, filling it with mindless terror. The hag wraith hovered overhead, its miasmic stench filling the air. As if in a dream, Erik looked to the hag, then pointed his loaded pistol at Wilheim and fired. Misshapen denizens of Cauldron Hill swooped in to join the fracas, their demonic chattering and dance biting at RT3's sanity.

Cassi lashed out at the cackling crawler with her warhammer, even while trying to manoeuvre closer to the lion that was savaging Wilheim. Occupied with the legless horror, she had no opportunity to defend herself when a black-robed spirit manifested nearby. The vestige drifted over to her and caressed her hair with a bony hand, and Cassi felt a burning tugging as if on her very soul. The vestige disappeared as quickly as it appeared.
Thornt moved to the north of the camp, filling the area with swarms of biting and clawing insects that took a toll on the lesser swooping terrors that ringed the camp. Tok moved among the combatants, blasting at the nightmare-creatures with his magic and shouting warnings to his companions.

Erik recovered his senses just in time for the hag to swoop down and attempt to plant a vomit-filled kiss on his lips. RT3's sergeant leapt aside and moved quickly to aid Cassi against the crawler. The lumbering thing moved with surprising agility when Erik levelled his pistol at its back, latching onto his legs and climbing the constable's body towards his neck. Erik wrestled with it, eventually managing to free his weapon. He rammed his pistol-bayonet into the crawler's mouth and pulled the trigger, scattering the creature's skull pan over a nearby fallen menhir.

Freed from the crawler's gaze, Cassi moved off to engage the lion and in turn allowed Wilheim and Thornt to turn their attention to offence against the swarming spooks. While the risuri knight held the creature at bay, the balck-robed vestige appeared twice more, each time caressing her face. At the third touch, Cassi felt its grip on her soul solidify. She called a warning to her companions, and Erik turned against to aid her.

When the vestige appeared for the fourth time Erik's pistol roared and the black robe danced wildly as the vestige spun. The shot had not been enough. A bone scythe appeared in the vestige's hands and swung down. Cassi, assaulted on one side by the serpent-maned lion and on the other by the vestige, could not avoid the blow. The tip of the scythe blade passed into the gorget of her armour and continued downward until it was buried almost entirely in her flesh. Cassi gasped once, and then slid wordlessly from the blade.

Even in death, the young knight had served her companions well. Using the time Cassi had bought them, each now turned their attention to the lion, the hag wraith and the vestige. First one then another fell under a fusillade of pistol shots, blows and magic until the peak of Cauldron Hill was empty but for Nevard and the survivors of RT3. The skyseer moved quickly to Cassi and felt for a pulse. When he found none, he looked sadly to the investigators then calmly suggested that they should leave as soon as possible.

The silhouetted figure had slipped away unnoticed during the battle.
RT3 regathered their breath before fashioning a little for Cassi's body, and then set out with utmost haste for the safety of Mayor Macbannin's manor. As they travelled, Nevard confirmed that their time at the peak had been sufficient to grant him a vision. Now he needed time to interpret it. That knowledge did little to raise RT3's spirits.

When the investigators eventually reached Macbannin's manor, they were surprised to find a throng of people gathered inside the rear gate.[/sblock]

Commentary

Even though I knew the vestige of the death was distinctly capable of causing a PC death if it managed to get its keystone attack off, I can't say I was truly prepared when it eventually occurred. It certainly shook Erik's player up, as he confessed that he had already planned to use Display of Heroism to get Cassi up and running again if she were knocked unconscious. Oddly, at the time of Cassi's death only Erik's player and the player who controls Cassi and Thornt were at the table. Wilheim's player was absent for the session and Tok's player had had to leave halfway through the session. As a result, they heard about Cassi's death second hand. I'm not sure whether that makes the death more or less foreboding, but one thing is certain - the players now know that there is no guarantee of safety in the Gears of Revolution campaign.

An old D&D friend (who played Fian and Caelen in my previous Stones & Shadow, Trees and Light campaign) is looking to rejoin the group at the end of march, and it's not clear whether he'll roll up a defender, or whether Wilheim's player will replace his monk with a paladin. If the latter, I hope to repurpose Wilheim as the sergeant of the RHC's second squad, and perhaps pit him as an NPC against the party at the end of Digging for Lies.

The Good

The three main antagonists in the ring of blood encounter are amazingly diverse, which made it quite difficult for the party to figure out how to combat them. The serpent-maned lion's roar allows them to get in amongst the party early, and the grabbing of the cackling crawler and the dazing attack of the hag wraith inhibit PC's usual responses. It was really enjoyable to have an encounter where it felt like I was just as much in control as the players.

It was also great that the three "clear and present threats" made it difficult for the PCs to truly gauge the threat level of the vestige of death. In truth, I had expected it to face a barrage of readied attacks the first time I mentioned Cassi feeling a "tugging on her soul", but clearly everyone was too busy with the other monsters to make time to deal with the vestige.

The Bad

Unfortunately, not many of the auras in the encounter (and there are plenty of them) really had much of an impact on the encounter. Tok fired off his daily Verse of Triumph, which allows all allies within 5 squares of him to shift when an enemy is reduced to 0 hp. That ability, coupled with the number of minions involved, meant that there were only two or three instances all encounter that someone ended their turn in an aura. Annoying!

The Ugly

I'm not really a fan of the spooks' Pandemonic Dance aura, specifically the section that specifies that spooks will damage each other. Given that they're minions, that makes them incredibly difficult to use en masse, which is really the whole point of minions. If you don't use them en masse, the PCs can pick them off fast enough that the aura never kicks in.

The lack of a melee basic attack on the spooks also means they can't make opportunity attacks. Once my players realised that, the spooks really became secondary targets. In order to be effective minions, I recommend that you ignore the bit about damaging other monsters and/or give them a weak MBA.

Interesting reading your thoughts on Cauldron Hill. I got three shrouds on the PC psion, as well as two on Nevard. The psion was sure he was done for once he had three shrouds, so he kept using Memory Hole to prevent the vestige from landing the final blow. I responded by going after Nevard - the entire party was low enough on HP and healing that it would likely have dropped 3/4 PCs, leaving only the swordmage standing. That would probably have been a TPK.

The minions worked much better for me than they did for you, probably because my party didn't have that shifting aura power you mentioned. In a less mobile, melee-focused party like mine, I think the minions are fine as-is, but I could see them being less useful for a party with a lot of shifting or telepporting.

Just finished session 13, which I'll post about another day (it's 11.45pm here).

Before going to bed, I thought I'd pop in and give a friendly warning to other DMs about the Arson encounter. It's deadly.

My group's swarm druid Thornt went from 27 hp to -15 hp in one round (a combination of a critical hit from Arsonist's Greatsword plus Wall of Fire), and would have died at the start of his next turn if I hadn't "forgotten" to inflict 5 fire damage on him from the Arson Bolt zone*.

The adventure text says that the party likely won't be able to take the brothers, but I didn't expect to have the party sizzled to a crisp and wondering how to survive by the end of round one.

Let's just say that they were very relieved when the dragonborn brothers ran off.

*Yes, I know I missed a change to secure my rat-bastardness, but I felt it would be unduly penalising the player. Thornt's player thought he had to move where he did to save Tok (who was on 2 hp after meeting Eberardo's greatsword), and it wasn't an unreasonable thing to do when he was on 27 hp.

Colmarr said:

Before going to bed, I thought I'd pop in and give a friendly warning to other DMs about the Arson encounter. It's deadly.

Click to expand...

Seeconded! As I said in my own account, our party would have been TPKed if the brothers had not prioritised flight.

At one point I had three of the party on the ground and - not realising how close they were to negative bloodied - had one of the brothers use his breath weapon.

This was a mistake on my part. I hadn't realised how badly injured they were and neither I (nor the dragonborn) wanted to actually kill them.

Our house rule benny system came to the rescue when the party leader, a genasi who can now manifest watersoul, used his watery shift power to extinguish the flames.

The dragonborn brothers are indeed very deadly!

gideonpepys said:

The dragonborn brothers are indeed very deadly!

Click to expand...

I'm actually quite interested to see how my players respond over the next few sessions when given the chance to track down the brothers (whether via Cippiano or their own investigations).

Hopefully they buy some fire resistance potions and return for a grudge match, but I wouldn't be surprised if they conveniently ignored the arsonists on the loose in Flint

I'm also interested to see whether anyone takes Durable as their level 4 feat. Lack of surges is really crimping their style at the moment.

My players hired a hydromancer and went straight after them. I decided the brothers would have left their old hideout (leaving a firetrap behind). That almost caused another TPK when the players forgot to check for traps!

(Three of them were left prone and smouldering in the hallway, leaving the water wizard with nothing to do but put them out with a cantrip.)

They finally took them down in Lorcan Kell's theatre - prearranged by Morgan Cippiano.

A great pair of secondary villains, in that they are actually more dangerous than Macbannin and Creed!

We don't have no fancy dragonborn in Pathfinder, so the path makes them lizardfolk. I'm going to make them kobolds though. Because it's awesome-er that way. To me.

And because I'm using lizardfolk a lot in an off path adventure.