ZEITGEIST The Flint Irregulars, whose portraits you may have seen

I agree with that. Used judiciously, the escaping villain can be a great way to add punch to a future encounter.

I've been considering the House Elf thread, and I'm thinking it's time to get my players using their contacts a bit more. So far we've heard from one of Vesta's brothers, who is involved in a unionization effort at a factory and is known to Thames Grimsely. But there's way more for me to pillage:

Viveen: (goliath runepriest yerasol veteran)
Viveen keeps in loose contact with other veterans of the war. She is closest to another goliath, Murgard, who lives in Pine Island, and Chileek, a gnome mystic. Chileek swore off violence after the wars and moved to Cloudwood, where she forages and picks up extra money telling fortunes. Murgard shrimps in the bayous, but spends a lot of time trading war stories for drinks in the taverns. If he's involved with smugglers he's never mentioned, and Viveen's never asked.

Vesta: (eladrin swordmage vekeshi mystic)
Vesta has three older brothers in Parity Lake. Crukas, Nornan, and Belaver. The younger two are both factory workers. Belaver would be as well if he could stay sober long enough to keep a job.

Playing a hermit who has only recently gotten out from behind a desk is kind of the suck for having contacts.

Reginald: (human psion spirit medium)
Kyne Ellison - An apothocary from whom Reginald has been purchasing hallucinogens ever since his return to Risur, Ellison is well connected in the psion/spiritualist community, and has underworld contacts as well (the underworld contacts having been cultivated to aid him in the collection of some of the more exotic ingredients he uses in creating his hallucinogens.

Maitland Whitecliff - Maitland is Reginald's youngest uncle on his father's side. He is a purveyor for the palace, and though he traveled widely in this role during his youth, he has spent virtually all of his time at court in the past decade, working in a managerial role. He is very much a player in court politics, and is well disposed toward Reginald (it was he who pulled the strings to get Reginald his position in the colonial outpost).

Sinjin Marchbanks - Marchbanks was a lieutenant serving in the same colonial outpost where Reginald was assigned, and they became reasonably good friends prior to Reginald's abduction. He has since made captain, and has been transferred back to Risur.

Murdok: (human ranger martial scientist)
Contacts: Favorite Professor at School: Prof. Jayne Cobb, heavy weapons
Other student I was closest to: Tolayle Arglebargle, near the top of the class, got an amazing job in Slate

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I missed a chance to involve Chileek during the constables' visit to Nevard's henge, but she'd almost certainly attend Nevard's rally. Chileek would also probably know about the House Elf, but look on him with a touch of disdain.

I figure that Danisca Waryeye and Kyne Ellison share some mutual alchemical component sources, and would know of each other.

Finally, I'm thinking Murgard is definitely involved with smugglers, and may turn up at the drop on the night of the 4th... or perhaps be otherwise involved with Lorcan Kell's crew.

If at some point I can contrive to involve Prof. Jayne Cobb in a future adventure, I'm looking forward to doing the voice.

[MENTION=85901]Ajar[/MENTION] - They went one better than that, actually. They used one of their contacts to hire a 'water wizard'! (It was such a good idea I let them go with it.)

A hydromancer! Brilliant!

For my group, it might be something as simple as bringing a full barrel of water, since Reginald can lift up to 400 lbs with his psion telekinesis. When they used Parity Lake water for that in the arson encounter, I told them they were lucky I didn't rule that Parity Lake water was dirty enough to catch fire.

After a rest, the constables returned to Goodson's Estuarial Reformatory, where they delivered the warrant freeing Travis. He told them what he knew about the wand smuggling operation. Viveen told him to keep his nose clean, at which point I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose loudly. "No problem, officers."

On their way back, Gale's canary found them. They set up the meeting for very shortly thereafter. At the waterfall, as soon as Gale appeared, Vesta stepped forward, offered a wrapped parcel (the mirror), and began speaking in eladrin. Vesta's player and I had a side conversation via text chat, so the other players wouldn't read:

Vesta: [Hands over parcel.] "My friends don't speak this language, and I hope I can trust your discretion as this is a matter they are not involved in."

Gale: "Should I open this now, or wait?"

Vesta: "You may open it whenever you desire. It comes with the message ''The Unseen Court is watching. Take this mirror, and when you see the face of our enemies within it, bring them down and we shall reward you.'"

Gale: [She seems slightly taken aback.] "what do you mean by 'bring them down?'"

Vesta: "I am just the messenger, my lady."

Gale: "I see. I won't promise to obey orders from a faceless court... especially when it comes through a new contact, however courteous. So far I have avoided killing people who pose no direct threat..."

Vesta: "Honestly, i hope their requests keep within those bounds. if I can assist in a non-lethal removal of such enemies, I would be glad to aid you."

Gale: "I understand. Thank you."

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They listened to what Gale had to say, and asked about the wand smuggling. The adventure assumes the PCs have followed up on the House Elf lead before meeting Gale, and in hindsight I should probably have given them more time to do so before having the canary find them, but I thought that Nevard would be a busy boy while he was still feeling spry, and also liked the imagery of a lone canary fluttering out to meet them on the ferry as they returned from the Reformatory.

So they got the information on the smugglers from Gale, rather than from the House Elf, and she mentioned that the smugglers were bringing in many more wands than she had intended to buy. She also said that if the PCs succeded in what she assumed to be their impending raid on the exchange, that she would find something else to spend her tens of thousands of gold coins on.

They agreed to continue their investigation into Nilasa's death, and keep her appraised of developments, especially any that relate to the conspiracy Gale suspects.

The moment they were alone again, the other three constables rounded on Vesta. "What the eff was that?" seemed to be the sentiment. Vesta said he wouldn't talk about it here, but if they could find a noisy bar or something he could tell them more.

First, they went to report their meeting to Delft. He was livid, but they persuaded him that they'd have had no chance to actually capture Gale, given her ease of movement relative to theirs, and also that they'd only committed to doing something they were already planning on: solving Nilasa's murder. Delft accepted this reasoning, but complained that if it all went south, he'd be in a politically untenable position.

"Even after you fired us?" asked Murdok.

Delft nodded. "Even after I fired you."

The House Elf thread is pretty much obviated at this point, so all that time I put into getting the map ready and figuring out how to do fog of war in MapTool turned out to just be long-term investment in the campaign's future. We'll see if they follow up on it anyway, but I'm doubtful they'll get a chance.

From HQ, they headed to Bosum Strand and the noisiest pub they could find -- specifically not the Thinking Man -- for dinner. Once they got a few drinks into Vesta, he opened up. He told them he'd made some bad choices in life, and that 'some people' had helped him a great deal. In return, they occasionally asked him for favours, and this was one such. Another couple of drinks, and he confessed that they were Vekeshi. Murdok's 24 history check put her knowledge level well above that of the average citizen, so she knew the Vekeshi were better than their reputation, but was still concerned about just how beholden Vesta might be to the mystics. Vesta claimed he was relatively unimportant and that even if asked, he wouldn't kill for the mystics. The other constables seemed satisfied with this for the time being.

I had them place the pub where they ate, but the spot they chose wasn't close enough to Dawn Square (whose location I hadn't yet revealed) for Reginald to detect the mystical screaming that they'll be finding out about on the morning of Day 4.

Next they decided to head to the safe house where they'd last left Nevard. A drunken Vesta started singing loudly in the streets, and attracted some conversation, during which they heard about Nevard's planned rally. Sure enough, he was no longer at the safe house.

That was when we called it a night. They're actually talking about heading over to Pine Island to look for the smuggler captain once Vesta sobers up; that would be interesting and I'm not quite sure how I'll handle it, if they do.

You could have Blander and/or Danisca present at the smuggling operation, only to scarper invisibly when hostilities break out. The smugglers would then tell the PCs who they were. It would be a shame to miss that encounter - it really is a lot of fun.

Obviously, it would be frustrating for it to be a complete dead end, but that's life. Or you could present Blander and Danisca sympathetically and add them as contacts for the PCs following their 'arrest'. (Danisca could bargain her way out of trouble by promising to act as an informant.)

If the PCs already know about the smuggling operation, and you go in reverse order (smugglers > gnomes), then the gnomes could lead back to the witchoil thread. Maybe they're selling vials of the stuff (in their hidden stash, because they figure it's creepy and probably illegal). The PCs can get them to talk about their contact -- you can make someone up -- who would point back at Macbannin.

Thanks for the ideas! I haven't decided what to do yet, because with the way Day 4 has come together, it's going to be a very busy day for my constables. There's no way we're getting to Smuggers' Night in this session (which starts in half an hour or so).

• They'll find out about the creepy feeling near Dawn Square, likely triggering the warehouse sequence. (Vesta's drunkard brother will show up at RHC HQ.)

• They'll receive the message from Dr Barnaby Camp.

• They'll attend Nevard's speech and try to save him.

• They'll probably follow up on the Camp thing sometime in the afternoon.

• They'll try to chase down their smuggler lead, which is the name of the ship's captain. If they succeed, the smugglers' night sequence happens.

I'm very nervous about the golem's 4d8+4 at-will, especially in an undersized party (4 PCs) with very little in the way of ranged attacks. Reginald will probably think to use his telekinesis to drop something heavy (up to 300 lb) on it, which will help. Still, I'm considering dialing the damage back to something closer to standard single-target damage for a level 3 threat, considering 4d8+4 averages 22 damage, equivalent to average damage for a level 13 single-target attack (3d6+11). That's pretty brutal, and a max roll could drop some of my PCs in one hit -- including ones who will need to close with the golem to deal any damage.

The golem is a solo, though, so instead of hitting nicely 5 times per round like a party of 5 monsters, it hits about hard once or twice per round.

Yeah, that's true, but even so, that's a crapton of damage at this level. I think what I'm going to do is have its damage change at each threshold, starting low and going up (2d8+4, 3d8+4, 4d8+4). They're sneaking into the warehouse through one of the windows right now!

The PCs slept at the safe house where they'd previously stashed Nevard. In the morning, the headed over to HQ to check in, where they found Vesta's drunkard brother Belaver waiting for them. He looked rough, severely hung over, and told them about a "creepy feeling" people were getting near Dawn Square. Some very high History checks suggested that this might be associated with the Bleak Gate and that the ritual Gale gave them could be useful.

They took a carriage to Bosum Strand, cast the ritual, and followed it to the source. The ritual revealed a shadowy fog at rooftop level, swirling slowly around a particular warehouse. The constables were surprised to see no guards. Murdok scouted the perimeter while Reginald peered through a window with his consciousness fragment, seeing what was going on inside. They decided to go in through one of the windows, so Viveen scaled the wall (easy for the 7' goliath) and let a rope down.

Reginald sent a message to Gale using the wind power she gave them, explaining the situation and saying that she would probably want to see this (and sending me scrambling for level 10 flying skirmisher stats, in case they waited for her!). Then snuck along the catwalk, and with some great Stealth checks, got close enough to do a Rainbow Six-style surprise rappel down into the middle of the bad guys. They ordered the techs to surrender, but the techs instead started trying to destroy the evidence. Reginald responded by telekinetically lifting the desk with the papers on it up onto the catwalk, preserving it for future examination.

One of the techs opened the door and let the golem in, while the others started smashing the alchemical equipment, since they couldn't get to the papers anymore. But Reginald bombarded them from above while sustaining his telekinesis, so they didn't last long -- only one of them got away, and 7 were incapacitated.

I did tweak the golem as I described in my previous post. At first I thought I'd made it too easy, but the battle ended up being quick and deadly: the golem dropped Viveen, then Murdok, and the party was only saved by a very timely natural 20 on one of Viveen's death saves. Being the party's leader (Runepriest), she got the others back on their feet. Several dailies were expended, and Reginald dealt the killing blow with his daily mind control power, so they'll be pretty light on resources for the rest of their adventuring day (including Nevard's speech). Since they recovered all of the papers, though, it was certainly worth it.

They put the techs in the cages, then sent their carriage back to HQ with a request for a bigger flatbed carriage for the prisoners and golem. While they waited for the carriage and for Gale to either arrive or reply, they started examining the papers...

Next session is two weeks from today, so I'm going to send out an email in between detailing what they find in the papers, what Gale says/does, and how the techs mysteriously vanish just as their flatbed carriage is arriving. ;D