ZEITGEIST The Flint Irregulars, whose portraits you may have seen

Bah, shooting one of these ain't hard. Let me show ya.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzhTBnRPNIA]Grandma Fires Nock Volley Gun - YouTube[/ame]

Ha! I had no idea Nock guns were a thing. I just assumed you named them and the goliath after yourself.

Last night was the battle against the bizarre psychic creatures called forth from Simon's wand. I didn't adjust anything, so it was a 1,250 XP encounter for 4 level 5 players -- making it just about level 7. It pushed them pretty much to the limit; the worm maw grabbed and mauled Vesta, infecting him with Distant Madness, and dropped Vesta twice. Most of the other PCs were down in single-digit HP by the end of the fight, with few surges and no encounter/daily powers left. But they managed to save both the dwarf child and Simon.

I noticed that Distant Madness doesn't list any ways for other players or NPCs to aid the affected PC. I'm thinking of doing a simple skill challenge for finding someone qualified and having them assist; Reginald's connections to the psychadelic drug trade could be a boon there. (His player spends a lot of his stipend on consumables.)

I backed Admiral o' the High Seas to get zeppelins in it. But my players backed it to get me in it!

They always seem to enjoy the sessions, but I'm actually pretty insecure about my live (and Google+ hangout) DMing -- I don't always do voices, nor do I always RP social stuff verbatim. I also feel like I have a hard time creating atmosphere. But I guess my players think I'm a good DM, and I really appreciate that coming from them.

We haven't been able to play most of this month, since I've been working 12 hr night shifts and haven't had a day off since the start of the month. But I'm hoping that soon -- maybe next week, maybe the week after -- I'll be able to get back to Lanjyr and continue on with Digging for Lies.

This has also sparked some long-range thoughts. My girlfriend and I backed the Reaper Minis Kickstarter as well, and I specifically requested a clockwork dragon. I'm hoping that somewhere in late Paragon or early Epic I can get the players together for a live game, and run a high-stakes side adventure with a clockwork dragon battle being the climax. I'm thinking that they'll have to hunt the dragon down in a zeppelin, perhaps after having joined me and the crew of my zeppelin-hunter ship Serenity to track down and commandeer the world's only zeppelin, the secret creation of a wealthy industrialist...

nayemkhulna said:

I am very expert at online campagine.......

Click to expand...

Reported for spam.

We had a short session a couple of weeks ago, and are going to continue tonight. The last session was basically just clean-up after the battle. The questions around Rock Rackus' stray bullet, the realization that Simon's staff triggered the conjuration, and that the staff is made of gold! Additional RHC staffers showed up to collect the dead creatures and confiscate any "suspicious" magical gear.

One of those staffers may be a new PC with transfer orders from Stover Delft... Bela, a star pact warlock gunslinger and experienced RHC officer whose current squad is on the Macbannin case and getting nowhere fast. Delft, who has worked with Bela for years, trusts him and his work, and thinks he's being wasted on Saxby's Macbannin assignment. When he catches wind of the audit, some dots connect: Bela received a minor commendation from Nigel Price-Hill some years ago for a past case, and this is a perfect opportunity to get Bela into the PCs squad. He trusts the PCs squad already, because they brought him up to speed on Morgan Cippiano's overtures to them. Adding Bela will help them earn Nigel Price-Hill's trust during the audit, and Delft wants to see the PCs squad succeed -- he wants them to breeze through the audit and put it behind them so that he can persuade Saxby to give them a real case.

Little does he know that they already have one...

Good session last night. We started where we left off, and I had Bela arrive with his transfer papers. The PCs weren't hard to find, since there was still quite a commotion at the Gun Alley Stage where the battle had taken place. They recognized Bela, although most of them didn't know him well. Vesta recalled that Bela had received a commendation from Nigel Price-Hill, and that his nickname was Knock Knock. It was kind of an amusing instance of dice reflecting reality; our game group is now comprised of three couples, one of which is Vesta's player and Bela's player.

When asked about his nickname, Bela -- who is trained in thievery -- said simply that he can be somewhat impatient, and lockpicking takes time.

After some discussion about the lack of progress in the Macbannin case and the amount of paperwork left behind by the PCs squad for Bela's squad, they got back to work. Reginald posthumously questioned the dead docker, which gave me a chance to have some fun with my best stoner voice. "Those Family guys, man, they're really cornering the fey pepper supply."

Then they headed for the subrail construction site and their meeting with Kaja. Reginald bluffed his way in and examined the wares, buying three potions of lesser haste and the Amulet of the Ancients. After returning to the squad, they decided to hide and wait for the next buyer. When a hapless halfling arrived to make a purchase, they waited until Kaja opened the chest and then attacked.

Kaja was pretty fun to run in combat, although my crappy rolls made it tougher. The players called foul when she pulled out the cannon, which I used to drop the party's leader, the goliath runepriest Viveen. However, she didn't have to make too many death saves, because Vesta charged in and kept Kaja occupied for long enough for the group to take her down.

Her surrender was followed by a very short interrogation before the constables realized they weren't going to get much of anything out of her. They checked out the smuggled goods, but couldn't figure out too much about the artifacts beyond that they were created by the Ancients.

There was a bit of discussion about how to cure Vesta's Distant Madness. Bela suggested taking him to the skyseers, and the other players agreed that maybe taking him to the orc shaman who helped them in The Dying Skyseer could yield something. At that point, we called it a night.

The introduction of Bela went really well. I think the character will be a good fit with the squad, and I'm looking forward to the wrinkles his introduction will add to the audit subplot.

Had another session on Wednesday. The constables sent a runner to Nevard's henge to make contact with Pazumu the orc shaman and ask if she or anyone else there could help with Vesta's distant madness. Then they took Kaja back to HQ and locked her up. Since my players tend to act like adventurers rather than constables -- they never just work crowds, rarely do insight checks when talking to NPCs, etc -- I decided to see what I could get away with, and had her lie to them, completely leaving out her role in R&D as well as her subsequent dealings with Lorcan Kell. She pretended that she was just a fence, and told them that Macbannin was her only supplier. With his operation gone, she was just selling off her stock and then planned to leave town.

Not one PC elected to make a single insight check at any point during this line of questioning, so they'll be pretty surprised when they get letters demanding her release!

They also didn't find the rusted ring. I think they're going to be pretty mad when she dies.

Then they went to check in with Delft, updating him on the situation. He shook his head, saying "You couldn't have waited one more day to find a link to the Macbannin case?" He then explained that the Lord Viscount was here and that they were going to have to go up to Saxby's office.

The Lord Viscount was pleased to see Bela, and also pleased to see that a Yerasol Veteran was on the squad. He said he was confident that they wouldn't find anything on a squad with such upstanding officers (while Reginald squirmed and hoped they wouldn't search his home and find his massively oversized stash of consumables). The PCs managed to escape the meeting without alerting Lady Saxby to the fact that their current mission had turned up a new link to Macbannin.

They then headed back downstairs to test out the Ancients' artifacts inside one of the gold rings, to prevent any inadvertent summonings. After some experimentation with test dummies, they decided to take the artifacts to Professor Kindleton at Pardwright University, who will of course direct them to Pardwright Museum and the next plot hook...

Back at it in the new year! Pure RP tonight.

First, the PCs decided to call on Nathan Jierre, hoping he might know something about Distant Madness. Unfortunately, he didn't, but he reminded them of a few things they'd forgotten -- the "blue sun" events on Axis Island, and he and Bela talked shop for a little bit. They talked a bit about the Ancients as well.

Then they went to talk to Pazumu, who offered a herbal concoction to help calm Vesta's dreams and stave off the Distant Madness. They also showed her the artifacts, but they were "too old" for her, and made her uncomfortable. Talking to one of the skyseers at the henge, they confirmed the artifacts' provenance but little more.

From there, it was off to Pardwight. Professor Kindleton was happy to see the PCs again, and after hearing their tale, offered her assistance in the study of the dead monsters. She also referred them to Hans Weber at the Museum of Natural History for questions about the Ancients -- with an admonishment that they should butter him up but not mention that she sent them.

At the Museum, they found Weber obsessively polishing an artifact. My girlfriend actually asked me to stop the polishing (I was polishing a glass with a piece of cloth) because she thought it was creepy, which was high praise! They had an extensive discussion with Weber about the Ancients, and then when they brought out their artifacts, Weber identified them as being from Xambria's expedition. That led to a conversation about the ziggurat, Xambria, and what Weber knew about her/her expedition. Ultimately, he said he would arrange for them to meet Xambria the next day.

After returning the artifacts to the RHC, the PCs turned in for the night, and woke up to letters from Lorcan Kell demanding the release of Kaja Stewart. Reginald immediately used his Spirit Medium ability to sense the history of the letter he received, but due to crappy Perception roll wasn't able to identify the location where the letter was written as the Theatre of Scoundrels. Still, he got some inklings that the letter was from a criminal source. He decided to find a sketch artist and have the location drawn so the other constables could try to ID it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the squad went to check in at RHC HQ and found out about Kaja. Murdok received the letter from the Colonel asking for the monsters' bodies to be turned over to the Risuri military, and seemed to think that would be a good idea. When they went downstairs to see Kaja's body, Murdok was very unimpressed with the guards' excuse that they were "distracted" by another prisoner -- long enough for Kaja to hang herself? Something doesn't add up... they started to do some looking around, but that was where we stopped.

*

These last few updates have been a bit scattered for me, life has been busy. We're playing again next Wednesday and hopefully I'll have a bit more in the way of DM commentary -- this isn't really a "story hour," it's partly for me to remind myself what happened and partly for other DMs to see how one party handled these situations. I'll try to get back to providing a bit more in the way of concrete thoughts for other DMs.

On that note, since there are no explicitly defined routes for the PCs to get from Xambria to Caius in Act 1 -- not that getting to Caius is necessary -- I'm planning to have the easiest option be one of Reginald's contacts:

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).

Click to expand...

This contact seems like he'd be a good fit for someone who might be up on where Caius could be found, if Reginald's player thinks of it.

Distant Madness
I forgot to mention in my last update that Vesta made his distant madness save, and was cured. The players had been very paranoid about the possible effects of distant madness and asked everyone they could think of for help before their first extended rest. In a way, it was a bit of a letdown that Vesta made the save and the whole thing just ended. Of course, there's no reason to think someone else won't contract it again later on...

Session Overview
After a one-week delay, we had a third session of pure RP last week. Almost all of it was spent in the basement of RHC HQ investigating the mysterious death of Kaja Stewart. Murdok repeatedly and bluntly expressed her extreme disappointment with the guards, and by the end of the browbeating the guards were all looking miserable and humiliated. Whether this will play well for the squad in the future remains to be seen...

Murdok and Viveen spent an inordinate amount of time talking to the insane eschatologist dwarf who the guards claimed distracted them by throwing a fit. Murdok played bad cop to Viveen's good cop. They weren't able to confirm their suspicions that the dwarf had distant madness, nor get much in the way of useful information from him -- even when they later spoke to the squad investigating the murders he'd committed.

Their inspection of the death scene revealed essentially nothing, but they were still confident that it wasn't a suicide, so they waited for Reginald to arrive. When he did, he presented the sketches, and Viveen correctly IDed the letter-writer as a member of Lorcan Kell's guild. Suddenly, the constables were filled with regrets about having declined Morgan Cippiano's offer to hire the dragonborn arsonists on their behalf to burn down the Theatre of Scoundrels. Although Bela wisely noted that given the audit, the decision was probably for the best.

Reginald communed with Kaja's spirit. Upon realizing that she was dead, she decided to tell him that she hadn't been forthcoming when they spoke the previous day. Reginald's first question was "what can we do to bring justice to your spirit," to which her reply was "kill the bastards that offed me." She explained her true role in Macbannin's schemes as the designer of his witchoil refining mechanism, and admitted that she had been working with Kell to try and track down whoever Macbannin had been working with/for -- albeit with no success.

The constables then checked in with Delft. After a somewhat mild Delft ass-chewing at having "let" another prisoner die in their care, they brought him up to speed. He perked up when he heard about Xambria and the archaeological expedition, and that Reginald's visions from one of the artifacts tied them to Macbannin, because "this could get you out of the city -- and the papers."

Leaving Delft's office, they were approached by a member of Bela's former squad, still on the Macbannin case -- Carlao. He asked if they would come with him to have a look at a scene they just discovered, involving a destroyed golem...

DM Notes
Perception and Insight aren't my PCs' strong suit. They rarely think of making other checks when studying bodies/crime scenes, and only occasionally make Insight checks when talking to -- or even interrogating! -- NPCs. I've made oblique suggestions along these lines before, but they're still fairly credulous, even when I feel like incredulity would be called for. I suppose it's better than the opposite problem, and it gives me some great moments. My players were all absolutely stunned by Kaja's posthumous confession.

Questions
Do the dragonborn arsonists make any more appearances, or can I just use them as I see fit?