ZEITGEIST [Zeitgeist] Chronicles of Unit 42

I like the flavor of the locals coming to the group's aid. As usual, thanks for the update.

Yeah, I wanted them to understand that the people of the city know who they are, and that they are heroes, but also that the doctor is kind of a folk legend to them. It gave it a kind of Indiana Jones feel, when the kids all rushed in to save him from getting shot, and I think they appreciated that.

No game this week, I've got a wedding shower to attend (my own!), so I'll have an extra week to prepare the strange warehouse encounter and maybe the Dawn Square incident.

I'm trying to find a way to work a reference to the fey titans into Skyseer, so that my players will understand the importance of the Voice of Rot showing up in the next module.

I'm thinking maybe they'll find some kind of really old book, possibly a children's storybook, that has magical properties. The story is about a young girl traveling through the forest with the aid of the fey titans, though she is unaware of their assistance.

The book is a wondrous item, however, and grants daily power to whoever holds it. Maybe a re-roll when an action point is used? I want this to be something important-feeling. Something they'll want to make sure they keep, so maybe if they have it on them when they meet the Voice of Rot, he is a bit more deferential to the person carrying it?

I don't know. What do you guys think of this idea? What can I do to make sure it is very cool flavor-wise, and just cool enough mechanically that they'll want to keep it?

She Who Writhes is a kraken-like entity. Perhaps the young girl was fleeing monsters to the north, trying to cross the Avery Sea and reach what is now Risur, when her ship was attacked. She Who Writhes destroyed it and took all the men as playthings and lovers, drowning them under the sea. The girl and her mother drifted to the bayous near what is modern Flint

The Voice of Rot is a giant pale serpent with a single glowing eye. It crept up in the night and captured the girl's mother, then spoke from the darkness and told her she must do him a service if she wanted her parents back. If she could bring him a book from Granny Allswell, the Voice of Rot would release her mother and retrieve her father from She Who Writhes.

The Voice of Rot warns her not to try to deceive him. The Fey Titans, he says, can tell when a lie is told.

Father of Thunder is a massive bison/gazelle with horns protruding all across his body. Everywhere he travels storms follow, and lightning regularly strikes the long horn on his nose. The young girl had to cross the stormy plains to reach the lair of Granny Allswell, but she saw so many trees blackened by lightning, so she dared not cross on her own. She had a gourd of beer her father had made, and was about to take a drink to calm her nerves. But the moment she opened it she heard the tromp of hooves approaching, booming like thunder. The Father of Thunder, his herd in tow, laughed joyfully and asked for the beer. She gave it to him, and he drank, and fell into a stupor.

The next morning the Father of Thunder had forgotten all about her, and it went on about its marching across the plains, not realizing that the young girl was riding on its back, protected from the storms because every bolt of lightning would strike the beast's horn.

Granny Allswell is a giant goblin-like matron, who presided over a warren of caves filled with goblins, filled with fire and music. Every cave leads to her lair. The young girl snuck in, hid herself by dancing the same wild dances the goblins performed, and managed to steal the book, thus depriving goblin-kind with civilization, which is why they're still savage to this day. (The book would be written on vellum, not paper, and probably gorgeously illuminated. Think the Book of Kells.)

She emerged from the warren through a completely different cave, into a forest.

The Ash Wolf was master of a mighty pack that hunted in the woods, and when people saw forest fires they would say it was the Ash Wolf out on a hunt, killing everything, even trees. The young girl flees the goblins through the Ash Wolf's domain and is pursued, but when the titan catches up with her she holds up the book, whose cover has transformed to wolf fur. The Ash Wolf sniffs it, then lets the young girl go and instead turns back to fight off the goblins, thinking they are pursuing one of its children.

She returns to the sea, but does not go to the Voice of Rot, for she realizes that the book changes form to match wherever it goes. She tucks it under her arm and dives into the ocean, and scales cover her body, letting her swim and breathe underwater. She slips past She Who Writhes, who has exhausted herself in an orgy with the sailors, and she finds her father trapped in a field of stinging sea urchins. She goes through them without being harmed, and pulls him free. But this awakens She Who Writhes, who will never allow any of her playthings to leave her grasp.

The girl and her father swim as fast as they can to the bayou, and when the Voice of Rot comes out to retrieve the book he so desires, the girl tells She Who Writhes that it was the Voice of Rot who sent her on her mission. This is a truth, if not the whole truth, but She Who Writhes believes as the girl intended and sets upon the serpent.

In the confusion the girl and her family are able to escape inland. She Who Writhes defeats the Voice of Rot, banishing him from the low bayou to the distant high bayou, far from the kraken's domain. The young girl and her family live on, safe in the knowledge that they can defeat any of the beasts of the world that might threaten them.

Playing again today. Guess where they're starting?

OK, I've finally got the write up for the last session ready. We played for a few hours on Sunday, and got through three different combat encounters (the skeletons and the flayed jaguars got split in to two encounters, because my PCs were super paranoid before Sechim's speech).

===

The morning after Unit 42's escape from Leone Quital and his men, they discussed what to do with their time before the skyseer's announcement. Gareth Carter, Reginald Battersea, and Casimiro del Garra chose to spend the morning properly equipping themselves - it had been a while since they had had some rest and a chance to get some new equipment. But, Reynard wanted to check out Dawn Square for any suspicious activity and Victor Bays agreed to join him.

When they arrived, construction of the stage had just completed, and the crowds had not quite arrived, so they were free to investigate whatever they wanted. Specifically, Reynard was still a bit jumpy about the dragonborn arsonists they had run across and wanted to make sure there were no firegems scattered around anywhere. They found nothing of the sort. Reynard shifted into fox-form to chat with the local wildlife and learned from a helpful chipmunk that nothing strange had been going on, except for a strange smell in the air - like burnt engine grease.

Meanwhile, back at RHC headquarters, the others heard their fellow constable Carlao bring a report to Assistant Chief Inspector Stover Delft about an uneasy feeling near Dawn Square, and some reports of a strange smell, like burnt engine grease. Delft recognized this description from Unit 42's reports, so he asked them to check this out, in case something was going down.
They stopped by Dawn Square to pick up the rest of their team, and headed toward the warehouses. After a quick use of Gale's Detect Planar Energies ritual, they were able to follow the shadow trail to a nondescript warehouse that had two of the doors barred from the outside. They chose to remove the barricade and go through one of those doors, instead of the unbarred doors on the other side.

When they entered, they found a group of technicians working in a caged in lab. The technicians seemed quite surprised at their appearance, and ordered their bodyguard - a huge, lumbering golem powered by witchoil - to attack while they made their escape through a rusted iron ring in the floor.
The fight ranged all over the warehouse, and though the golem was tough, Unit 42 proved tougher, and though Carter was unconscious when the monstrosity went down, the rest of the group easily finished it off and revived their leader.

With the golem down, it seemed the technicians could no longer teleport away, and the constables were able to corner them, though they got no real good information from them. They were, however, able to gather up their documents, and learn of the experiments on the jaguars, as well as find a hand-written note. Confused, they turned this evidence in to the RHC, and made their way back to Dawn Square.

They had a few more minutes before the skyseer would arrive and make his announcement, so they decided to do one more cursory look around. Everything seemed normal enough. There was a group of druids set up near the stage, and just to be safe they asked them to move their stuff away. The druids remained silent, and shook their heads at the constables.

They asked again, and again the druids silently refused. So, Carter approached one, and saw it had a mask over his face. He forced the druid into his wagon, and when he did so, the mask fell off, revealing a skeletal face underneath the robes. The unit had uncovered the attackers.

The fight with these skeletons was quick work for the seasoned Unit 42, however, and as they finished off the last one, the skyseer walked by and nodded approvingly. He made his way up to the front of the stage, and as he did so a small child brought a folded up piece of paper to Carter, and told him that "a shadow man told me to give it to you." Carter read it, and contemplated its meaning.

The skyseer began, but before he got very far into his speech, there were screams from the crowd as a pack of skinless, dripping jaguars charged from the fountain behind the stage. Before the constables had a chance to react, they were upon the skyseer and he was down where he stood just moments before.

The jaguars proved much tougher than the skeletons, and by the end of the fight, the constables, the skyseer's body and the stage he once stood on were all covered in a thick layer of viscous, black witchoil while a horrified crowd looked on. The jaguars were defeated, but Nevard Sechim lay dying.
He called out for Casimiro del Garra, whom he knew had a connection with nature, and placed his wrinkled hands on the shaman's forehead, projecting into him the vision he had received. As the dying skyseer left them, Unit 42 was left with more questions than answers.

===

It's a pretty short recap, mostly because I skipped a lot of the details during the combats.

The fight with the golem was fun for me, and the three tiers were a fun twist to the traditional bloodied/non-bloodied thing. That's the way a solo should be written - though, I wish it was a level 4 solo, since my party was level 4 and would have given them a bit more of a challenge. As it was, they were scared, but were never really in any danger of dying.

The jaguars all rolled super high on their initiative, and since I roll everything in front of my players, I didn't fudge anything. So, the result is that Nevard died in the first combat round. It would have been nice if they had a chance to save him, but sometimes that's how the dice work, I suppose.

In two weeks, we'll finally get to Smuggler's Night (which, at this point has very little in the way of plot-relevance, but they don't know that!), and then a meeting with Morgan Cippiano, perhaps, before they confront Macbannin? Should be fun.

We finished up Skyseer Sunday afternoon. I'll post a summary when I get a chance, but between finals this week and preparing for my wedding at the end of the month, it's hard to squeeze in time. I'll get it done soon, though.

It was a great time. The players love this campaign, and they're very excited to pick up again after the new year! Thanks for the great game!

It's been a long time since I've posted anything!

We took a short break after finishing up Skyseer so I could get married and settled in, but next week we will return and begin Digging for Lies. Any advice on running this module from anyone? It seems fairly straight forward at the beginning, but if anyone has run into anything unexpected I might need to know about, that would be great to hear!

Thanks.

When they get to the Voice of Rot, clarify that they'll be tracking the latent Apet energy on the visitor from Gidim, not energy from Gidim itself, because they haven't actually been to Gidim. That way they can track Apet energy all through Flint, but eventually the Gidim finds the seal and is able to cleanse itself of Apet energy, making it so you cannot trace it any farther.

My players got a bit irked because Xambria didn't register as a Gidim, because they thought they were tracking Gidim energy, not Apet energy.

Tip 1 - Make sure you understand the rainbow bridge puzzle room. I thought I did, but it turned out I didn't...

Tip 2 - Make the final poison flood trap as dangerous as you can. There's a lovely deus ex machina moment that will hand any dead players' asses back to them at the end of the encounter and make them feel all creepy and conflicted about being indebted to a rotting serpent.

Tip 3 - While a bit of confusion can add to the fun, Stover Delft is always a useful tool to get the players back on track if they go awry. He was able to steer my players right on two occasions during Digging for Lies:

First of all, they were obsessed with trailing Apet energy, to the exclusion of all else and for some bizarre reason did not think the lead to the second sunken ziggurat was strong enough. Their intention was to focus their efforts in Flint, looking for more obvious trails, until Delft intervened and pointed out that a second ziggurat might unleash yet more aliens!

Secondly, they completely missed the clue at the bottom of Caius Bergeron's letter to Finona Duvall. It took a debriefing session at the end of the adventure to draw their collective attention to that one. (It was actually quite gratifying. They could see that the best lead was in front of them the whole time.)

Tip 4 - Pretend that the Gala of the Ancients encounter is the final encounter of the adventure. (I metagamed here, and referred to it as 'the final encounter' by 'accident'. So sue me.) If the players believe that clever play has helped Xambria to shake off her possession, even better. (This goes some way to explain why the battle is much easier than they expected.) Also, you can beef up the fight with more thoughtforms, only to have them fly/scuttle away when Xambria 'defeats' Sijhen. The reason for all this, is of course that you want them to be off their guard and bring Xambria to RHC HQ without thinking. (Doesn't help that at least one NPC has died in those cells already; my players wanted to take Xambria elsewhere, until one of them suggested that quarantining the alien was a priority.)

Tip 5 - The Thing from Beyond is nasty! Your players will likely have exhausted their resources by this point. Mine almost suffered a TPK - one character died, two were unconscious and swallowed and the remaining two were bloodied. A lucky crit from the party warlock saved the day, but just a couple of rounds more and things would have been very different. (This warning is particularly important if you follow the suggestion to beef up the Gala fight. Felt a bit bad about that dead player for a couple of seconds...)