ZEITGEIST [Zeitgeist] Chronicles of Unit 42

I don't think there is anything wrong with the naval encounters necessarily. I just don't think that's something my group is all that interested in. It's actually a nice theme to tie all the acts together, and it gives a good ruleset to something that pretty badly needed it. This particular encounter is the only one I've found superfluous at all, and really it's just barely that. Mostly, I think I'm just quite eager to get them on the train.

We did it! We finally finished Digging for Lies!

After their fight with Saxby and Carlao's team, Delft brought Unit 42 back to his office to rest and consider their next move. He gave Dima and Carlao a tongue lashing, but told them that if anyone was going to survive this, they would have to pull their weight and help the rest of them stop Sijhen. Only a few seconds later, another flash went off, and they spotted Sihjen, in Xambria's body, working on some sort of ritual in the nearby abandoned subrail tunnel.

So, Gareth Carter led Reginald Battersea, Casimiro del Garra, Carlao and Dima to the subrail tunnel, where they charged Sijhen. He attempted once to talk them down, but they weren't biting, so he instead set his mind to completing the ritual.

He was bloodied after only a round, and he used his psychic abilities to project a copy of himself. One charged after Carter, the other ran to the gold seal and ripped it from the wall, freeing the Thing from Beyond to attack.

What followed was a brutal fight. The constables first focused on taking down Sijhen, and once he was down, Xambria transferred her consciousness to del Garra, who gladly accepted her. The Thing was tough, but with Carlao and Dima's help (specifically, the healing that Dima granted), the unit was able to pull through with no casualties, and Xambria helped del Garra solve the ritual to seal the plane of Apet from the material plane for good.

Afterward, Unit 42 helped Delft with crowd control. Dima and Carlao were arrested, and were to be investigated for their actions. Saxby was dead and Serena was in the hospital with mortal wounds.

A week later, Lord Viscount Nigel Price-Hill held a press conference announcing the promotion of Delft to Chief Inspector and Gareth Carter to Assistant Chief Inspector. During the ceremony, Delft approached all three remaining constables and thanked them, surreptitiously handing each a piece of paper that asked them to meet him at midnight on the Dagger.

There he told them of the beginnings of a plan. They were taking the train.

After their meeting, del Garra spotted two meerkats running across the dock together, into the sunset.

===

So, a few things.

I let Viktor Bays' player (my brother) use Carlao for the encounter against Sijhen and the Thing (though, I wrote him up as a full level 7 fighter) and gave them Dima's stat block from Digging for Lies, as a fifth party member, to make up for the loss of a PC.

As scary as the Thing from Beyond was, it really ended up being pretty easy for them. Partly because they were lucky. He used his prismatic scream twice in one round (because of an action point), targeting the same four people both times (del Garra and his menagerie were all sharing a space with it at the time, and thus untargetable). The first roll, only Carlao was hit (though, all three defenses were hit). The second time, Gareth, Reginald and Dima were all hit, but not Carlao, which meant each person was only hit once. On the next round, they had a few lucky rolls, and del Garra crit the creature, sending him to the final tier before he could use the scream again!

It was still pretty brutal, but no one died. Only Dima was swallowed, but she was quickly spit back out the next round. They were scared, but survived. So that's good.

Next week, we'll be starting a side quest with their custom B-Team. I only anticipate it taking a week or two, since they are enjoying their regular characters so much right now. Here's what the B-Team is looking like, so far:

Human Monk (reflavored like an old-school bareknuckle boxer)
Dwarf warden/fighter (the same player that plays the shifter shaman/monk - he loves hybrids)
Dwarf Runepriest
Gnome Sorcerer

It will be a fun party.

Ran the first session for our B-Team last night.

To refresh everyone, I've decided to let them all make their own character for the B-Team. They are starting as 2nd level characters, and I'll run them through a few sessions now, before we start Always on Time, a few between that and Cauldron Born, and then they'll be using these characters during the B-Team scenes during Cauldron Born, until they meet up with Lorcan Kell (if that indeed happens, of course).

There are four members of the B-Team, with a fifth joining next week, after my wife decided she wanted to join these side adventures, but didn't necessarily want to commit to the larger storyline.

UNIT 16:
Gemma Liefsdottir - female Changeling bard (this is my wife's character, thus she wasn't involved in this week's session, she has a fiddling grig accompanist/arcane familiar)
Gragg Stonesmith - male dwarf runepriest, eschatologist (played by Gareth Carter's player, seems to be the de facto leader for this group as well)
Maggie Bythesea - female human sorcerer (played by Reginald Battersea's player, Maggie looks up to the others as her adopted uncles)
Morgran - male dwarf fighter/warden, spirit medium (played by Casimiro del Garra's player, Morgran loves being up in the middle of it all)
Papa Carl - male human monk, docker (played by the late Viktor Bays's player, the middle aged pugilist Papa Carl runs a pizzeria and assisted Unit 42 with the battle at Axis Island)

For this side quest, I'm running a highly modified version of the Shards of Selune adventure from Dungeon Magazine. I liked it, because it's a city-centric adventure (and I wanted the B-Team's first adventure to take place completely in Flint), and because it relies heavily on the themes from the Neverwinter sourcebook, which took some finagling, but it goes well with what I really like about Zeitgeist so far.

===

Shortly after the battle at the RHC, new Assistant Chief Inspector Gareth Carter was tasked with assembling a new team to help Unit 42 share the load while they prepared for their mission abroad. After an extensive search, he arrived with a motley, but well-rounded crew.

One evening, after the group had been assembled, they gathered at Papa Carl's pizzeria for a drink, and to get to know one another. While they sat on the patio overlooking Parity Lake, three objects, that looked much like shooting stars, fell into the city.

The next morning, Carter called the unit into his office and introduced them to the Skyseer Lady Jasmine. She explained that the three stars were troubling to the skyseers, and she requested that they bring them in, so they could adequately study them, to determine their meaning. One, she said, landed in the swamp near the Battalion, one landed in Parity Lake, and one landed on one of the islands in the Ayers, near an old, abandoned watchtower. They could search for them in any order they wished.

After a brief discussion, the unit chose to go to Parity Lake first. They had been warned that the docker protests had gotten more and more intense, and the news that high ranking RHC officials were corrupt did not help matters. They were also warned to watch for Lorcan Kell's men, who had become more and more brazen in the previous weeks, as if they were unafraid of the law at all.

So, carefully, they headed into the district, keeping their ears open for news of this mysterious "star".

It was easy to learn information, the whole district seemed to be talking about it. Something had landed in the district, and almost immediately a brawl opened to see who would claim it. As they surreptitiously patrolled, they came across a cabbage vendor being shaken down by some of Kell's men - they claimed he owed them money for protection.

The constables were not about to stand by and let this happen, so Maggie stepped up and asked to buy some cabbages, hoping to break the tension up a bit. Instead, the thugs shoved her aside and continued their shake down. So, the rest of the group came over to admire the cabbages, and the crooks, eager for a fight anyway, decided to take their aggression out on these new interlopers. Before jumping in to battle, each took the time to change form, they were all wererats!

The fight was brutal and fought in close quarters. Maggie nearly dropped in the first round after being surrounded by two of the men, and only after Papa Carl knocked one prone was she able to scoot out and climb up a nearby statue to gain some distance from the diseased men. In anger, the thief slashed at the vendor and wounded him gravely.

However, the constables were victorious in the end, and compensated the vendor for the trouble they had caused by giving him the gold they found in the thugs pockets - nearly 300 gp! Thankful, the vendor told them he thought the shard fell near Heward Sechim's factory, close to where all the protests were going on, and the constables made their way.

When they arrived, Papa Carl was approached by and old friend of his - Thames Grimsley. They spoke for a minute about the protests and the recent events in the district, before getting to the matter at hand. Grimsley said he heard about everything, and that after the large brawl a halfling named Palas came out with the shard. Palas and his crew had been absorbed by Kell's guild recently, and the halfling reportedly saw this as his opportunity to get out from under his eye. They had a hideout under the docks near Pine Island.

On their way, the were approached by a pair of twin elf sisters, each carrying an extremely fancy magical sword. They introduced themselves as Sylvara and Ayala, and they were trying to earn their way into an enclave of the Unseen Court by upping their reputation. They asked to have a friendly duel with the party, and they would put their swords up as a wager for the favor.

After a brief discussion, the party agreed. The fight was quick, brutal, and friendly, with the two sides taunting each other, but afterward, when the sisters had been defeated and handed over their swords, the two sides walked away friendly.

===

That's where we stopped for the day. It wasn't a lot, but we started a bit late. I'm trying to incorporate as much of the setting material as I can, and the players seemed to enjoy trying out the new characters. However, I'm already aware of this going too long, so hopefully I can keep the pace up and finish this side quest in just a week or two.

OK. Unit 42 will be back in the saddle this afternoon, God willing, to get started on Always on Time. I'm very excited to start, and I've been binge reading some of the other accounts of it to get myself prepared.

I think we'll be down our swordmage today, so it will be interesting to see how the group works without their defacto leader on hand. Otherwise, it should be interesting to see how much they get in to the planning stage of this game.

I was originally planning on skipping the nautical encounter, but since Gareth won't be there, I'd rather do it, and wait until the group is all together to get them on the train.