Suzail (final update)

This is the story of a campaign run using the Neverwinter Nights computer game, which is based upon (but by no means identical to) 3e D&D. It’s my first attempt at producing my own campaign, after a string of reworked modules. It’s set in Suzail, the capital of Cormyr in the Forgotten Realms.

I have been DMing this “group” since they were level 1, but what with players and characters coming and going there remains only one player/character who’s been with me since day one. They’re up to level 6 or 7 as the campaign starts.

NWN is sufficiently different from D&D that I’m not going to post character sheets and the like to avoid causing confusion. But there are a few things that seasoned D&Ders will need to know:

1. There’s no scrying, flying or teleporting in NWN. [To my surprise I actually rather like this.]

2. Most of the roleplaying oriented divination spells (e.g. discern lies) are missing. All the social/RP skills like Knowledge, Bluff and Intimidate have been compressed down to “Persuade” and “Lore”.

3. A six second combat round actually takes six seconds, with the computer doing the donkeywork. Battles rarely last much over a minute and nobody knows exactly what’s going on. Player tactics have to be good, honed to the point of reflex.

4. Everything in the module has to be built before the first player logs in. You can’t spontaneously add a courthouse halfway though the session if somebody gets arrested, you have to foresee that sort of thing.

The characters

Here is the starting cast for the campaign; all of them started at level 6 or 7:

Mabel Ann Gary. NG halfling cleric 5/rogue 2, domains Air and Trickery, cleric of no particular deity. Mabel has the coolest head in the party and the best grasp of the necessities of a situation – e.g. she was the only one who headed the other way when they sent an iron golem hostile, and she got the other 5 back from the dead. She originally set off in search of her wayward nephew Archibald Gary III and his renegade twin Archibold Gary, who has brought great shame on the family by practicing magic as an adventurer instead of something respectable like theft. Her adventuring is largely incidental to the search.

Padreic Ciardhe. LG human paladin 6 of Helm. Padreic is a recent recruit, he heard that the party were battling the Cult of the Dragon in a recently unearthed Netherese ruin and went in to help out. Quiet and affable, he seems to have misplaced the arse-shaped stick which is normally issued to paladins of Helm. He lets his halberd do the talking when appropriate.

Lia Amakiir. NG elf ranger 6. Lia is another quiet one, more interested in sticking unnatural things full of arrows and getting the job done than talking about it. She is friends with a bear, that follows her into the strangest places.

Lafajet Le'Blak. CG elf bard 6. Perfumed fop and endless fount of tactically useful knowledge upon which the party can generally be relied to not capitalise. Favourite phrase: “nobody ever listens to me”. Another a fairly recent recruit, they found him hiding from the rain during their last adventure.

Griseld Oggerman. CG human barbarian 5/fighter 1. Griseld is big and blonde and comes from somewhere cold and northern. She actually did adventure in a chain mail bikini (OK, hotpants and halter) for quite a while, before she found some nice full plate and took a fighter level. Griseld’s main interests are mead and boys. She has been chasing Lafajet, who flees like a kitten. When things get complicated, Griseld writes a list of who/what needs killing on her arm and crosses them off as they fall.

Merlinda, just Merlinda. NG elf druid 7 and worshipper of Mielikki. Merlinda is a nice druid from the high forest with a bit of an attitude when provoked. She’s very elf and very druid. I can’t really sum her up any more than that, she’s just… very elf and very druid. Currently pining for one Lomir, a ranger of the Dalelands who recently captured her heart before they had to part ways. The only original in the party, been here since level 1.

This space reserved

This space reserved for future expansion

Hey, Griselda made an appearance in my recently completed Underdark NWN campaign as well--chain mail bikini and all. Good player.

Once you get this going, you might want to post a link at the NWC main boards.

Session 1 part 1

The party had been hired to do a job for Lord Blake, head of the one of the great noble families of Cormyr. They were to investigate the trolls which had recently started raiding on his land. He suspected to a rival lord, but had no proof and wanted to find out more before he tackled the rival in some way he might regret. So he decided to hire some adventurers to investigate without visibly involving him.

An old friend of Lord Blake's, a merchant and wizard called Gert Fyne, ran into the party during their previous adventure in the Dalelands and made the offer. He told them to travel to Suzail, capital of Cormyr, and meet up with a man named Ahmed in or around the caravan park for further instructions.

The party reached Suzail after two weeks on the road. They arrived at the outer gate to St Aelax field, the walled caravan area tucked against the outside of the main city walls, at about dusk. Everybody was ready for a drink and a bed. Most of them were desperate for a bath as well -- they had a strange obsession with baths.

The main gate into the city had just closed for the night, and it would be closed through the following day for a military drill, but the watch sergeant pointed them to an inn serving the caravan trade. Correctly pegging them as adventurers, he also pointed out a "Services Wanted" notice board.

WANTED

Lost cat. Contact Mrs Miggins if you find Snookums.

Wagon loaders for night shift. Contact Merry & Sons (Factors and Chandlers), behind temple of Waukeen.

Party of capable adventurers of good repute. Enquire temple of Waukeen.

Click to expand...

The guards grinned at each other as the party exclaimed over the cat. They'd seen this before... The party moved on a little and discussed what to do next.

“So what are we doing?” asked Merlinda.

Griseld half-replied, half-mumbled “So many things to do... Let's see if Ahmed guy is around, den go to da inn... den check out da temple... den look for da cat. Sound good?”

They looked around, getting their bearings. Even the commercial outskirts of Suzail were impressive. A twin line of streetlights, made by students at the Cloaktower using permanent light spells, lined the avenue between the outer and inner gates. The caravan park, a great field of cobbles, opened out to the right. Few wagons were lined up since there were no caravans in town. The splendid temple of Waukeen faced it across the road, and sundry buildings and few market stalls lined the walls.

They wandered trough the caravan park, ignoring a drunken dwarf, until they came to the inn. Lafajet took perfumed foppery to new heights by balking at entering an inn called “The Old Boot”, but they went in anyway. They ate, bathed and slept. The next morning Griseld had a bit of fun by dumping a bath full of cold water over Lafajet and his bed to wake him. He vomited in response, and after breakfast and settling the bill the barkeep told them to find another inn in future.

They met the dwarf drunkard outside again and asked him if he knew an Ahmed. He told them he did, Ahmed was a good chap who slipped him some food occasionally to wash his ale down, and he whilst he hadn’t been around lately the bartender at the Boot would know where to find him. “But we’re barred” said Mabel. “Oh aye? Mishelf tae”, said the dwarf, “there wash shome mishundershtanding over a bill. Ale, ale, I need more ale…”

The party weren’t really into initiative or lateral thought this side of noon, so rather than looking for Ahmed they went to the Temple of Waukeen to see about the advert. Merlinda (who had a record of blowing the party’s cover) was true to form – she told the first priest they met that that they were working for Lord Blake. It wasn’t a complete disaster -- impressed by the name, he took them to the high priestess Soippi Bine straight away.

Soippi, a gnome who clearly brooked little nonsense, eyed the party keenly and said “Yes, I think you might do. Your equipment speaks of experience. As you know, we wish to hire some adventurers.”

Griseld studied her own armour intently. “It talks?” She frowned to herself.

Lia uttered a cautious “Yes…” and the party all waited for the priestess to go on. Well, all except Lafajet who exclaimed “I am not for hire, that is dirty.”

Soippi seemed incensed. “Dirty? Who is this fool? Do you know sir that you are in the temple of Waukeen, goddess of trade? Fair work for good money is a pillar of our credo.”

“And?” said Lafajet. She glared at him, challenging.

“Lafa, please behave” hissed Lia. “Don listen to him. He mad today” added Griseld.

It happened that Lafajet was mooching around at the back of the group occasionally juggling healing potions, while Griseld was stood at the front. Soippi leaned towards the barbarian and looked up. “Can you control the brat?” she hissed? “Oh ya” said Griseld.

“Very well, I will outline our proposal.”

She explained that an artefact known as known as “Cool Judgement” had just been stolen from the temple. It was not magical and had no particular powers, though it would be worth a fair amount as a gem. But it was priceless to the temple, since it was formed from a tear of joy that Waukeen had shed at the end of her imprisonment by the demon prince Graz’zt. It looked somewhat like a large pearl set in gold. She had communed with the goddess, and showed them the results.

Was Cool Judgement stolen by servants of a rival deity?
NO

Did they steal for financial profit?
NO

Did they steal to gain influence over the church of Waukeen?
NO

Is the item still in Suzail?
YES

Is it above ground?
NO

Is it below a building with normal access?
NO

Is it defended?
YES

Could the servants of this temple overcome the defenders?
POSSIBLE, BUT UNLIKELY

Grant us your wisdom, o Merchant's Friend.
THE BEST TRADE IS BENEFICIAL TO BOTH PARTIES

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Soippi explained that the last question was ritual, habitually added to the end of all communes with Waukeen, but she interpreted it as advice that the temple should hire professionals to recover the artefact. She added that they had no idea who would have stolen it, but that they must have been able to cast Dispel Magic to get past certain wards.

The Waukenites offered highly specific rewards: 5000 gold for the return of their artefact, 1000 gold to find out who did it and why, and another 1000 to make sure whoever did it “couldn’t try again”.

to be continued...

Session 1 part 2

Session 1 part 2

Swiftly establishing that the high priestess had not seen a cat called Snookums (“How would I know what a cat was called?”) they headed outside. On the temple steps, they tried to figure out what to do first. It was tough. So they went shopping. Fifteen minutes of inconsequential um-ing and ah-ing later, they noticed a sewer entrance just up the road from the merchant’s stall. Well, the commune had said Cool Judgement was underground, and they hadn’t explored any sewers lately…

They headed down into the sewers, killed a few rats, picked a random direction, killed a few dire rats, picked another random direction and ran slap bang into a half-hidden crack in the wall, tucked into a dark alcove, with a slope of rubble leading up beyond it. [In the distance, a DM screamed in outrage at their luck.]

They ignored it, much more interested in the rusty iron door across the corridor. Mabel scanned it for traps, opened it, and put one eyeball round the doorframe. The room was empty. It was also quiet, showed no signs of recent use, and had a single metal door which could be barred from the inside. Plus it didn’t smell as bad as the rest of the sewers. They pegged it as a place to retreat to and rest, and promptly headed off to explore some more sewer. Padreic stage-whispered “Ahem” and pointed to the hidden passage they’d all forgotten in the space of five minutes…


the dungeon level

They clambered up, and found themselves in a dark and unnaturally cold ruin. It looked like a crypt, or catacomb, with a few old coffins in niches in the walls. Everything was covered in a thin rime of frost. In a few places, they found cobwebs under the frost but no frost under the cobwebs. Was the presence of moisture in the air a recent thing?

They were in a short corridor, with a serious metal door at the northern end. A trap and a lock later they walked into a large dark chamber, where a bizarre group stopeed talking and turned to look at them. There was a human woman in full plate, accompanied by a dire wolf, who wore a holy symbol of Silvanus but had the most extraordinary vacant look in her eyes. Beside her stood a minotaur, a very big minotaur with a very big two handed axe. It stared intently. Behind them were another human, obviously a mage of some sort, and an oversized goblin with twin daggers which nobody recognised as a barghest. Off to one side were four thrones set around a brazier, the room’s only source of light.

The staring went on for a few moments, as the party edged into the room and sidled into something resembling a mêlée formation, before a challenge rang out from the cleric.

“Who invades the ministry of frost?” Her voiced oozed command and menace.

Griseld was quick off the mark as usual. “Da what? We here for da rats. You pay your rat tax?”

Lafajet affected insouciance. “Who cares to ask?”

The cleric was unfazed by Lafa’s careful tone of voice, it failed to penetrate her insanity. Once more, her command rang out and echoed off the stone walls. “Bow down in the presence of your betters.”

“Pardon?” asked Lia, as the party exchanged glances. The cleric looked back to her companions. “Meddlers. Kill them.”

Lafajet rapidly began to regret wandering forward to talk, as the minotaur surged into his face with its axe swinging. The barghest slunk behind him looking for a soft target, choosing not to switch to wolf form, and the cleric’s dire wolf companion slammed into the party’s right. Behind them, the cleric and the mage began to cast.

It was over inside 30 seconds. Padreic did what Padreic did best, ignoring attacks of opportunity and charging around the left to get at the mage who went down in three or four swings of the halberd without ever managing to complete a spell. The cleric did get spells off, her Hammer of the Gods slamming into the party twice and hurting them; but someone dealt her a blow that stopped her summoning a dire spider and that was the end of her heavy battle spells. Meanwhile lightning flashed as Merlinda started to unload, blowing half the thrones to pieces in passing. Arrows flew, and a general melee scrap centred on Griseld and her greatsword took the minotaur and barghest down. Most of the party were between one and two thirds of their full health, which meant they could gang up on the cleric and finish her off.

“Ouch!” said Lafajet. “Boy, dat quick” added Griseld.

The rest didn’t waste time talking while they could be looting corpses. They found assorted weapons and armour, not so different from what they had already, and Griseld loaded it up to sell. Lafajet collected a couple of wizard scrolls, but there was no Cool Judgment. There was, however, a key. And there were metal doors east and west.

to be continued...

Session 1, part 3

Session 1 part 3

They tried the east door first. There was a trap on it, a fairly nasty electrical trap that would blast all in range if disturbed. Mabel couldn’t quite figure out how to disarm it. She drank a potion of Fox’s Cunning to see it that did the trick and, ack, it all seemed clearer, but she still couldn’t quite work it out it. Padreic suggested throwing Lafajet at the door, since he’d been moping all day. This seemed to pull him out of his funk for long enough to play a tune. The music crystallised things in Mabel’s mind, and her suddenly nimbler fingers put the insight to good use. The trap soon ceased to function.

Any door like that had to guard something nasty. They buffed, and stood back out of sight to let Mabel open it stealthily. Mabel found a treasure chamber, devoid of enemies. Well, it was a grotty old crypt room with the walls collapsing at one end and rubble all over the floor, but it had a chest in one corner so it was a treasure chamber. Cool Judgement was in the chest, along with assorted valuables. They had it. The party had bypassed any defenders who might be in the crypt thanks to the secret entrance from the sewers. They had their main objective. They could leave and get paid without raising a weapon.

“OK, let's clear dis place out,” said Griseld, “den go back to da temple”.

The other door off the throne room was just as solid and the trap on it was almost as nasty. There was a tangle trap on the floor just inside it as well – it looked like somebody had prepared this room as a place to retreat to and make a stand. They wondered of they’d already dealt with that somebody, or there were more enemies out there in the crypt. The door opened and Lafajet went scouting ahead, his natural elven ability to move and search at the same time speeding things up. After he’d spotted three or four traps and trodden on them before he could bring himself to a halt, they figured a slower moving halfling scout might make more sense.

At the end of a long cold corridor, they found a door with viciously, supernaturally cold air seeping out around it. They discussed casting Protection from Elements as much as they could, but decided to save it. Mabel opened the door and crept in. It was a long, long gallery like room, extending further than she could see, with alcoves off each side. In each alcove stood a zombie, motionless, lightly dusted with frost. She pulled out, and they whispered tactics.

They agreed that Mabel would try turning undead which would either kill the zombies, or scare them back into their alcoves to be casually shot full of arrows, or at least provoke them into attacking the party who could hold the doorway and gang up on one at a time. This plan worked well for the first few seconds – Mabel completely failed to turn them, but they clobbered the first two in the doorway quite successfully. Then they felt that old urge to roll forwards… And roll forwards they did , wading into more and more zombies so that they were eventually fighting five or six at once. The zombies were unarmed but their blows did cold damage. As Solothys, Merlinda’s panther companion found out, they also carried a nasty disease.

Still, the party were more than a match for the zombies. It helped that Griseld’s greatsword did fire damage, which seemed to count for double against these particular creatures. They chewed their way forwards without too much trouble.

At the end of the gallery, three ice zombie lords awaited them.

Each wielded a pair of kamas, with blades that shimmered with cold. As they jerked into life and lumbered towards the adventurers, their spell like abilities manifested as Stoneskin and Spell Mantles[1]. They shrugged off blows and arrows, but heavy pounding from Padreic and Griseld with support and healing from the rest of the party eventually battered their stoneskins off and took them down. Padreic looked the worse for wear at the end, but took it well.

Silence fell. There was nothing left in the room, apart from the remains of the zombies and a few kamas which had lost their cold damage as the zombies died. It was still phenomenally cold, killing the zombies had not lessened the supernatural chill, and they were happy to leave.

That was the last opposition they met, from here on it was exploration and a few traps until they reached the front door. They passed a room filled with metal placards covered in some strange pictographic language. Nobody had any idea how the translate it, and Lafajet’s lore failed to turn anything up for once, but the pictograms seemed to major on ice and storms and snow. Mabel, whose sharp eyes had seen a few crypts before, spotted that while most of these were hundreds of years old one was new, perhaps a year old. It looked like this place had been abandoned for centuries but reoccupied in the last year.

The party really needed to rest but it was just too cold. They found the stairs up, which led into a small tower that seemed well preserved. There was a chain ladder leading further up, but they left it for later and cautiously headed out the heavy stone door. Outside, they were amazed to find themselves back in St Aelax field. They were stood outside an abandoned looking tower in the northwest corner that nobody had really noticed before. The caravan park was just south, people were wandering around the streets, and the party tripped over their pet drunken dwarf who was sleeping in the doorway. He seemed terrified, and rambled something about them walking out of a building with no door. They dismissed his ravings, currently more interested in moving than thinking, and went back to the Temple of Waukeen.

High Priestess Soippi was delighted to receive her artefact. She listened to their story and paid them 5000 gold for retrieving it. She also told them the story of the tower. Apparently, it had once been home to the “Ministry of Frost”, a group of four wizards specialising in cold magic who had been killed 250 years before. It had been sealed up in some way that was meant to trap their spirits (implying that somebody knew there would be spirits to be trapped). Nothing had been heard of the Ministry for 250 years, but when they mentioned the new placard Soippi remembered a minor earth tremor the year before. Perhaps it had opened the entrance from the sewers and somehow freed these spirits.

She speculated that they had possessed the sundry adventurers and ne’er-do-wells – everything from a cleric of Silvanus to a minotaur – who’d wandered in since. If it was the ministry, or rather their spirits, who’d stolen Cool Judgment then their reasons were unfathomable. Apparently the wizards were not noted for their sanity whilst alive, so guessing their motives now would be futile.

She also mentioned that the doors and windows to the building were false, and there was no entrance to it from St Aelax field, but local legend had it that the door somehow became “more real” in extremely cold weather. The party didn’t mention that they’d left the building via the front door.

Griseld seemed to think that they’d earned the other 2000 gold, but Soippi reminded them that they hadn’t cleared the whole building and were only really guessing at the nature of their opposition. The priests of the merchant god drove hard bargains. She offered to pay the other 2000 more if they’d thoroughly clear out the tower and bring back any other evidence they might find. They were welcome to rest in the temple first.

The party sold off their loot, and prepared for their return to the tower.

[1] Meta: Spell Mantle is an NWN level 7 mage spell absorbing the next d8+8 levels of incoming spells. The zombies were rigged to wield kamas with 1d8 additional cold damage, but to drop plain kamas on death.

Next week, session 2

Re: Session 1, part 3

Morte said:

The zombies were rigged to wield kamas with 1d8 additional cold damage, but to drop plain kamas on death.

Click to expand...

Gah... such a simple idea, why didn't I ever think of that? I use a lot of tweaked monsters (I liked the ice zombies ), but this had never occurred to me. As it is, I often don't engage drops for monsters that occur more than once, otherwise the party inventories fill up fast with loot.

*yoink!* *yoink!*

Another fun thing to do is to put a permanent VFX effect on a monster at the end of its OnSpawn script. With creative use of effects, you can effectively get a lot of new "looks" off a tried-and-true model.

Finally, do you have a script that keeps a log of the conversations in-game, or do you just keep notes/have a good memory?

Great to see a NWN story, looking forward to more.

Lazy

Scenes from pre-production

Sion Jr'enesh, twinked out level 20 master rogue used for testing the module logic, casually dispatches the ice zombie lords...

Re: Re: Session 1, part 3

Lazybones said:

Gah... such a simple idea, why didn't I ever think of that? I use a lot of tweaked monsters (I liked the ice zombies ), but this had never occurred to me. As it is, I often don't engage drops for monsters that occur more than once, otherwise the party inventories fill up fast with loot.

Click to expand...

Yep, though I was more concerned about money. Those kamas are worth about 10,000gp each at toolset prices. Dropping six of them in a module where the merchants buy at 50% would have tripled or quadrupled the haul for this subquest. More money than I wanted to give out for the work done. So I made it that their additional cold damage was some supernatural power of the room they were used in, and dropped plain kamas.

I did inch the zombies' challenge ratings up a bit to allow for the fancy weapons, so the players got some recompense via XP rather than GP.

Another fun thing to do is to put a permanent VFX effect on a monster at the end of its OnSpawn script. With creative use of effects, you can effectively get a lot of new "looks" off a tried-and-true model.

Click to expand...

You haven't met my 14 year old ghost paladin?

Well, she's the 150 year old ghost paladin of a 14 year old half-orc girl who was given as a sacrifice by her village to ensure that the rest of the village could have children. Built as an adult female gnome with a permanent ghostly visage effect in her OnSpawn script. The left hand version is from the toolset and the right hand version is from my module "Peaceful Silence" which I never ran becuase I realised that it needed about 4 DMs.

Finally, do you have a script that keeps a log of the conversations in-game, or do you just keep notes/have a good memory?

Click to expand...

The v1.27 patch added an option for users to log client chat to the "logs\nwclientLog1.txt" file. The setting in the nwnplayer.ini file is:
[Game Options]
ClientChatLogging=0

Chnage the 0 to 1 to enable logging. If you have everybody on party talk, as I do in my Tuesday game, you'll get all dialogue.

Great to see a NWN story, looking forward to more.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I'm about half way through your Wild West story, BTW, and enjoying it.