WotBS Bill T's Second War of the Burning Sky: Shelter from the Storm [more spoilers than you can shake a stick adorned with ribbons and kerchiefs at!]

[Bill T.]

Dramatis Personae

• Basel, an Innenotdaran (aka grey) elf evoker who has been attending Gabal's school and previously made his living as a baker.
• Dämmek, a human swordswoman with keen senses and a great sword.
• Gusle, a seela bard who recently escaped captivity from a circus. This player has been through the first few chapters already, so she's aware of the seela and can fill Torrent's role as guide.
• Jesús Tillamook, a half-elf cloistered cleric of the Stormbringer Phoenix, a sect of the Stormchaser Eagle that is dedicated to finding the Aquiline Heart so that they can reincarnate the Eagle.
• Crystin and her pet rock Crystal.
• Tiljann.

This is just a summary of the notable points, based on the assumption that the reader is familiar with this adventure. I'll post any players' notes if they type them up.

There was a fair amount of fuss and bother about how the heroes were going to get down the Glaskeel cliffs. Ultimately, the seela bards batted their eyes prettily at one of Timor's experienced underlings to run the HALO jump with them (and gliding the last dozen or so feet on their own), Basel held hands with Crystin and Dämmek, bringing them safely and stylishly to the ground -- but Jesús took a flying leap before anyone could give fair warning, used the West Wind style to immediately catch himself, and then discovered that the descent was much longer than he had anticipated. Oops! Well, another quick application of West Wind style kept him from injuring anything other than his ego.

The heroes buy a sleigh that gets them almost to Bresk, and from Bresk they take a barge to the mouth of the Nasham River. There they learn about a fleet in the Gulf of Dassen. Given their total lack of sailing skills, they forego purchasing a boat and decide to walk instead.

The first people they met in Vidor were the poor refugees -- I figured the refugees would park themselves there in order to get people's attention before they got into Vidor. It worked! The first person they met was a half-giant making tea for the other refugees, and they were able to play on the heroes' sympathies. They decided they needed someone who could deal with wandering the swamps, so they hired Jazelle, a refugee ranger. Since that meant they needed a third boat, they decided to bring along another couple of people. The half-giant warrior (Homer) was their first choice and, since their Goodness got the best of them, they decided they wanted to bring an orphan along -- to which I obligingly declared, "We're all orphans!" The orphan they ended up with was a young soldier who had deserted the Ragesian army and was fleeing to Seaquen. We all decided that she had been nicknamed "Bubbles" by her fellow soldiers, much to her ongoing dismay.

The rest of the session was consumed by the battle with H'andrea, H'andrea, and H'andrea. I ran the encounter fairly closely to what the adventure suggested. The one major change I made was to have H'andrea use her darkness SLA to hide the boat rather than obscuring mist (the mist should sit still, not stick with the boat). Everyone on watch was affected by the enthrall spell, so the boat got close to shore unimpeded for H'andrea to start casting spells.

The battle started as brutal as the last time I ran it; between the slow and the stinking cloud, several people were severely incapacitated. H'andrea and Crikey probably attacked too soon, but they were able to bring several people down. Most of those went down in the water, which had me worried -- I had assumed that Indomitability's Boon would keep them from getting killed, but I had forgotten about drowning. Jazelle did drown (so now they're lost in the middle of a swamp in the everlasting drizzle), but after a miracle dice roll, Jesús managed to resuscitate Bubbles after nearly drowning himself, only surviving thanks to a implausibly fast dash into the water by Crystin. Basel, meanwhile, got caught out by himself near the witches' boat. He got banged a couple times with the torchstaff but managed to grease the interior of their boat, causing both witches to lose their footing. He then foolishly set the grease on fire, partly because he mistakenly thought the boon would protected him and because he didn't know that these witches weren't made of wood.

Eventually, H'andrea and Crikey succumbed to the heroes' blows, and the witches ran out of useful spells. They tried to make it around to the far side of the island in order to try a final casting of sleep in hopes of salvaging something useful from the night's expedition, but Basel cleverly positioned an earthen grasp in their path that arrested their boat, and Homer and one of the seela were able to wade in and knock H'andrea unconscious, which lead H'andrea to surrender.

For those who read my description of the last time I ran this encounter, since destroyed by the web site upgrade, the score was very similar -- one redshirt and the attacking druid dead, the attacking cleric unconscious, and the attacking wizard surrendered.

Frustratingly, I forgot H'andrea's prescient sense -- again! -- when I ran this encounter, but I also spaced Gusle's use of Spellbreaker's Song. Equal-opportunity amnesia, I guess.

We probably won't play again until March.

Edits: WotBS prefix, grammar, layout.

 

[Bill T.]

Dramatis Personae

• Basel, an Innenotdaran (aka grey) elf evoker who has been attending Gabal's school and previously made his living as a baker.
• Dämmek, a human swordswoman with keen senses and a great sword.
• Gusle, a seela bard who recently escaped captivity from a circus. This player has been through the first few chapters already, so she's aware of the seela and can fill Torrent's role as guide.
• Jesús Tillamook, a half-elf cloistered cleric of the Stormbringer Phoenix, a sect of the Stormchaser Eagle that is dedicated to finding the Aquiline Heart so that they can reincarnate the Eagle.
• Crystin and her pet rock Crystal.
• Tiljann.
• Homer, a half-giant refugee they picked up in Vidor.
• Bubbles, a young half-orc Ragesian deserter they picked up in Vidor.

In the name of "social distancing", we used Google Hangouts to get together. It worked pretty well -- I had a laptop set up so that I could switch between the built-in camera, pointed at the my wife and I, and the game table with the mat and miniatures we didn't need. The big down side was I kept shouting at the computer to make sure I was heard, so my throat's still a bit sore 48 hours later.​

The heroes interrogate H'andrea, asking her why they attacked, where's their prisoner, etc. They give her plate armor to Homer, and her holy symbol, a pendant depicting the Tidereaver, to Jesús. H'andrea extracts a promise from Gusle and others to be let go after she leads them to the witches' prisoner.

They go to H'Andreas' island. Gusle browbeats H'andrea into shooing away the skeletons. She then proceeds directly to the shed Katrina is being held in, frees her, and takes an instant disliking to her.

Yes, again, alas. This is the player who's gone through these adventures once before, and her character didn't like Katrina the last time, either.​

They then explore the rest of the sheds. Gusle becomes ill when she learns what the cauldron was used for. They manage to get full details from H'andrea regarding her contact in Seaquen and a description of the torchstaff and the Tidereaver's Tears. H'andrea is eager to get on the heroes' good side for some mysterious reason. :-D

After dumping the witches' cauldron in the swamp, the heroes argue about what to do with H'Andrea and H'Andrea. Gusle and Dämmek insist they should keep their word. Katrina and (to a lesser extent) Basel insist the evil witches are a threat that needs to be eliminated. Gusle eventually turns a blind eye as Basel annd Katrina dump the two witches into a burning shed.

Our group sometimes has problems with serious role-play between characters bleeding out into the interactions between the players, but they -- OK, we -- did a good job arguing about the morality of killing the witches without taking it personally.​

Further travel to Seaquen is uneventful, in large part to the map Katrina thought to purchase before entering the swamp. They sell their boats for 12 cp and walk into town. Gusle suggests they find Lee. So, they make their way to the harbormaster's office. Gusle is being coy about who their friend of Lee's is, so Katrina demands to know why Torrent's name is a big secret. That gets the party directions to Lee's place.

The meeting with Lee goes pretty much as expected. Lee promises to arrange a meeting. After meeting with Lee, they stop for a bite to eat. The overhear townsfolk arguing about the influx of refugees and Simeon's competence. While this is going on, Jesús notices a giant eagle with a rider fly by outside. He pops out to look and is told that that's Laurabec and her wondrous steed.

They track down Paradim's shop and are appalled yet impressed by what he's doing.

They decide to put together a sting in hopes of catching Nebekulus. When the first scope out the fish market in the early afternoon, they hear someone shout "fire!" They rush to help with the bucket brigade, and the fire is put out with only minimal damage, but no one around seems to have much to say beyond the fact that fires have been fairly common along the south harbor, so they don't have idea of what might be behind the fires.

Then again, neither do I! The text says that several recently-built homes have been destroyed near the south harbor, but doesn't give a hint as to who or what is behind it. Is the halfling crime syndicate demonstrating what happens to people who don't keep up their "insurance" payments? Or is Pickens right about the Lyceum's dire motives? Or is it simply that the recent explosion in home-building has resulted in lax enforcement of building codes?​

During the sting, a gnome on the street recognizes the candy-stripe staff Jesús is carrying as one of Erdan's products and asks him if he's seen his sister. His sister contacted him from Gate Pass a few days ago and he wonders if the heroes might have run into her on the way. Obviously that couldn't happen, but the gnome also got some information on the war's goings-on in Gate Pass which he shares with Jesús. However, Nebekulus doesn't make an appearance, and the heroes eventually give up.

I figured that Brutus would scope out the market as himself before casting disguise self to meet H'andrea.​

The heroes decide to buy tents and pick a spot near where Homer has managed to ingratiate himself with some of the refugees. After wandering around the camp a bit, Tiljann discovers that the Wayfarers are holding auditions for singers and wants to go now now now. The heroes have to remind her that she has to wait until daytime. The audition itself goes well, with Gusle providing background vocals ("ooh, a sister act!" says Giorgio, leering), although Gusle, opposed from the start and offended by Giorgio's heckling, is skeptical that the Wayfarers will treat her well, and promises to come to Tiljann's aid if she ever feels mistreated.

She played Gusle's backstory up to the hilt here, and no one was quite brave enough to ask why she was so worried that they'd cage Tiljann and possibly herself. Eventually, we did come to an agreement that the Wayfarers take a very dim view of the travelling carnival that had held Gusle captive before she escaped in Gate Pass.​

The meeting with Lee goes very well. Somehow, Katrina misses the meeting, yet the heroes thouroughly impress Simeon with their abilities as they describe their efforts to get the case of vital military intelligence, their having put out the fire forest, and the information they shared about what the H'andreas three were up to. Simeon invites them to come by should they come up with any additional information and welcomes them to the resistance. They have lunch at the Lyceum, where they learn that Crystin has been given a position on the Lyceum's staff and Katrina has parleyed her spelldueling talents into a private dorm room at the Lyceum. They ask the Lyceum for help in tracking down Nebekulus, which gains them the loan of a hat of disguise. Now Nebekulus is sure to turn up!

Well, maybe not so sure, but the dice sided with the heroes and he came the next evening to see if H'andrea was there.​

So, while Gusle makes like a batty witch in full plate, Dämmek and Basel grab a bite to eat and Jesús preaches that the Flamebringer Phoenix will be reborn and that no one will ever die.

OK, this was an new twist on the Phoenix. Resurrection and life eternal? Seems familiar, somehow.... ​

Nebekulus does indeed come to get the Tear. Gusle does an excellent H'Andrea imitation, to Nebekulus's annoyance, but the transaction is ultimately accomplished. He then wanders off, with Dämmek carefully persuing him and the rest of the heroes carefully pursuing her.

Dämmek loses sight of Nebekulus in the crowd, but fortunately the raven familiar the Lyceum sent with the heroes doesn't. It points her down a narrow alleyway. When she enters, she bumps into a surprisingly polite half-orc. On a hunch, she turns and follows the "half-orc" rather than proceeding down the alley.

Amusingly, the heroes decided that the half-elf had disguised himself as a half-orc rather than the other way 'round. They were also convinced that he was in cahoots with Paradim.​

I probably let them get away with a little bit much here -- my theory was that Brutus dismissed his disguise out of sight and proceeded on his way, but Dämmek couldn't have been sure of that. The smart thing would have been for Dämmek to continue down the alley while the raven followed the half-orc, but I'd sort of committed to the half-orc really being Brutus by that point.​

They "chase" proceeds along the south edge of Seaquen proper as the half-orc proceeds east. Eventually, though, he breaks away from the southern border road and heads down a trail to the east. At that point, fearing they'd be spotted anyhow, the heroes attack. The half-orc reads a scroll and makes haste to the east, but a few pot shots with missile weapons and one hard hit with a seeking ray and the half-orc goes down in a heap.

Drat! Brutus rolled a 20 to notice being trailed, so I figured he would make his way to the Battle Royale, hire a whore, cast disguise self again, and sneak off unnoticed. I didn't realize they'd get twitchy when Brutus got out of the city, although they may have been worried that the raven would lose site of him as night fell.​

They haul Brutus to the Lyceum, where he is quickly put under lock and guard. One lesser vigor and a firm intimidate later and Brutus is answering all their questions -- including, rather belatedly, telling them his name. He told them he was getting the Tears for Lee, that his brother and several others were also involved, and that he didn't know much else.

The step outside and, in a discussion with Gilver Fern, decide that the council meeting would be the best place to capture Lee just because of all the firepower available.

Well, now, that sure shakes things up! My one escape hatch is Brutus's familiar. I didn't notice the familiar, so the heroes must not have either. The familiar will know that Brutus is in trouble and give the alarm to Setales. Setales can then take the familiar to Lee, who can then speak with the familiar to determine that Brutus is captured. Lee, Setales, and Brutus's other contacts can now go into hiding.​

Anyone have any other ideas on how I might proceed from here? How might Lee be hindered by having to go into hiding? Also, Brutus was supposed to participated in the fight aboard the Wayfarer's Theatre -- now what?​

We plan to play next on Easter Sunday.

 

[Tormyr]

Lee can hide out at the pyromancer's tomb and fall off the divination radar.

It sounds like the heroes did really well. In my opinion, Brutus should be replaced by a generic mercenary roughly half his difficulty.

 

[RangerWickett]

The fires are caused by flaming elemental rats.

 

[Bill T.]

@Tormyr, thanks for the reminder about divinations. That never occurred to me, although these newbie players probably wouldn't think of it either. In fact, that might be a good place to start next session -- Simeon can dragoon the PCs into helping to search for Lee using a wand of locate person.

As for the fight on the Theatre, I just realized that the first time they saw Brutus he was with Paradim. Having Setales arrive with a Majestic Creation in tow would tie things together nicely. That gives them an opportunity to have a (likely unproductive) confrontation with Paradim.

@RangerWickett, the adventure says the fire-touched rats are causing the fires on the north coast, but I didn't think the steam conduits the rats used got down to the south harbor. The text is a bit inconsistent now that I look more closely -- the north coast description describes the fires as something normally reserved for the south shore, but the south shore describes the fires as recent there, too -- "recent" versus "more recent", I guess. Mind you, this is the adventure for the 3.5 rules, so maybe the concept was tightened up in later releases. Now that I think about it, it actually makes it easier to run if they're all from the same source.

 

[Bill T.]

Dramatis Personae

• Basel, an Innenotdaran (aka grey) elf evoker who has been attending Gabal's school and previously made his living as a baker.
• Dämmek, a human swordswoman with keen senses and the Living Blade.
• Gusle, a seela bard who recently escaped captivity from a circus. This player has been through the first few chapters already, so she's aware of the seela and can fill Torrent's role as guide.
• Jesús Tillamook, a half-elf cloistered cleric of the Stormbringer Phoenix, a sect of the Stormchaser Eagle that is dedicated to finding the Aquiline Heart so that they can reincarnate the Eagle.

We played on Easter, as expected, but I didn't type up the notes until two teeks later. I'd managed to convince myself that not much had happened but, now having typed them up, realize a fair amount did!​

After wrapping up their interrogation of Brutus, the heroes return to camp. On their way there, a guard clumsily starts up a conversation. "So, how about this weather, eh?" After more stilted dialogue, the guard eventually gets to why he approached the heroes: "Somebody's looking for you...." They ask for directions and eventually continue to camp.

In the morning, Gusle tells the heroes of the strange dream she had. She dreamt of an elderly elf who has been studying the vital military intelligence. He describes what he's discovered (text in ciphered infernal, maps and architectural drawing, mysteries terms "scourge" and "infernal", etc.). When he is done, he starts to fade away but thensuddenly turns solid and sends Shealis's and his condolences regarding Leeta's death.

I like giving these subtle hints, but at too often frustrated when the PCs don't even ask the follow-on questions -- the questions, in this case, is how and why he might have known Leeta had died. Maybe I just like being frustrated.​

As they finish discussing Gusle's dream, Katrina bursts in. "You guys sure have lit a fire under Simeon -- he can't find Lee anywhere. Here, each of you take a turn with this wand of locate person and we'll work our way through the refugee camps to see if we can find him." Nope, no Lee.

They go back to Simeon to report. He explains that he realized there was another question no one had asked Brutus, "What will your familiar do?" Their guess is that the familiar went to Lee and they learned from it, somehow, that it informed Lee of what happend to Brutus.

Basel has the clever(?) idea of looking for Lee's corpse using locate object, so the heroes get to spend a bunch more time sweeping the camps. Katrina manages to opt out of this search. They then go to Lee's place, as Simeon has decided that someone should keep watch on the place should Lee try to return.

Not to mention he was appalled that the brave heroes were huddling in a tent among all the refugees!​

They scope Lee's place out: There's a parlor and small kitchen on the upper floor, and circular staircase down to a floor with a bedroom and storage space that had barrels, and built-in cistern, and a couple of crude places to sleep, and a trap door leading down to a large undersea cavern. In the cavern they find a bullseye lantern lit using continual flame lying on the pebble beach.

Ultimately, they decide to chase down their one remaining lead, the place they think they'll meet the person looking for them. They meet an obsequious butler, who explains that Lady Jess is away for the moment, that he doesn't keep her schedule, and that he'll leave a message. They turn to leave and bump into a woman. Dämmek suddenly pipes up, "Oh, wow, fancy meeting you here! It's wonderful to see you again!"

Dämmek had been charmed by Jeszka before they turned around, and I was able to communicate this to her without the rest of the group knowing. I didn't expect her to automatically greet her as someone she knew! She threw us all for a loop, but she carried it off really well.​

The banter is pleasant, but eventually the woman, who identifies herself as the Lady Jess they seek, eventually asks about the case they were supposed to be bringing to Seaquen. Dämmek claims ignorance (as she was ignorant, having joined the heroes well after they'd seen the case). The conversation morphs into game of "Who can get a straight answer out of whom?" as Basel and Gusle are unwilling to say anything about the case and Jess is unwilling to go into details about herself. Eventually, Jesús gets fed up and spills the beans about the case. Gusle decides they urgently need to see Simeon, so Jess promises Dämmek they'll get together for dinner and the heroes leave amiably.

Aww, no battle with Jeszka at Lee's place.​

On the way to the Lyceum, Gusle and Basel talk about Dämmek behind her back (in Sylvan!), coming to the conclusion she was under some sort of magical influence, and describe what they learned to Simeon.

Tiljann meets the heroes back at Lee's place, and then Katrina arrives for the promised spelldueling. The duel with Basel is unsurprisingly quick and brutal. Katrina gets a little more pedagogical with Jesús, then she manages to trip over her own feet casting her first spell. The fight is long and drawn out, and eventually Gusle, the appointed referee for the duel, gets bored, declares the duel a draw, and decides it's time to go back upstairs and party.

Spelldueling didn't go at all well. Jesús has the feat, but the player is still very noob and continues to have trouble with basic combat mechanics, so he quickly got frustrated. While he was away from the table the rest of us decided to abandon the duel and move on. We also had technical problems: the computer they were using to Google Hangout decided to get confused about colors and had to be rebooted in the middle of the spellduling.​

The next morning, the heroes learn that Jess is really the devil Jeszka. They get to meet her in her true form, where she rails to be let out. Dämmek is upset and asks Jeszka to explain why Jeszka lied to her, as no one thought to try to dispel the charm, much to everyone's frustration -- including Jeszka's! Eventually, they manage to come up with a list of questions that they want her to answer before they have the Lyceum dismiss her. Simeon agrees to let her go, but Gusle is less convincing with Jeszka and is unable to persuade her to reveal what other Ragesian agents in town she's aware of.

I'm really torn here. In some respects, I'd very much like the heroes to learn about the Ragesians with the teleportation anchor. I'm not sure how useful the information would be, but they might be crazy enough to try deliberately triggering the anchor to get at the Ragesians, which would really turn the adventure on its head, one way or the other. I also doubt they'll ever take advantage of Jeszka's offer to serve them for free. It seem a bit out of character for her after the hard-nosed bargaining about what she would tell them. Anyone have any ideas? I'm tempted to rewind, have her answer the question, and retract the offer, since the only other thing that happened was that​

Gusle, Basel, and Dämmek meet Tiljann at the dock, taking her up on her offer the preceding evening to let them tour the Wayfarer's Theatre. It's a quick tour.

 

[Lylandra]

awww... Lee busted and you have no Torrent in your party?

Also, I don't think that Jess knows too much about the other Rags. She's been sent specifically after the party by Guthwulf and the whole "she didn't go after them earlier because Teleport anchor yadda yadda" is more of a meta reason for her to show up in Seaquen and not in the wilds (where she'd rbe a risk of TPKing the party).

So maybe go for a compromise: She does know that teleporting more than x distance would drag her off to someplace, but she doesn't know where. She didn't want to risk trying it out. Which should be alarming to the party and convince them that teleporting into the unknown blindly would be a bad idea if even an erinyes is scared of doing so.

 

[Bill T.]

Thanks, @Lylandra, for reminding me to think about the point of Jeszka's presence. I think my players have pretty much understood both points -- they found out about Ragesian agents through there own diligence, and none of them are even thinking about teleporting. With those two messages under their belts (not to mention a heaping handful of xp), Jeszka has served her purpose.

On to the council meeting! Well, hopefully sometime this month....

 

[Bill T.]

Dramatis Personae

• Basel, an Innenotdaran (aka grey) elf evoker who has been attending Gabal's school and previously made his living as a baker.
• Dämmek, a human swordswoman with keen senses and the Living Blade.
• Gusle, a seela bard who recently escaped captivity from a circus. This player has been through the first few chapters already, so she's aware of the seela and can fill Torrent's role as guide.
• Jesús Tillamook, a half-elf cloistered cleric of the Stormbringer Phoenix, a sect of the Stormchaser Eagle that is dedicated to finding the Aquiline Heart so that they can reincarnate the Eagle.

We played on the 25th of May and had a very unproductive session. The heroes attended the council session, for starters. I had the players taking the roles of the various councilors, as with the last group. The players seemed to get into it, but didn't have many questions afterwards.

Then, as a bit of retcon, I went back to the negotiations with Jeszka, retracted the offer of 9 free days of service, but did tell them about the teleportation anchor. The playrs then burned at least half an hour trying to determine how to find the anchor. You warned me, @Lylandra!

The rest of the session was mostly composed of chasing various dead ends. They did manage to spot a rat, accompanied by an unexpected glow, scurrying away from a house that caught on fire. It ran under a neighboring building, a furniture shop, so they asked a bunch of questions, but didn't go so far as to look around under the shop.

Eventually, after asking to be lead by the nose, they found their way to the Lyceum in search of a ranger and/or diviner. They met with Professor Vett, who wanted his creatures retrieved, but, more importantly, Drimma, who begged them to help rescue her shipmates. After not seeing a fire the next morning, they set off for the Milsoven.

We play again today!

 

[spinmd]

Great session summaries!

I am running a WOTBS 5e campaign, and we are currently in the middle of the Mad King's Banquet. The players are pretty combat oriented so they started to get a little bored when they first reached Seaquen. I have the 3e and 4e versions of WOTBS as well, so I added the beginnings of a criminal enterprise led by Cernaban Gremman and used some of the White Wyrm encounters from the 4e version. That broke up the chase random leads/investigation/meeting people section before the action heats up enough that the players didn't end up making a fight happen with the town guards, or the Lyceum Academy, or the Magistrate.