WotBS Bill T's WotBS campaign, reincarnated

Bill T.

Explorer
Adventure IV, Prolog

Dramatis Personae

  • Amelia, a human spellthieving acetomancer
  • Erielle, an elven archer ranger
  • Kjolmar, a dwarven dungeoncrashing deepwarden
Amelia hails from Gate Pass -- she is, in fact, the Katrina's and Rantle's sister. She briefly attended Gabal's school, but was invited to look to study elsewhere when her unusual study techniques were discovered (to be blunt about it, she spellthieved her way through an exam). She have plenty of free time to go partying with Fitz (the cleric of Wee Jas from the previous party), though. She charmed her way into a party headed to Shahelsti, lost said party in one of their cities, but ultimately made her way to Calanis where she hopped a ship to Seaquen. There, she convinced the Lyceum to accept her as a transfer student. Although they eventually uncovered the ruse, she unusual approach to spelldueling and her "hands-on" approach to magic and magic items secured her a minor position a the Lyceum.

Having Amelia related to Katrina makes me a bit nervous. Lylandra's example has inspired me to be brave, though!​

Erielle (or maybe just Eriel, but pronounced the same either way) is a ranger from Shahalesti. She shoots things with her bow. She's spent the last month or so guiding refugees through the swamps to Seaquen. Some of them, it turns out, found their way to the Lyceum, so they have her respect.

Kjolmar is a clanless dwarf in dreadlocks decorated with feathers, beads, and small animal bonus, some of which might have significance but some of which is certainly just debris. He's rough, uncouth, and antisocial. Unknown to most people, he was cast out by his clan in Gate Pass when he sided with an elf contrary to the clan's interests. He was banished for doing so, so he was forced into life as a mercenary. Eventually, he regained something of a name for himself when he joined the Gate Pass Resistance 40 years ago when Ragesia first invaded the city. His combat effectiveness, combined with his unwavering dedication to the cause, earned him a place with the resistance, and he has spent the last several decades popping up to help whenever Gate Pass was being threatened. He has regained the respect of his clan, but is still officially outcast in order to protect the clan. When not in the service of Gate Pass, he has spent some time as a mercenary. He briefly encountered Katrina while in the employee of a Ragesian fort. They fought giants together, but Katrina scared him more the giants.

Warm-up: Encounters In Seaquen

Our first encounter is a simple spellduel -- Katrina and Amelia start the dueling off with a sister act, refereed by Kjolmar. Amelia hammers away at Katrina with her rays, hoping to score a sneak attack with which to steal a spell from Katrina. Katrina mostly sticks to her offensive spells, although she did have to become invisibility at one point during the duel. She also manages to immolate Kjolmar at least once -- Kjolmar will be having nightmares of burning to death for months. Amelia manages to use grease to bring Katrina down once. Finally, after much back-and-forth between the two duelists, Amelia gets close enough for Katrina to immolate the both of them, knocking them two women unconscious. While technically a tie, the audience, aware of Katrina's reputation, reacts as though Amelia had won the duel.

Having Katrina throw the spellduel was harder than I had expected. In part this was because Amelia didn't attempt to use any of the spelldueling tricks like readying or bluffing and in part because Katrina is sorely lacking in non-offensive spells.

After the spellduel, Amelia is approached by someone who indicates that Xavious Foebane is interested in speaking to her. Eriel and Kjolmar follow along to, uh, act as bodyguards -- yeah, that's it.

Not the most cohesive of parties -- it's not at all clear why Amelia would associate with the other two at this point.

Xavious is surprised when the heroes arrived, as he was not aware that people were coming to visit him. He introduces them to the Conquest board and play a brief game with Amelia, with Kjolmar rather rudely kibitzing on the side -- well enough to convince Xavious that Kjolmar might know something about strategy.

I didn't find the rules for Conquest very interesting, so we skipped that and simply role-played playing the board game. It helped burnish Kjolmar's backstory, if nothing else.

Xavious eventually realizes why he'd sent for help from the Lyceum: He'd heard that Pickens Frankart is stirring up trouble in the south harbor regarding the fires. He doubts there is much to the fires along the south harbor, as they weren't terribly new, although he does mention the fires along the North Shore as an unusual twist.

So, the heroes go to the south harbor area and find Pickens in a tavern, speaking with a halfling. The halfling excuses himself when they arrive, so the heroes start quizzing Pickens about his story. They spend a great deal of time trying to reason with him and getting nowhere, of course. However, one thing that does get Pickens' attention is Kjolmar's mention of the fire sorceress who recently arrived in town -- Pickens immediately put two and two together and decides that it was Katrina in particular who has been starting the fires along the south harbor.

The whole "blame Katrina" thing was funny, but now Amelia is getting annoyed that Kjolmar keeps casting aspersions on her sister. Can't please everyone, I guess.

The other theory the heroes propose to Pickens was that maybe it was Ragesian spies, not the Lyceum, that was setting the fires, trying to sow discord in Seaquen. He responds fairly positively to the idea at the time, but this story works even better when the heroes share it with the most recent victims of a house fire. Amelia spends the afternoon trying to organize neighborhood watches to look out for Ragesian spies.

This was an unexpected "solution" to the Pickens problem -- now, rather than blaming the Lyceum, the south harbor residents had multiple targets to blame. I figured this blunted Pickens' efforts at rousing the rabble, so the rag-tag fleet assaulting the Shahelesti during the storm didn't have as many ships as it might have had they not done this. I'm still not quite clear what Pickens accusing the Lyceum of starting fires has to do with the fleet sailing against the Shahalesti, though -- the causal relationship there escaped us all.

The heroes spend quite a while discussing what to do regarding the halfling they saw talking to Pickens. They figured out while listening to Pickens that someone else was feeding him this story, as some of his arguments didn't ring true -- he was mouthing someone else's words about the Lyceum. They never get around to confronting the halfling, though.

...which was probably for the better. They assumed that The Halfling was himself a person of some import, but I had decided that he was just a gopher for Cerneban Gremman. They would have either gotten stuck, confused by Cerneban's lack of real knowledge, or gotten themselves into a heap of trouble with the halfing mafia.

They never did follow up on the fires on the North Shore. The rats would have been fun: Ari had seen the sparking teeth of the inquisitor's rat in the fire tomb right before she killed the poor rodent.

On the way back to the Lyceum, they run into a small group of thugs in a back alley who had encountered Judson Figovich carrying oil for his stove back to his apartment. The mob had decided Judson was an arsonist, despite the fact that he's lived in Seaquen for most of his life. Amelia manage to charm the leader of the mob, which only angers the rest of them, but eventually they manage to get Judson free and scare away the thugs without killing anyone.

Judson spends some time with the party, spouting off various trivia about the city, until he decides he needed to head home (down one of the more public streets, this time). Judson doesn't get but two doors down before screaming briefly and vanishing from sight. The heroes race to investigate, only to discover that Judson's trail suddenly ends right in front of an abandoned warehouse. Kjolmar bashes through the warehouse door to discover a pitch-black warehouse with teetering towers of crates, bits of abandoned belongings, and very little else. Then suddenly, a spider the size of a horse appears out of thin air! It takes a bite of him, then vanished seconds later. Kjolmar feels the poison running through his bloodstream and finds it invigorating. The three of them creep deeper into the warehouse, peering around for the spider. It phases in to attack Amelia and the immediately vanishes, so they beat a retreat back to the warehouse entrance. However, Eriel happens to stride past one of the less stable towers of crates, making enough noise to bring it down on her head.

I'm not going to go into detail about their fight with the phase spiders. Suffice to say, it was a good opportunity for this party to spend some time trying to figure out how to work together. It also pointed out how ill-equipped the elf and the dwarf are for adventuring, although it's not clear that they got the hint.

I also decided that Judson spends some of his free time playing his lyre to entertain the children, just on the off chance they figure out that trying to get the magic lyre from Naizelasa might be useful. Strangely, they didn't think to ask anyone at the Lyceum about the phase spiders, although they did mention the spider nest to the temple they left Judson in.

Eriel and Kjolmar spend the week before the hurricane cleaning up the warehouse to provide living space for refugees, while Amelia returns to her duties at the Lyceum. Then, as the weather is changing for the worse, Crystin approaches Amelia. The Lyceum has learned that Lee is a Ragesian agent, and she needs Amelia, with her new elf and dwarf friends, to go to Lee's residence and capture him, or at least confiscate his magic items. Amelia denies having any new friends, but Crystin isn't falling for it.

Yeah, real cohesive, this bunch.

The heroes break into Lee's place without any difficulty. In his office, they discover a scroll case, a wand case (with a fire trap that Eriel mostly dodges) and a large amphora that looks to be a recent addition. After some debate on the correct way to break an amphora, Eriel takes the simple approach and simply lifts off the lid after Kjolmar gets halfway down the stairs. The amphora is protected another fire trap that destroys the amphora and lets loose its occupant -- a living prismatic cloud. It slimes Eriel with acid, and poisons Kjolmar, not that he even notices, before they turn the ooze into a blob of technicolor marshmallow cream on the carpet.

They proceed on and eventually get down to Lee's water exit, in which he's left a flock of stirges to guard the place. Eriel manages to kill a couple before both she and Kjolmar get covered by the blood-suckers. Kjolmar squishes one against a wall and Eriel manages to shoot several that are on him before Kjolmar jumps into the sea in hopes of convincing the last attached stirge to leave. It doesn't work -- it drinks its fill before trying to get away. Meanwhile, the stirges on Eriel continue to suck away and completely drain her blood before the heroes finish the stirges off.

No worries though -- Amelia quickly digs through the magic items Eriel grabbed in Lee's office and discovers a scroll of reincarnate -- and a wand of owl's wisdom to make using it feasible! So, ten minutes and six seconds later, Eriel stands back up -- only a bit clumsier and a whole lot hairier. Amelia brought Eriel to life as a half-orc!

I did not expect that scroll to get used so soon. The funny thing is, Eriel's player didn't know how
reincarnate works, so she was completely surprised to discover her character is now a half-orc. Better yet, she's now beginning to seriously think about this character's personality in light of this little change of identity.

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Adventure

Amelia notices a young man staring at their group rather than listening to Crystin's strolling lecture. Amelia invites Crystin over for introductions, whereupon everyone is dismayed to learn that they're heading for Bresk. She introduces the staring lad as Jineer, who haltingly asks the heroes to carry a message to his father, as he has a bad feeling that his father is in trouble. "Your father will be caged by madness," says Crystin, not even slightly reassuringly. The heroes agree, although they're more concerned about why everyone knows that they are headed to Bresk but them. Crystin tells them they should talk to Simeon.

Eventually, they give up on getting information out of Crystin, go to Simeon's office, and get the spiel about their next mission from Balan (as described in the adventure). They run into Fitz on the way out of the meeting, who smugly points out that he is actually going on a mission that will help liberate Gate Pass. "Try to keep Seaquen from getting overrun before I get back, mm'kay?"

Making Crystin the lecturer that Jineer was ignoring made it easier to give her a chance to utter her latest prophecy. I hadn't expected them to quiz her so on their not-so-secret mission, though. That said, they've now started deeply planning clever ways to get to Bresk without getting waylaid by Ragesian agents, including radical ideas like taking a ship to the Ostalin-Dassen border and walking cross-country to Bresk from there. Given how seriously they're taking this, I guess I'm going to have to come up with some Ragesian agents to waylay them. Uh...help?​
 

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Bill T.

Explorer
Adventure IV: Traveling to Bresk

Dramatis Personae

  • Amelia, a human spellthieving acetomancer
  • Erielle, an half-orc (formerly elven) archer ranger
  • Kjolmar, a dour dwarven dungeoncrashing deepwarden
  • Balan Bastom
Preparations

Simeon hands out some equipment for the trip -- several brute items created by a half-orc item creation specialist studying at the Lyceuem, a magic mithral buckler, and several wands, including wall of ice, since it seemed useful, and dimensional anchor because they're nearly useless thanks to the Burning Sky.

Sailing to Dassen

Balan finally manages to convince the heroes to tell him how they're going to get to Bresk: Sail up past the swamp, then jump ship and walk to the mouth of the Nasham river and on to Bresk. However, after the first day and night of sailing, the crew of their cargo ship spots a warship headed their way. The warship, of course, pursues them. The heroes try to get the ship ready for ship-to-ship combat, but it's all for nought, as a bone devil soon appears and makes its surrender demands.

Well, it tries to make its demands -- as soon as it appears the heroes open fire, neither knowing nor caring what this oversized skeletal creature is or what it wants. Amelia manages to nail it with her lesser acid blob right off the bat. It promptly moves to where Eriel and Kjolmar are standing and managed to be fearsome enough to send Kjolmar panicking into the sea.

The fight is astonishingly one-sided, with Amelia being the one side. Her acid blobs keep hitting, but the devil keeps missing, Kjolmar keeps swimming, and Eriel keeps looking for a better weapon because Amelia thinks a bludgeoning weapon would be more effective against the devil. The bone devil tries to set up a series of walls of ice to fend off Amelia's attack, but finally disappears after getting out its demands: Lower the sails, get in the rowboat and row away from the ship so we can come aboard and take what we want. Oh, and one of the things he wants is that woman throwing acid balls. Then it vanishes in a ball of flame.

Someone -- probably me -- got lucky that Amelia was included in the demands. They would have seriously considered acceding to the devil's demands. Little did they realize that the ship's sails was one of the things the devil wanted. That would have made for a rather ignominious end!​

So, the heroes come up with A Plan: Pretend to tie Amelia to the mast, send the sailors off on the rowboat, and then everyone else prepare ambush the devil when it appears. Oh, and Eriel needs to cast barkskin on everyone. And Amelia should use the mage armor wand on Eriel. And someone cast owl's wisdom on Kjolmar so he doesn't panic again. Oh, and let's enlarge Kjolmar while we're at it -- we can always do it again if the spell runs out. And then have Kjolmar can hide behind the three-foot-tall house in the middle of the deck.

Well, surprise, the devil spots Kjolmar when it reappears. It threatens them both with painful death and moves up to glower at Amelia. Amelia's got two surprises -- she's not bound, and she has a wand of dimensional anchor in her hands, which she promptly nails the bone devil with.

She barely made the caster level check to hit the bone devil. I deliberately didn't react one way or the other to the caster level check, so she would have been rather surprised if it had teleported away. On the other hand, since bone devils can cast Dimensional Anchor, it immediately knew what she had done to it.​

The fight isn't quite as one-sided this time, although Amelia manages to make another critical hit with an acid orb. The devil tries to scare Kjolmar off the boat again, but Kjolmar's not impressed. He lays into the devil with his 7-iron. The devil tries one more series of attacks before looking to establish terms of its own surrender. Eriel, of course, keeps firing arrows [sigh], but the heroes finally decide to give it a chance to make an offer. After a bit of back-and-forth, the deal with the devil shapes up to (1) it won't try to harm anyone on the cargo ship, (2) it'll tell them what it knows about what's going on in the war, and (3) sail with them as far as it can, all the way to Bresk.

The heroes pick up some relevant information -- there's a war party searching for them on the peninsula, there's a Ragesian army north of Alydi Gap, and General Revulus is prepping a task force including Inquisitor Crona, an aerial cavalier, and some scouts for some sort of mission.

Sadly, I don't think the players are keeping notes, so this bit of information will likely be lost on them. Also, they didn't demand the devil stop its privateering ways, so I assume it returns to duty as soon as its contract with the heroes is fulfilled -- which, as you know, is sooner than they expect.​

Up The River Without A Boat
The bone devil gets a good laugh and promptly vanishes when the party sees that the Nasham River is frozen practically to its mouth. Balan's eager for a sleigh ride, so they buy a sleigh and a horse or two and head north.

I still need to decide how big the sleigh is and how many horses it requires. Per tradition, a one-horse open sleigh is the obvious choice, though.​

The encounter a huge, hot, multi-legged creature pursuing a mob of refugees. Eriel slaughters it with her arrows before it even gets close.

Well, that was boring -- between the ranger's good Spot check and the archery combat style, the thing didn't get a chance to do anything at all. I wanted to try an awesome blow on someone!​

A couple days later, the sleigh gets stuck, and the heroes dig it up and the associated evidence. They investigate where the horse tracks come from, and Eriel is able to track one of them up the tree. Eventually they manage to draw a connection between the tree and the one man's rope burns. :-D The heroes consider taking the men's remains to Lady Dene, but her stronghold is at the far side of her territory and Balan doesn't want to risk missing their audience.

Shortly thereafter, they come upon the Talon's men going through some halflings' wagons. When they discover the woman hiding under one wagon and threaten to kill her, Eriel promptly fires a "warning shot" about two inches in front of the leader's nose. Oddly enough, the leader feels threatened, so he kills the woman and orders his men to attack.

Amelia tries to get Balan to cast Deep Slumber on the soldiers, but she doesn't have the time to convince him. The squad moves near the sleigh, and, when Eriel prepares to fire her bow, he immediately orders them to move up to her. It's all for nought, though, as the Talon squad is no match for the heroes. They can't even manage to snatch Eriel's bow out of her hands with their flails as she renders the leader unconscious with a volley or two of arrows. Kjolmar, meanwhile, knocks down several of squad members before one of them snatch his flail away. They all get up together, so Kjolmar finally dungeoncrashes one into the sleigh, killing the soldier and, more to the point, getting him to stop holding onto his flail so Kjolmar can pick it up. Amelia, loathe to stir up more trouble, tries to move into a position where she can head off the soldiers should they try to escape.

Afterwards, she realized she should have tried to convince Balam to put Eriel into a slumber rather than the soldiers. Probably wouldn't have been a good idea for party relations in the long run, but it was funny enough he probably would have gone along anyhow.​

The remaining soldiers surrender, so the heroes very graciously heal them (using the soldiers own healing potions!). The question them some about what they've been up to, and manage to learn that they were the ones who had killed Lady Dene's men.

At this point, the heroes feel like they've put themselves in a tight spot. They certainly don't want to murder the captive soldiers, but they don't feel they dare release them for fear of getting arrested as soon as they get to Bresk. Eventually they convince themselves that the least awful option is to go to Lady Dene with the remains of her men and the soldiers that killed them.

This plan came together via email the day after the session. I'd wondered if they were going to go that way, and figured it was more interesting for Balan to agree to the plan rather than wave his diplomatic papers. They impressed me with their reasonably detailed plan about how to approach Lady Dene to give themselves a good chance of getting out of this without getting hanged themselves. They probably don't realize it yet, but Lady Dene's men will make truly excellent witnesses to their own murders.​
 
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Lylandra

Adventurer
Sounds like you all had fun, I'm excited for what'll happen next time :)

Funny thing is that Katrina and her flock seem prone to attract devil pursuers. I've had one of Guthwulf's agents demand to hand over Katrina in an intermission adventure.
 

thekwp

First Post
Sadly, I don't think the players are keeping notes, so this bit of information will likely be lost on them.

That was one reason I have taken to sending out player summaries of the previous session. It serves both to remind them of the immediate past session, and also as a permanent records for them to refer back to much later. That is the starting point for my campaign posts; though I like your format of interspersing comments throughout the recap.

Have you considered taking the recaps you post here and editing them slightly to send out to your players as a campaign record for them?

By the way, I am enjoying your recaps very much, and look forward to reading more!
 

Bill T.

Explorer
That was one reason I have taken to sending out player summaries of the previous session. It serves both to remind them of the immediate past session, and also as a permanent records for them to refer back to much later. That is the starting point for my campaign posts; though I like your format of interspersing comments throughout the recap.
Thanks, but I'm shamelessly stealing Mrpereira's recap format.

Have you considered taking the recaps you post here and editing them slightly to send out to your players as a campaign record for them?
Actually, I've been trying to do the opposite -- let them post their notes and then embellish them for this forum. I figure I'm doing enough to run this campaign. If they can't be bothered to keep track of what happened and lose clues, that's their problem! Maybe later they'll figure out they could have done better if they had written things down.
 

thekwp

First Post
Thanks, but I'm shamelessly stealing Mrpereira's recap format.

It's not stealing, it's an homage!

I am still working my way through the history of the boards for material and ideas. Some of the campaign journals are great, and I plan to steal from them -- er, I mean, pay homage to them by including them in my campaign. I am also drawing inspiration from the material you and Lylandra are posting now.

Actually, I've been trying to do the opposite -- let them post their notes and then embellish them for this forum. I figure I'm doing enough to run this campaign. If they can't be bothered to keep track of what happened and lose clues, that's their problem! Maybe later they'll figure out they could have done better if they had written things down.

May you have better luck with that than I have had!

I have one player (Rick) who has generally kept detailed journals, and they are really good to read. I am hoping he will start writing some for this campaign for me to share! However, he is the noted exception. Another player (J.T.) has started keeping detailed notes for this campaign, and using them. This is really a first, though, for him, and I hope he continues.

For the rest, my experience has been that if I do not post the recap, the two week gap is enough for players to lose track of what is going on just between sessions. Call backs for events months or possibly years ago can cause some of the party's I play with to lose the plot. When that happens, it ruins my fun too. So, I do the extra effort to do a session recap.
 

Lylandra

Adventurer
I'm lucky... one of my players is writing recaps and the other has a pretty good memory (even if he forgets some details, he remembers enough to ask me the minor stuff), so he doesn't need the recaps. Player written recaps are not only an ease of workload on me (I'm already writing the wiki entries on the gazillion NPC), but they also provide a good insight into what parts of the story or clues are memorable and made an impression on the player(s).

For an example, I took great lenghts to describe the Tales of Toteth Topec and my players were simply not interested in the theater play. They both couldn't remember much and asked me to do a recap for the play myself. I was kind of giggling to myself how they could be so oblivious because the play included a LOT of information on the Aquiline Heart and they had some info that the heart might be of great importance.
 

Bill T.

Explorer
Dene, then Bresk

Adventure IV: Dene, then Bresk

Dramatis
Personae

  • Amelia, a human spellthieving acetomancer
  • Erielle, an half-orc (formerly elven) archer ranger
  • Kjolmar, a dour dwarven dungeoncrashing deepwarden
  • Balan Bastom
Dene

The heroes put the Talon's soldiers in the sleigh under the blankets the soldiers themselves had been carrying and the remains of the one dead soldier and Lady Dene's men in the "luggage compartment". They then ride the horses back south to the mouth of the Nasham river before heading west into Lady Dene's lands. Once in Dene, they learn that the taxes in Dene have recently been recently and drastically increased, and also learn something about Lady Dene's feeling about Ragesia and Seaquen. On the way, Balan explains all about Lady Dene.
Balan did so well on his knowledge check that I figure he must have lived in Dene for a few years and has some sort of unspecified relationship with the family.
When they reach Lady Dene's stronghold (one of the last vestiges of the elven nation that used to rule the forest), they are a bit mystified by Thorn's reaction rather cold reaction to Balan, and Balan's equally cold response. They arrive in the evening, only to learn that Lady Dene is on one of her many long walks. They take advantage of the time to learn about Lady Dene -- her interests, her concerns, etc., as well as take a moment to speak the visiting dignataries from Megadon. They don't learn why the Megadonians [sic] are visiting, but do learn that Megadon is hostile to Seaquen and are dismissive of their attempts to get Steppengard to renegotiate the agreement with Ragesia.
I figured that Megadon sent emissaries to extract some sort of financial inducement to draft ships to transport Ragesian soldiers to Seaquen, on the theory that Lady Dene wants as few soldiers tromping through her lands as possible.
The beautiful Lady Dene holds an inquiry the next morning into the deaths of her men. The soldiers' explanation largely agree with the heroes'. Finally, Dene's spiritual advisor questions the dead men. He asks them who killed them, and then asks the truly deciding question: "Were you involved in the assassination of King Steppengard's family." They weren't, of course.

"The dead cannot lie, milady," declares Dene's cleric. Lady Dene gives Talon soldiers an opportunity to convince her that they shouldn't be immediately hanged for murder. Two of the soldiers manage to talk their way into newfound lowly positions in the keep where they can be carefully watched, but the commander and one other soldier end up forfeiting their lives for their king.

Then comes Balan's opportunity to pitch Seaquen's case before Lady Dene. He's clearly in his element here in Dene's stronghold, smoothly weaving in the issue of succession, the fact that they were able to return the remains of her men killed by the talon, and an offer not of merely a non-aggression pact but an actual alliance. Lady Dene is so taken by Balan's case that she immediately agrees to help the Seaquen in its attempt to reverse the treaty, accepts the non-aggression pact, and hints that she will accept an alliance as soon as it is prudent to do so.
They pushed all of Dene's buttons and then some. In particular, they took excellent advantage of Lylandra's idea that Lady Dene is afraid of Xavious Foebane's army, swearing up and down that Seaquen presented no threat and wanted to ally with Dene, while never mentioning how very small Xavious's "army" is. It didn't hurt that Balan got a 19 on the die, so, all told, he got a 60 on that diplomacy check.
Bresk
The next day, they made their way to Bresk in the company of Thorn and a free wand of endure elements, courtesy of Lady Dene. Three days later, they arrive at the Golden Griffin. Amelia promptly takes a bath, while Kjolmar and Balan go to discover when their audience is -- tomorrow morning!.
Well, they did take a fair while getting to Bresk....
Over dinner, they inquire about the political situation and garner all the relevant facts -- the position of the council and Nina, as well as the general concern about succession. They also learn that Jinis is in jail and realize they may not be able to get him his son's letter promptly. :)

After dinner, they decide they need to talk to the least-hostile proxies. They only have time to speak with one, but Balan eventually realizes that they can split up, so he and Kjolmar speak to Timor's proxy while Amelia and Eriel visit Dashgoban's. Balan provides several bottles of dessert wine as gifts and a way to get the evening conversation flowing.
Kjolmar is being played as a dwarven outcast, so Kjolmar assumes that any dwarf he encounters will be made hostile by his very presence. I figure I'll turn that on its ear when they get to Commander Hertiage, just to mix things up.
Amelia plays up how Ragesia cannot be trusted. More importantly, she extends the offer of magical assistance, and drives the point home by asking about what sort of magical assistance Dashgoban would most like. She then participates in drinking games with the dwarves, which go well until she realizes she got back to the Golden Griffin without any idea of how she got there. ;-)

The next morning, they arrive in time to see the final moments of the days' trial. Amelia immediately realizes that Relder is under some sort of magical influence, but is unable to determine what. Kjolmar realizes that Nina should be under magical influence -- Silence being an obvious choice.
The players were all appalled by the Nina's voice. I was flattered by the sentiment. Nina's questioning also made them realize that attempting to sow mistrust of the Ragesians was unlikely to work.
The king moves on to taking audiences. Balan makes his pitch. He neglects to mention the issue of succession but nonetheless hits all the other major points. Everyone had already decided that mentioning the death of Lady Dene's men and her execution of the soldiers who killed them would be impolitic. Timor and Dashgoban are now both willing to help Seaquen in its attempts to get Dassen to forbid the Ragesian army passage, and all the other proxies are friendly.

King Steppengard points to Kjolmar and demands, "How many friends have you lost in this war? How many family?"

"Fourty-three", replies Kjolmor. "Ravna, daughter of my aunt Erddwegh; Geoffery, son of...."

"I have lost nineteen" proclaims the king, as though Kjolmar had not spoken. He goes on to bar anyone from assisting Seaquen and demands the heroes leave within three days. He then invites the next petitioner to speak.
I should have known that Kjolmar would have an off-the-wall answer. I really should have chosen Eriel instead, especially considering that Kjolmar had moved over to try to eavesdrop on the Ragesians. It really put a dent in the reaction planned for Steppengard, but I figure the king is sufficiently absorbed by his own self-pity or whatever that he doesn't even pay attention.
That said, Amelia's player stepped in to play Balan during the audience and did a credible and creditable job of laying out the case before the king. I probably should throw some extra xp or something her way for that.
With the audiences done and the mission a bust, Kjolmar decides he may as well leave promptly, but is intercepted by the Timor's people, who encourage the heroes to visit Duke Gallo. Amelia and Eriel hang around after the audiences have completed. She tries to talk to Lady Namin, but is politely rebuffed by the lady herself, although her retinue gives them covert gestures of encouragement. She also gets a chance to speak to the Ragesians. Balan looks so dejected that they immediately offer him a chance to surrender and go into exile. Amelia's response is terribly off-the-wall, leading the Ragesians to decide she's an idiot and look for someone else to talk to, but not after taking the opportunity to proclaim Ragesia's greatness. Amelia does manage to give the Ragesian ambassador with a conundrum, however -- should he stay in Bresk where it is comfortable and his presence is expected, or join in the expedition to Seaquen so he can watch the city burn?
I believe this meets the "cruel and arrogant" standard the adventure advises. :D
Amelia was trying to bait the Ragesians into letting the court know about their Evil Plan to Conquer the World. It didn't work that way, despite me not understanding what she was after.

The party heads back to their room to try to figure out what to do over the next three days. There is loose talk of assassinating the Ragesians, and maybe Nina, but the only firm plan seems to be to keep a watch on the Ragesians' comings and goings.
So ended that session. The following session was pretty much a bust -- they spent most of trying to get a lead on the royal family's assassins and not getting anywhere. I eventually pulled them off that self-assigned mission. They then started to flee as soon Hrumbrand said their lives were in danger, and then I had them arrested anyhow because they sounded much more interested in that path through the adventure. Oh well, better luck next session, I guess. I should have known better than to give them Hrumbrand's warning.
 
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Bill T.

Explorer
Quick question, since we're almost there -- any thoughts on how much of Balan's equipment the party should get? They have done a lot of adventuring since Seaquen and haven't collected any loot in the process, so I'm tempted to let them keep most of it. They'll probably give his sword to his next of kin, anyhow....:erm:
 

Bill T.

Explorer
Adventure IV: Get Out Of Jail

Adventure IV: Get Out Of Jail

Dramatis Personae

  • Amelia, a human spellthieving acetomancer
  • Erielle, an half-orc (formerly elven) archer ranger
  • Kjolmar, a dour dwarven dungeoncrashing deepwarden
  • Jinis, proxy for Duke Gallo
Getting Past The Guards

After a bit of last-minute spellcasting on Eriel's part, the heroes settle in for a restless sleep. In the morning, Eriel prays for healing magic to heal the near-lethal wounds Amelia acquired when a sphinx pounced on her from the air. They then have a long discussion regarding how to escape. Amelia favors subterfuge -- she wants to pretend to be choking in hopes of getting the guards to come into the cell and help her. Kjolmar favors a more direct approach: Using a loose cell bar, he prys open the lock to their cell. Amelia takes the opportunity to thoroughly search the empty cells, coming up with a stray bit of leather hidden in the straw. Combined with one of Jinis' knives and a bit of greasy bacon from breakfast -- oh, and a serious application of brute strength to her manacle and gag -- she has all the components she needs to make the most of her magic.

They got pretty clever about the material components. Bacon from breakfast was a slick way to get the component for Grease. I let them decide what they found when Amelia searched the cells -- giving everyone but poor Jinis Mage Armor gave them a big step up in the battle.

Time to get this show on the road! Eriel takes off her wool sack, which they fill with straw and tuck into a corner to make it appear she's still in the cell so she can hide in the cell nearest the guard room with the freed cell bar in hand. Amelia and Jinis are able to swap cells so that Amelia has a barrier between her and the guards. The guards approach and eventually notice that Jinis isn't who they were expecting in that cell. The fight's on!

Jinis flings the door open so that Kjolmar can barrel into the prelate, which he does. Jinis then suprises everyone by moving to Kjolmar's side, while Eriel quietly checks the guard room for more guards and Amelia conjures a cloud of knives. "Hey, where's my grease?" demands Kjolmar.

Had I been thinking, I'd have added a lone guard in the guard chamber as a reward for Eriel's forethought to check the guard room for more guards.

The battle continues, with more spellcasting (like Grease!) on both sides, with all the prison guards brought down by lethal damage, slipping in the grease, or the flail Kjolmar "picked up" from a guard (in that order). Prone and surrounded by well-armed prisoners, the prelate and the remaining guard surrender. Amelia takes the opportunity to steal healing and other spells from the prelate, as well as the Magic Circle vs Chaos she noticed that a guard was protected by.

Where's The Exit?

They move on, find their equipment, the rope ladder in the storage room, and, eventually, Balan's body. Amelia rushes in and grabs the book resting on his torso. They then start to free him from the table until Kjolmar points out that he's not breathing, and that not breathing means he's dead.

You can take the mage out of wizard school, but you can't take the love of books out of the mage, I guess. And yes, Kjolmar really did have to point out that people who aren't breathing are unlikely to be alive.

I figured it made more sense to have the rope ladder in the equipment room rather than the torture chamber.


Amelia searches the grate for traps and then Kjolmar uses his handy crowbar to slowly and heavily pry the grate beneath the table hard enough to break the latch on the grate -- springing the trap. Jutras is on the loose, and he's hungry! No matter, although he does manage to grapple Eriel briefly, Jinis pulls him free, and none of his tonguing manages to leave anyone quivering unmoving on the floor. Eventually, he ends up a shattered mass of bones and entrails on the floor right outside his little closet. Jinis then exclaims, "Oh, that's Jutras!" and explains the history of Jutras. Since Jinis is being so brave, they decide that he should be using Balan's magic shortsword.

Well, they haven't given it to his next of kin yet.

Kjolmar leads the way down from the torture chamber. When he sees the vicious creatures grabbing and biting from the ice in the cave beneath the prison, he tries poking one with his pike --only to have it grab his pike away! Offended, he jumps down and starts beating up iced zombies, but realizes there's a more efficient approach: Amelia offers to enlarge him, and, using a length of chain from his backpack, he wanders into the mass of frozen zombies and, with his allies holding the other end of the chain, flails the chain like a jump rope, clearing out swaths of zombies. Two or three iterations and he's cleared a path for everyone to walk to the cave's exit unthreatened. Amelia takes the opportunity to use a stolen Cure Moderate Wounds spell that the prelate had metamagicked into a ray to heal Kjolmar while he's smashing zombies, then scurries up the rope ladder so she can detach it before Kjolmar has a chance to come back and pick up Balan's remains in hopes of having his brought back to life.

Clever Kjolmar! A ton of Power Attack certainly helped shatter the pitted zombies. I appreciate how he's playing the big tough fighter to the hilt, and hope that the other players pay attention to how play a high-strength, high-constitution warrior.

At this point, they flee the prison and Steppengard, bypassing the tower in the graveyard and only stapping in Macon long enough for Amelia to pick up some horses. Sadly, Amelia is a poor judge of horseflesh and the horses she gets are basically some leftover nags from the village, although she does manage to wheedle feed for the horses out of the townsfolk. After traveling for the day, they find a barn to sleep in for the night. Amelia tries to amuse herself by reading the notebook left on Balan's body, but has to step outside to vomit because she's so disgusted by what the inquistor did to Balan.

I'll post Torrax's notes soon, but I was quite pleased with how appalled Amelia was by the notes.
 

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