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<blockquote data-quote="EinWaterBottle" data-source="post: 8572589" data-attributes="member: 7030936"><p>Thanks! I'm pretty sure I stole the idea of the eval from someone on here... but I might be wrong on that. It's been months since I wrote that stuff, after all.</p><p></p><p>Regarding Ulyana, that's an idea. I've been sporadically reading the later adventures, but otherwise mainly Act 1. I do attentively make sure to CTRL-F any names to see if they appear in the future -- like the fact that Julian LeBrix, outside of The Dying Skyseer, is only mentioned in one line in Adventure 13! Unlike a lot of hobbyists I know, I'm not the type of person who reads adventures like this for the fun of it.</p><p></p><p>A fey contact that was maybe friends with her mother (she did mention she wanted to learn a little more of her heritage, but I forgot to mention it up there) could work. Fey business is still far off, so I have time to mull it over.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, here's some of the next adventure. Not all of it, because my fingers do get tired eventually.</p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p></p><p>We begin The Dying Skyseer with Delft informing the PCs of a flying half-elf, now dead inside the borders of Risur. The PCs, assigned to the Gale case after the tragic end of Task Force One, are immediately on alert. They head over.</p><p></p><p>During downtime, Amyra made an enemy of Deorn Feldman. So during the boat ride over, Deorn delays the party by a good half an hour. Because I made very clear to the PCs that things are rather time sensitive in this arc (murderers can flee cities, and witnesses may die if they don't get to them fast enough), they are a little worried by this.</p><p></p><p>Officer Bellastair, the liaison between the RHC and the police, debrief the PCs further at the scene of the crime. Task Force One doesn't deign to recruit the police's help further and lets them go back to their normal business.</p><p></p><p>Consulate Security Chief Julian LeBrix greets the party and beckons them in. I made LeBrix a former Axis Island prisoner and so he recognized the PCs when they arrived, and congratulated them respectively. I did this because I wanted there to be a little more connectedness between the two arcs, for the PCs to get some recognition for their work last adventure, and for the party to feel like there were NPCs that may be reoccuring, even if they don't expect it (foreshadowing Kaja Stewart).</p><p></p><p>Anyway, LeBrix explains to the PCs the case, lying through his teeth about some matters. The PCs are a little suspicious of his story, especially that of him shooting her in the leg and her motive of an egg-thief. Still, when they examine the egg, it does definitely look valuable, and so they're vaguely convinced and mollified.</p><p></p><p>They show interest in examining the Consular's office to investigate the shattered window. LeBrix instead subtly guides them away from the Consular's office and towards the corpse of Nilasa Hume. Braden is sat by her covered body, sobbing and very distraught. Ulyana tries to coax the man through his sadness, but flubs the roll; he immediately runs into the bathroom to vomit for the rest of the encounter.</p><p></p><p>Next, they find the box of brigadeiros, and we have a long out-of-game chat about pastries and our favorite pastries. After that, Amyra finds they were laced with fey pepper and notices the brigadeiros lead to the Thinking Man Tavern.</p><p></p><p>LeBrix tries to hurry the investigation, but is understandably shocked when Franke conducts his dead-talking ritual. Fearing for his story being uncovered, he tries to call the act "desecration of the dead" but is intimidated by Kastiv to stay his hand while the interrogation goes on.</p><p></p><p>They ask five questions:</p><p>[SPOILER="Hey, I'm dead. AMA!"]1) What were your goals in targeting [the consulate]?</p><p>1a) Documents for her master.</p><p>2) Who is your master?</p><p>2a) Gale.</p><p>3) What documents and information were you looking for specifically?</p><p>3a) She sought info that would help Gale most effectively strike factories for her agenda.</p><p>4) What is Gale's agenda?</p><p>4a) Gale despises industry and its exploitation of the people, but she also realizes that being blindly violent gets her no public support.</p><p>5) Where is your base?</p><p>5a) Gale has no base, but she operates out of the district of Cloudwood.[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>After that horrendous affair, they investigate the outside, where the body fell. Ulyana and Amyra talk to the crowd to get some info about a man with a goatee (Wolfgang) taking the documents off Nilasa's body before fleeing into an alleyway.</p><p></p><p>Kastiv investigates the alleyway, and finds weird-looking blood in some mud. The trail of the thief? Franke meets up with Kastiv and, investigating himself, finds that there are traces of magical energy and electrical magic, used to attack.</p><p></p><p>During their conversation, a carriage driver interrupts them. She says she just drove some goatee'd man out and he ditched her, and she was hoping to find some of his friends where she picked him up. With a little bribe from Kastiv (something that might appear in the audit later?), she fesses up the man's destination: a hostel.</p><p></p><p>With multiple leads in mind, the party decides to split. Kastiv takes the body back to Dr Samwell Wells to get an autopsy done. Franke goes to investigate the hostel. Ulyana tries to retrieve Nilasa's police records file from the Parity Lake police station. Amyra follows the brigadeiros trail to the Thinking Man's.</p><p></p><p>Franke doesn't think to get Wolfgang's hostel record unfortunately (but that is remedied when a contact he made, Redd, a fixer, sends him his hostel record when she is asked to investigate into it), but is told about an officer Roger Porter who had already cleared out Wolfgang's room. Notably suspicious, Franke is unfortunately forced to meet one of his contacts (the Redd mentioned above) when this lead dries up. His contact tells him the exact thing Ulyana will be told a few paragraphs down: if you wanna meet Gale, you gotta get in with her bud Nevard Sechim.</p><p></p><p>Also, a very important note:</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="Important note!"]Franke later goes to mention to Delft that there's a case of an impersonating officer Roger Porter. Delft makes a note of this and promises to him that he'll get some people to look through some previous case files, because he recognized that name from somewhere...</p><p></p><p>This'll be explained later, but just keep in mind that this is in play, and basically helps reveal the whole mystery (or at least, the villains) for Task Force Three.[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>Moving on, Amyra's trip to the Thinking Man's is... mixed. She doesn't blow the encounter by mentioning Nilasa's death, and instead weasels out from Barbra Hilly that Nilasa is rather popular, probably is the one who drugged the pastries, and is interested in the criminal element. If she wants to know more, she'd have to talk to the Professors. Unfortunately for her, she finds Hennet Rinus understandably infuriating and just leaves the encounter after refusing to participate in the 'ritual'. A dead lead, because of Rinus' obstinance.</p><p></p><p>Kastiv takes Nilasa's body to HQ with no obstacle. The doctor says he'll get an autopsy for the constable first thing tomorrow morning.</p><p></p><p>Ulyana fetches the police record, to no difficulty. She investigates Nilasa's home address, leading her to Henrietta Sechim (a genderbent Heward, for funsies). Ulyana is righteously horrified when she discovers industry working conditions, and the strike from its workers. Quite approving of Henrietta's political stances and demeanor, she gets along very well with the acid seller, and through her gets an invitation to meet her uncle Nevard Sechim, the Skyseer. As a Skyseer herself, Ulyana is rather honored to meet the old man.</p><p></p><p>Franke, after meeting with his contact Redd about arranging some information trails, meets with Ulyana and goes to talk with the dying skyseer. Meanwhile, Amyra and Kastiv meet each other near the Thinking Man's and share some cinnamon buns (bought from Barbra Hilly).</p><p></p><p>Ulyana leads the discussion with Nevard, and the old man readily admits his affiliation with the terrorist Gale. He offers to arrange a meeting if she can get his dying body up Cauldron Hill so he can see into the stars for one last vision. She agrees, even to the ritual that Nevard proposes to give him the vitality of a younger man.</p><p></p><p>With the team split up, Ulyana who's only with Franke at the moment uses the spell Animal Messenger to get a falcon to deliver a note to Amyra and Kastiv. They are, understandably, rather shocked when the falcon slams beak-first into their box of cinammon buns. After taking a cinammon bun as payment, Amyra and Kastiv read the note Ulyana sent and head off to meet them at the base of The Nettles. They have a nice little pow-wow that ends with them agreeing to get Nevard up Cauldron Hill. All they have to do is fetch permission from Mayor Reed Macbannin. So they go to his manor.</p><p></p><p>At the manor, they see a scruffy old man lounging about the garden. He makes a casual comment of the current state of affairs, and Kastiv is ready to jump into a small philosophical debate with him. I put some real foreshadowing here.</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="Nico"]<em>"I'm sure there's an endless demand for someone waxing poetic about the state of things," says Kastiv.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>"The last time I tried, I was burned," the scruffy old man says with a laugh.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>"Precisely why I keep my thinking to myself! Burning to death is a bad way to end things."</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>"More than you know." His smile is knowing.</em>[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>Getting some weird vibes from the man, the team asks him his name. The scruffy old man, glancing at the roll of Nicodemus he just finished, responded off-handedly, "Nico, why not?" and promptly left. Amyra noted that she didn't like the man or just philosophers in general.</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="Player Thoughts"]The player characters, Kastiv's and Amyra's specifically, stated that he felt like Nico's whole spiel sounded like BBEG material. Especially since it seemed like he just named himself from a 'random' object in the environment. Oh, if only they knew.[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>They meet the butler Cillia Creed (genderbent, for funsies), who used to be a constable of the RHC and was actually one of the agents responsible for recruiting Franke to the service. I had Franke roll some Intelligence, just to see what he could remember about the lady. I had some degrees of success, with the highest being that he can see that she looks a lot younger than he remembers. Unfortunately, he didn't get that one. All he knew is that Cillia Creed was rather patriotic and was the first to be enraged at the apparent betrayal of Vendol (Franke's uncle mentioned in his backstory).</p><p></p><p>Then they met Macbannin. They tried to lie to Macbannin that they weren't bringing Nevard up there, but his insight rolls were rather good. He wasn't a big fan of the team's lying, and wrung the truth from them. This interaction made Kastiv rather surly to the man, even if they begrudgingly understood the fact that he is the expert of the dark arts here and thus wants no such risk to Flint.</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="Some out-of-game notes"]We play biweekly. In off-weeks, I ask my players some character questions to flesh their characters out a bit. Sometimes I ask a Kiss, Marry, Kill. Kastiv said his Kill was Macbannin. Which I suppose will help for future encounters![/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>Macbannin gave Task Force Three the whole spiel of goat's blood and low-light fires. Franke, being already plagued with spirits and the dead for his whole life (his curse as a spirit medium), was NOT looking forward to the future encounter. Everyone tried to comfort the man. To no avail.</p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p></p><p>That was where the session ended, but that's been months passed by now. We're nearing the end of the arc now, but I'm just stopping the write-up now because hoo boy, I forgot about how much actually happened and it takes a bit of brainpower to write it all out.</p><p></p><p>I think I'm better for it, though. This little write-up has let me think about the game and past events in a more in-depth way. Lets me see where I foreshadowed things well, or where I've made mistakes and could remedy them later.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EinWaterBottle, post: 8572589, member: 7030936"] Thanks! I'm pretty sure I stole the idea of the eval from someone on here... but I might be wrong on that. It's been months since I wrote that stuff, after all. Regarding Ulyana, that's an idea. I've been sporadically reading the later adventures, but otherwise mainly Act 1. I do attentively make sure to CTRL-F any names to see if they appear in the future -- like the fact that Julian LeBrix, outside of The Dying Skyseer, is only mentioned in one line in Adventure 13! Unlike a lot of hobbyists I know, I'm not the type of person who reads adventures like this for the fun of it. A fey contact that was maybe friends with her mother (she did mention she wanted to learn a little more of her heritage, but I forgot to mention it up there) could work. Fey business is still far off, so I have time to mull it over. Anyway, here's some of the next adventure. Not all of it, because my fingers do get tired eventually. [HR][/HR] We begin The Dying Skyseer with Delft informing the PCs of a flying half-elf, now dead inside the borders of Risur. The PCs, assigned to the Gale case after the tragic end of Task Force One, are immediately on alert. They head over. During downtime, Amyra made an enemy of Deorn Feldman. So during the boat ride over, Deorn delays the party by a good half an hour. Because I made very clear to the PCs that things are rather time sensitive in this arc (murderers can flee cities, and witnesses may die if they don't get to them fast enough), they are a little worried by this. Officer Bellastair, the liaison between the RHC and the police, debrief the PCs further at the scene of the crime. Task Force One doesn't deign to recruit the police's help further and lets them go back to their normal business. Consulate Security Chief Julian LeBrix greets the party and beckons them in. I made LeBrix a former Axis Island prisoner and so he recognized the PCs when they arrived, and congratulated them respectively. I did this because I wanted there to be a little more connectedness between the two arcs, for the PCs to get some recognition for their work last adventure, and for the party to feel like there were NPCs that may be reoccuring, even if they don't expect it (foreshadowing Kaja Stewart). Anyway, LeBrix explains to the PCs the case, lying through his teeth about some matters. The PCs are a little suspicious of his story, especially that of him shooting her in the leg and her motive of an egg-thief. Still, when they examine the egg, it does definitely look valuable, and so they're vaguely convinced and mollified. They show interest in examining the Consular's office to investigate the shattered window. LeBrix instead subtly guides them away from the Consular's office and towards the corpse of Nilasa Hume. Braden is sat by her covered body, sobbing and very distraught. Ulyana tries to coax the man through his sadness, but flubs the roll; he immediately runs into the bathroom to vomit for the rest of the encounter. Next, they find the box of brigadeiros, and we have a long out-of-game chat about pastries and our favorite pastries. After that, Amyra finds they were laced with fey pepper and notices the brigadeiros lead to the Thinking Man Tavern. LeBrix tries to hurry the investigation, but is understandably shocked when Franke conducts his dead-talking ritual. Fearing for his story being uncovered, he tries to call the act "desecration of the dead" but is intimidated by Kastiv to stay his hand while the interrogation goes on. They ask five questions: [SPOILER="Hey, I'm dead. AMA!"]1) What were your goals in targeting [the consulate]? 1a) Documents for her master. 2) Who is your master? 2a) Gale. 3) What documents and information were you looking for specifically? 3a) She sought info that would help Gale most effectively strike factories for her agenda. 4) What is Gale's agenda? 4a) Gale despises industry and its exploitation of the people, but she also realizes that being blindly violent gets her no public support. 5) Where is your base? 5a) Gale has no base, but she operates out of the district of Cloudwood.[/SPOILER] After that horrendous affair, they investigate the outside, where the body fell. Ulyana and Amyra talk to the crowd to get some info about a man with a goatee (Wolfgang) taking the documents off Nilasa's body before fleeing into an alleyway. Kastiv investigates the alleyway, and finds weird-looking blood in some mud. The trail of the thief? Franke meets up with Kastiv and, investigating himself, finds that there are traces of magical energy and electrical magic, used to attack. During their conversation, a carriage driver interrupts them. She says she just drove some goatee'd man out and he ditched her, and she was hoping to find some of his friends where she picked him up. With a little bribe from Kastiv (something that might appear in the audit later?), she fesses up the man's destination: a hostel. With multiple leads in mind, the party decides to split. Kastiv takes the body back to Dr Samwell Wells to get an autopsy done. Franke goes to investigate the hostel. Ulyana tries to retrieve Nilasa's police records file from the Parity Lake police station. Amyra follows the brigadeiros trail to the Thinking Man's. Franke doesn't think to get Wolfgang's hostel record unfortunately (but that is remedied when a contact he made, Redd, a fixer, sends him his hostel record when she is asked to investigate into it), but is told about an officer Roger Porter who had already cleared out Wolfgang's room. Notably suspicious, Franke is unfortunately forced to meet one of his contacts (the Redd mentioned above) when this lead dries up. His contact tells him the exact thing Ulyana will be told a few paragraphs down: if you wanna meet Gale, you gotta get in with her bud Nevard Sechim. Also, a very important note: [SPOILER="Important note!"]Franke later goes to mention to Delft that there's a case of an impersonating officer Roger Porter. Delft makes a note of this and promises to him that he'll get some people to look through some previous case files, because he recognized that name from somewhere... This'll be explained later, but just keep in mind that this is in play, and basically helps reveal the whole mystery (or at least, the villains) for Task Force Three.[/SPOILER] Moving on, Amyra's trip to the Thinking Man's is... mixed. She doesn't blow the encounter by mentioning Nilasa's death, and instead weasels out from Barbra Hilly that Nilasa is rather popular, probably is the one who drugged the pastries, and is interested in the criminal element. If she wants to know more, she'd have to talk to the Professors. Unfortunately for her, she finds Hennet Rinus understandably infuriating and just leaves the encounter after refusing to participate in the 'ritual'. A dead lead, because of Rinus' obstinance. Kastiv takes Nilasa's body to HQ with no obstacle. The doctor says he'll get an autopsy for the constable first thing tomorrow morning. Ulyana fetches the police record, to no difficulty. She investigates Nilasa's home address, leading her to Henrietta Sechim (a genderbent Heward, for funsies). Ulyana is righteously horrified when she discovers industry working conditions, and the strike from its workers. Quite approving of Henrietta's political stances and demeanor, she gets along very well with the acid seller, and through her gets an invitation to meet her uncle Nevard Sechim, the Skyseer. As a Skyseer herself, Ulyana is rather honored to meet the old man. Franke, after meeting with his contact Redd about arranging some information trails, meets with Ulyana and goes to talk with the dying skyseer. Meanwhile, Amyra and Kastiv meet each other near the Thinking Man's and share some cinnamon buns (bought from Barbra Hilly). Ulyana leads the discussion with Nevard, and the old man readily admits his affiliation with the terrorist Gale. He offers to arrange a meeting if she can get his dying body up Cauldron Hill so he can see into the stars for one last vision. She agrees, even to the ritual that Nevard proposes to give him the vitality of a younger man. With the team split up, Ulyana who's only with Franke at the moment uses the spell Animal Messenger to get a falcon to deliver a note to Amyra and Kastiv. They are, understandably, rather shocked when the falcon slams beak-first into their box of cinammon buns. After taking a cinammon bun as payment, Amyra and Kastiv read the note Ulyana sent and head off to meet them at the base of The Nettles. They have a nice little pow-wow that ends with them agreeing to get Nevard up Cauldron Hill. All they have to do is fetch permission from Mayor Reed Macbannin. So they go to his manor. At the manor, they see a scruffy old man lounging about the garden. He makes a casual comment of the current state of affairs, and Kastiv is ready to jump into a small philosophical debate with him. I put some real foreshadowing here. [SPOILER="Nico"][I]"I'm sure there's an endless demand for someone waxing poetic about the state of things," says Kastiv. "The last time I tried, I was burned," the scruffy old man says with a laugh. "Precisely why I keep my thinking to myself! Burning to death is a bad way to end things." "More than you know." His smile is knowing.[/I][/SPOILER] Getting some weird vibes from the man, the team asks him his name. The scruffy old man, glancing at the roll of Nicodemus he just finished, responded off-handedly, "Nico, why not?" and promptly left. Amyra noted that she didn't like the man or just philosophers in general. [SPOILER="Player Thoughts"]The player characters, Kastiv's and Amyra's specifically, stated that he felt like Nico's whole spiel sounded like BBEG material. Especially since it seemed like he just named himself from a 'random' object in the environment. Oh, if only they knew.[/SPOILER] They meet the butler Cillia Creed (genderbent, for funsies), who used to be a constable of the RHC and was actually one of the agents responsible for recruiting Franke to the service. I had Franke roll some Intelligence, just to see what he could remember about the lady. I had some degrees of success, with the highest being that he can see that she looks a lot younger than he remembers. Unfortunately, he didn't get that one. All he knew is that Cillia Creed was rather patriotic and was the first to be enraged at the apparent betrayal of Vendol (Franke's uncle mentioned in his backstory). Then they met Macbannin. They tried to lie to Macbannin that they weren't bringing Nevard up there, but his insight rolls were rather good. He wasn't a big fan of the team's lying, and wrung the truth from them. This interaction made Kastiv rather surly to the man, even if they begrudgingly understood the fact that he is the expert of the dark arts here and thus wants no such risk to Flint. [SPOILER="Some out-of-game notes"]We play biweekly. In off-weeks, I ask my players some character questions to flesh their characters out a bit. Sometimes I ask a Kiss, Marry, Kill. Kastiv said his Kill was Macbannin. Which I suppose will help for future encounters![/SPOILER] Macbannin gave Task Force Three the whole spiel of goat's blood and low-light fires. Franke, being already plagued with spirits and the dead for his whole life (his curse as a spirit medium), was NOT looking forward to the future encounter. Everyone tried to comfort the man. To no avail. [HR][/HR] That was where the session ended, but that's been months passed by now. We're nearing the end of the arc now, but I'm just stopping the write-up now because hoo boy, I forgot about how much actually happened and it takes a bit of brainpower to write it all out. I think I'm better for it, though. This little write-up has let me think about the game and past events in a more in-depth way. Lets me see where I foreshadowed things well, or where I've made mistakes and could remedy them later. [/QUOTE]
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