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Rangda's Zeitgeist Campaign (SPOILERS)
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<blockquote data-quote="rangda" data-source="post: 6041769" data-attributes="member: 86125"><p><strong>11/3 Session</strong></p><p></p><p>The session starts with the party in combat against weird creatures overrunning part of the arms exposition. I beefed this combat up a bit (officially there are only two combats before the leveling up to level 6, and my group needs more fighting than that), so it's a bit slow. All the insubstantial creatures take a bit to kill. The worm maw doesn't last long, it “eats” someone which makes it 1) scary and 2) substantial which just paints a giant bulls-eye on it.</p><p></p><p>Once the combat is complete the clean-up beings. The party lets the RHC peons handle most of the clean-up off screen but they decide to confiscate the staff. Simon is reluctant to tell them, but the party leans on him and threatens to arrest him and charge him with all sorts of offenses related to summoning the beasts. Given this threat, he breaks down and confesses he did the steampunk equivalent of buying speakers from the back of a van. He gives them instructions on how to arrange a buy through the souvenir shop and they let him go.</p><p></p><p>They head back to RHC to examine the staff and the bodies. Players spend Arcana points on each, they learn that the bodies are like nothing known, but they learn enough that if they find other strange aberations they will be able to identify if they come from the same place. They figure out that the Staff is related to the Ancients and that talking to someone at either Pardwight or the Museum is probably a good idea. </p><p></p><p>They head back to the expo to follow try to setup a sting for the illegal magic items sales, Carlie disguises herself to prevent any chance of being recognized (with a 14 bluff including disguise kit this works). However, after the fight with the aberations security is very high, the contact at the souvenir shop tells them to come back tomorrow. They decide to call it a day at this point and get some sleep. Ford (a marital scientist) gets a letter that night from Harlock requesting some specimens of the aberations; in return for supplying the bodies he is promised a copy of the research paper. He agrees and some of the bodies will be picked up the next morning at RHC.</p><p></p><p>The next morning they are dragged into Saxby's office to meet Nigel. In my game I've portrayed Saxby as a political bitch; they know she's pissed at them but they are assuming it's because they are becoming politically inconvenient (which they are). Saxby takes great pleasure in pointing out that Nigel is here to “route out corruption” but that of course he won't find anything related to such stellar agents as themselves; as the players start running through their head all of the things that could be used against them.</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gave government property to a known criminal (gave 1,000gp in magic items to Kell for info on Wolfgang).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Association with a suspected crime lord (Cippiano)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Forged arrest papers (to get Cippiano's family members off the hook for the dock fight)</li> </ul><p></p><p>The first two they cannot do much about but for the last Laci spends an Evidence Collection point to review the paperwork and make sure it's as close to perfect as it can be given it's not 100% truthful. Because of the spent IP this will not come up in the review later (but the other things most likely will).</p><p></p><p>They head back to the expo to follow get the sting going. But when they get there they are sidetracked. Sara Lockheart asks for help with a gang of very organized street urchins operating at the expo. They are very organized and pressure is being put on her to get them under control. I've expanded the “mama” thread a bit to turn them into an arm of Kell's organization with a combat encounter. The party spends Streetwise IP to find and follow some of the urchins back to their lair, which is of course in the sewars. I have my combat setup with a bunch of minions (urchins), a few were-rats, and some Kell bodyguards for mama. Mama is a noncombatant lead from the rear type who hides once the fighting starts. I made this combat a bit too big (think I over-compensated for the easy time they had of it in module 2) and this fight is pretty brutal. Carlie “dies” but when she was killed the gang was in control of the combat so I rule she's disabled not dead, figuring the gang would try to question or ransom her. Losing the area striker early on really hurts the party, as I had a lot of NPC's in the fight assuming there would be constant area attacks that would do a job on the NPC's in a confined space. Without that the party has a very rough time of it.; everyone except Savana ends up contracting Filth Fever. They do end up breaking the gang but mama gets away. Amongst the stolen items they find a rusted amulet which is immediately linked to MacBannin's bleak gate operation; questioning the urchins they get a description of an outrageously dressed man (Isaac). They have some sketches made up of Isaac and give those to Sarah to circulate to see if anyone has seen him (given how he was dressed how could people have not...) At this point I'm leaning towards turning Isaac into a combat encounter to give them another fight before they level up; although I'm not 100% sure I'll do with it.</p><p></p><p>It's now mid-afternoon; they get themselves cleaned up and continue with the magic item sting. Despite all being down a surge because of Filth Fever, they figure if they don't show up today the contact might get suspicious so they have to do it now. Carlie is told to head to the subrail construction site for the buy.</p><p></p><p>They head over with the rest of the party hiding. Cyrus and Ford are stealthy so they follow close by taking cover in all of the construction materials. Laci and Savanna can't even spell stealth so they hang farther back. Carlie easily passes the bluff check to convince Kaja she is a legit buyer and is shown the contents of the chest. This is when Ford declares “RHC, nobody move” and the fight music starts. This fight goes pear shaped, it's about as close to a TPK as you can get without actually having a TPK. I increase the number of Kell pistoleers to 6 figuring that Carlie's areas will obliterate them given their very low hit points, especially given her Kell phobia. She gives into her hate and gets +3 damage for the fight but has to focus on the Kell pistoleers; however 23 hp doesn't last long when someone is doing 2d10+15 <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite7" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue :p" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":p" />. They break and run but the gun platforms Kaja has are just vicious; concentrated fire from them hurts! (If your party isn't combat tuned don't focus fire the combat turrets.) The party initially pushed Kaja off the station platform down to the rails (20' drop); they were shooting for the extra damage but they ended up pushing her away from the chest of items. I made it a summoned chest (like her guns) but decided she had to be next to it to make it go away; she wasn't (initially anyway) willing to abandon the chest which left her a problem of how to recover the chest before getting away. This forced her to stick around longer than she wanted but also put a lot of damage on the players, at the end of the fight Cyrus, Laci, and Ford were all dieing, Carlie had 2 hp left and Savanna + Cyrus' robots were bloodied. But they did prevail and ended up with the chest including the Blade & Amulet of the Ancients.</p><p></p><p>They bring Kaja back to RHC and the team splits up. Carlie and Savanna play good cop/bad cop questioning Kaja while Ford, Cyrus, and Laci head back to the expo to see if any progress has been made trying to find the man with very poor fashion sense. Kaja cracks under questioning and they learn of her involvement in MacBannin's operation, her magic item racket, and they confirm Kell involved. They also find out that the staff is linked to MacBannin and that a tiefling visitor was there at the same time he staff arrived, and that MacBannin was not happy about the tiefling being there. Meanwhile at the expo several people reported seeing Isaac, and they even get lucky a carriage driver is found who took him from the faire so they have an area to search for him. They link back up at RHC, then head to a hospital to spend the night getting treatment for Filth Fever.</p><p></p><p>They arrive at RHC the next morning to find a grim Delf. It appeears that Kaja fell down a set of stairs with a box of steak knives despite there being no stairs and no steak knives in her cell. The scene has been preserved for them to get a look at it, despite Delf telling them that Saxby wanted it cleaned up right away. Carlie spends an Evidence Collection IP at the crime scene and finds the puncture wound being hidden by the marks on Kaja's neck from the hanging. Cyrus detects bleak gate energy on the wound, which links MacBannin's operation to the now non-suicide. This immediately makes them think of rusted metal gates which they don't find. Cyrus wants to cast Detect Planar Energy, but the guards object to a ritual being performed in the prison. The party decides pushing this will potentially create too much pushback from Saxby as they are making waves. They do poke around looking for a circle/rectangle of rusted metal but don't find one. They submit an official report that lists death as suicide but invite Delf or lunch and make an unofficial report indicating it was murder and that whatever MacBannin was involved with on the bleak gate is most likely involved. This is the second prisoner who died under very mysterious circumstances; Delf (and the party) assume this is not a coincidence and Delf tells them to be careful and that perhaps more interesting news should be talked about over lunch rather than in reports.</p><p></p><p>When they get back they find the RHC team that has taken their place on the MacBannin investigation in their offices. They have a crime scene that they'd like the party to look at to give them their opinions. They head over to the crime scene and take a look. They find most of the clues here but are just about out of IP (of course the next level and the resetting of IP is not far away). They find:</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The body is a late 50's early 60's male with an old gunshot wound in his leg. He most likely served in the Risuri military, his initials are AG.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">His hands/arms are tied with steel bars in a way that suggests magic was used for the bending. This links him to Leone.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It appears the golem punched him in the skull, killing him. He died around the same time things were coming to a head with MacBannin.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">He was wearing a necklace which most likely was one of the rusted metal amulets (unless rusted metal is a new fashion trend).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Witch oil was poured into him while he was still alive, but the witch oil does not contain a soul. Ergo they soul went somewhere else.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">He had money and ship schedules, he was planning on leaving the country to head to Elfaivar.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The golem was pulled or blasted apart not broken. This also links to Leone (or magneto as my party calls him).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The golem was very ornate and complicated and was probably more for show than fighting.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">They head is still magical and could still be housing something. And right next to this is witch oil with no soul where someone died. Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The golem most likely pulled the rested metal amulet off of the man.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">They find a scrap of exotic cloth; the other team agrees to allow them to take a small sample of it. Whether they will chase this down on their own or not is undecided.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The cloth sample is magical and given how long it's been here this means that whatever it came from had some big juju.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Iron ingots fell off the shelf when whatever happened here happened.</li> </ul><p></p><p>The session ends with the party pondering how involved they should get with the other team's investigation...</p><p></p><p>Unresolved issues:</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Finding the strangely dressed man.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Talk to someone at either Pardwight or the Museum about the Ancient's items.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Finding the tiefling that visited MacBannin's bleak gate complex. (They missed putting this on their white board but I'll be nice and remind them.)</li> </ul></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="rangda, post: 6041769, member: 86125"] [b]11/3 Session[/b] The session starts with the party in combat against weird creatures overrunning part of the arms exposition. I beefed this combat up a bit (officially there are only two combats before the leveling up to level 6, and my group needs more fighting than that), so it's a bit slow. All the insubstantial creatures take a bit to kill. The worm maw doesn't last long, it “eats” someone which makes it 1) scary and 2) substantial which just paints a giant bulls-eye on it. Once the combat is complete the clean-up beings. The party lets the RHC peons handle most of the clean-up off screen but they decide to confiscate the staff. Simon is reluctant to tell them, but the party leans on him and threatens to arrest him and charge him with all sorts of offenses related to summoning the beasts. Given this threat, he breaks down and confesses he did the steampunk equivalent of buying speakers from the back of a van. He gives them instructions on how to arrange a buy through the souvenir shop and they let him go. They head back to RHC to examine the staff and the bodies. Players spend Arcana points on each, they learn that the bodies are like nothing known, but they learn enough that if they find other strange aberations they will be able to identify if they come from the same place. They figure out that the Staff is related to the Ancients and that talking to someone at either Pardwight or the Museum is probably a good idea. They head back to the expo to follow try to setup a sting for the illegal magic items sales, Carlie disguises herself to prevent any chance of being recognized (with a 14 bluff including disguise kit this works). However, after the fight with the aberations security is very high, the contact at the souvenir shop tells them to come back tomorrow. They decide to call it a day at this point and get some sleep. Ford (a marital scientist) gets a letter that night from Harlock requesting some specimens of the aberations; in return for supplying the bodies he is promised a copy of the research paper. He agrees and some of the bodies will be picked up the next morning at RHC. The next morning they are dragged into Saxby's office to meet Nigel. In my game I've portrayed Saxby as a political bitch; they know she's pissed at them but they are assuming it's because they are becoming politically inconvenient (which they are). Saxby takes great pleasure in pointing out that Nigel is here to “route out corruption” but that of course he won't find anything related to such stellar agents as themselves; as the players start running through their head all of the things that could be used against them. [LIST] [*]Gave government property to a known criminal (gave 1,000gp in magic items to Kell for info on Wolfgang). [*]Association with a suspected crime lord (Cippiano) [*]Forged arrest papers (to get Cippiano's family members off the hook for the dock fight) [/LIST] The first two they cannot do much about but for the last Laci spends an Evidence Collection point to review the paperwork and make sure it's as close to perfect as it can be given it's not 100% truthful. Because of the spent IP this will not come up in the review later (but the other things most likely will). They head back to the expo to follow get the sting going. But when they get there they are sidetracked. Sara Lockheart asks for help with a gang of very organized street urchins operating at the expo. They are very organized and pressure is being put on her to get them under control. I've expanded the “mama” thread a bit to turn them into an arm of Kell's organization with a combat encounter. The party spends Streetwise IP to find and follow some of the urchins back to their lair, which is of course in the sewars. I have my combat setup with a bunch of minions (urchins), a few were-rats, and some Kell bodyguards for mama. Mama is a noncombatant lead from the rear type who hides once the fighting starts. I made this combat a bit too big (think I over-compensated for the easy time they had of it in module 2) and this fight is pretty brutal. Carlie “dies” but when she was killed the gang was in control of the combat so I rule she's disabled not dead, figuring the gang would try to question or ransom her. Losing the area striker early on really hurts the party, as I had a lot of NPC's in the fight assuming there would be constant area attacks that would do a job on the NPC's in a confined space. Without that the party has a very rough time of it.; everyone except Savana ends up contracting Filth Fever. They do end up breaking the gang but mama gets away. Amongst the stolen items they find a rusted amulet which is immediately linked to MacBannin's bleak gate operation; questioning the urchins they get a description of an outrageously dressed man (Isaac). They have some sketches made up of Isaac and give those to Sarah to circulate to see if anyone has seen him (given how he was dressed how could people have not...) At this point I'm leaning towards turning Isaac into a combat encounter to give them another fight before they level up; although I'm not 100% sure I'll do with it. It's now mid-afternoon; they get themselves cleaned up and continue with the magic item sting. Despite all being down a surge because of Filth Fever, they figure if they don't show up today the contact might get suspicious so they have to do it now. Carlie is told to head to the subrail construction site for the buy. They head over with the rest of the party hiding. Cyrus and Ford are stealthy so they follow close by taking cover in all of the construction materials. Laci and Savanna can't even spell stealth so they hang farther back. Carlie easily passes the bluff check to convince Kaja she is a legit buyer and is shown the contents of the chest. This is when Ford declares “RHC, nobody move” and the fight music starts. This fight goes pear shaped, it's about as close to a TPK as you can get without actually having a TPK. I increase the number of Kell pistoleers to 6 figuring that Carlie's areas will obliterate them given their very low hit points, especially given her Kell phobia. She gives into her hate and gets +3 damage for the fight but has to focus on the Kell pistoleers; however 23 hp doesn't last long when someone is doing 2d10+15 :P. They break and run but the gun platforms Kaja has are just vicious; concentrated fire from them hurts! (If your party isn't combat tuned don't focus fire the combat turrets.) The party initially pushed Kaja off the station platform down to the rails (20' drop); they were shooting for the extra damage but they ended up pushing her away from the chest of items. I made it a summoned chest (like her guns) but decided she had to be next to it to make it go away; she wasn't (initially anyway) willing to abandon the chest which left her a problem of how to recover the chest before getting away. This forced her to stick around longer than she wanted but also put a lot of damage on the players, at the end of the fight Cyrus, Laci, and Ford were all dieing, Carlie had 2 hp left and Savanna + Cyrus' robots were bloodied. But they did prevail and ended up with the chest including the Blade & Amulet of the Ancients. They bring Kaja back to RHC and the team splits up. Carlie and Savanna play good cop/bad cop questioning Kaja while Ford, Cyrus, and Laci head back to the expo to see if any progress has been made trying to find the man with very poor fashion sense. Kaja cracks under questioning and they learn of her involvement in MacBannin's operation, her magic item racket, and they confirm Kell involved. They also find out that the staff is linked to MacBannin and that a tiefling visitor was there at the same time he staff arrived, and that MacBannin was not happy about the tiefling being there. Meanwhile at the expo several people reported seeing Isaac, and they even get lucky a carriage driver is found who took him from the faire so they have an area to search for him. They link back up at RHC, then head to a hospital to spend the night getting treatment for Filth Fever. They arrive at RHC the next morning to find a grim Delf. It appeears that Kaja fell down a set of stairs with a box of steak knives despite there being no stairs and no steak knives in her cell. The scene has been preserved for them to get a look at it, despite Delf telling them that Saxby wanted it cleaned up right away. Carlie spends an Evidence Collection IP at the crime scene and finds the puncture wound being hidden by the marks on Kaja's neck from the hanging. Cyrus detects bleak gate energy on the wound, which links MacBannin's operation to the now non-suicide. This immediately makes them think of rusted metal gates which they don't find. Cyrus wants to cast Detect Planar Energy, but the guards object to a ritual being performed in the prison. The party decides pushing this will potentially create too much pushback from Saxby as they are making waves. They do poke around looking for a circle/rectangle of rusted metal but don't find one. They submit an official report that lists death as suicide but invite Delf or lunch and make an unofficial report indicating it was murder and that whatever MacBannin was involved with on the bleak gate is most likely involved. This is the second prisoner who died under very mysterious circumstances; Delf (and the party) assume this is not a coincidence and Delf tells them to be careful and that perhaps more interesting news should be talked about over lunch rather than in reports. When they get back they find the RHC team that has taken their place on the MacBannin investigation in their offices. They have a crime scene that they'd like the party to look at to give them their opinions. They head over to the crime scene and take a look. They find most of the clues here but are just about out of IP (of course the next level and the resetting of IP is not far away). They find: [LIST] [*]The body is a late 50's early 60's male with an old gunshot wound in his leg. He most likely served in the Risuri military, his initials are AG. [*]His hands/arms are tied with steel bars in a way that suggests magic was used for the bending. This links him to Leone. [*]It appears the golem punched him in the skull, killing him. He died around the same time things were coming to a head with MacBannin. [*]He was wearing a necklace which most likely was one of the rusted metal amulets (unless rusted metal is a new fashion trend). [*]Witch oil was poured into him while he was still alive, but the witch oil does not contain a soul. Ergo they soul went somewhere else. [*]He had money and ship schedules, he was planning on leaving the country to head to Elfaivar. [*]The golem was pulled or blasted apart not broken. This also links to Leone (or magneto as my party calls him). [*]The golem was very ornate and complicated and was probably more for show than fighting. [*]They head is still magical and could still be housing something. And right next to this is witch oil with no soul where someone died. Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm. [*]The golem most likely pulled the rested metal amulet off of the man. [*]They find a scrap of exotic cloth; the other team agrees to allow them to take a small sample of it. Whether they will chase this down on their own or not is undecided. [*]The cloth sample is magical and given how long it's been here this means that whatever it came from had some big juju. [*]Iron ingots fell off the shelf when whatever happened here happened. [/LIST] The session ends with the party pondering how involved they should get with the other team's investigation... Unresolved issues: [LIST] [*]Finding the strangely dressed man. [*]Talk to someone at either Pardwight or the Museum about the Ancient's items. [*]Finding the tiefling that visited MacBannin's bleak gate complex. (They missed putting this on their white board but I'll be nice and remind them.) [/LIST] [/QUOTE]
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