Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (FINISHED 7/3/14)
Joshua Randall
Legend
Tsk, tsk, Spire Guard: not trapping the entire volume of the room? Amateur mistake. 
Also, in hindsight (heh), a teleport redirect (to, say, the middle of the ocean) would've been a spectacularly nasty trap to lay for those Black Circle b*stards.
Also, in hindsight (heh), a teleport redirect (to, say, the middle of the ocean) would've been a spectacularly nasty trap to lay for those Black Circle b*stards.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Run #5 (Page 8 of StevenAC's collected Story Hour .pdf): Praska introduced. She's was Dranko's only friend growing up in the Church of Delioch. She sent a letter to Dranko, warning of strange political machinations in the church, particularly regarding Mokad and Califax.
Runs #14 & 15 (Page 18): Praska is caught spying on Mokad and Califax, and rather than face punishment, flees the church. She sends another letter to Dranko, that she discovered church money was being channeled to a secret archaeological dig in Sand's Edge.
Run #38 (Page 46): Praska sends word to Dranko that she fled to Hae Charagan, and has been accepted back into the church there. She's happy and excited. But when Dranko goes to visit her, he finds she's been kidnapped by Mokad and the Black Circle. The Company has a strange dinner with Mokad, during which time he seems to be trying to recruit them, and afterward he releases Praska to them. She seemed fine at the time, but in fact she had been "attached" to Mokad via a "Morbid Link," which meant that if Mokad was ever killed, he'd immediately take possession of Praska's body.
Run #63 (Page 77): Califax sends word to Dranko not to trust Praska, but the church can find nothing wrong with her.
Run #108 (Page 150): In the Crosser's Maze, a version of Praska neither entirely real nor entirely imagined, says: "I’m part of the Black Circle now, and we know things. I’ve already foiled several schemes that the church of Delioch was cooking up. I see everything, and no one can tell.”
Run #131 (Page 161): The party kills Mokad and prevents him from merging Volpos and Abernia. He immediately takes possession of Praska's body, though it will be a long time before the party figures this out.
Much later: The party learns that Praska has gone over to the Black Circle, but does not yet know about the Morbid Link. They think Mokad is really dead, and that Praska simply betrayed them.
Even later: The party finds the Book of Lies, finally realizes that Mokad isn't dead, and that Praska isn't in control of her body.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Tsk, tsk, Spire Guard: not trapping the entire volume of the room? Amateur mistake.
Also, in hindsight (heh), a teleport redirect (to, say, the middle of the ocean) would've been a spectacularly nasty trap to lay for those Black Circle b*stards.
They couldn't have done these things; that much ambient magic in the vicinity would have screwed up the Ritual of Seven Stars. They had talked about various defenses, like dimensional lock and forbiddance, but they would have disrupted the Ritual. I don't think the party has the spell teleport redirect, but it would have had the same problem.
Cerebral Paladin
First Post
These updates have been awesome--I'm looking forward to how this plays out. But I'm also wondering--do we know who Alander is? It's not surprising that the Black Circle name for the Company isn't the same as the Company's name for itself, but I'm curious if we know what that name means. I couldn't remember anything about Alander, but...
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Alander was one of the original Archmagi and one of the Spire's founding members. Abernathy was his apprentice, centuries ago. In the "Before They Were Famous" prologue, found on StevenAC's site, you'll see mention of how it was Alander who gave Abernathy a scroll that ultimately chose who would be in the Company.
Alander was killed when Naloric Skewn (the original Emperor) forced his way back from his prison prime of Volpos, a thousand years after he was banished. That was the battle at which Naloric was killed, along with Alander, another archmage named Typier, and (it was long thought) Parthol Runecarver.
Thanks -- I don't recall any of that specifically.
Joshua Randall
Legend
Bah, everyone knows that too much ambient magic makes obscure evil rituals awesomer. It's in the DMG somewhere.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
First: Hi Wystan! It's always nice to hear from new readers, especially when they feel motivated to read the whole huge thing. Weclome.
Second, though you won't be reading it for a long time yet, I did something particularly rat-bastardy to the party last game. I think it left some of my players feeling angry and let down, which is something I can understand. Without divulging spoilers, what I did made them feel like they had gone through a whole lot of previous effort for nothing. I tried to assure them that that's not the case, but I'm not sure how much effect my attempts at mollifying them had. I did what I did for a number of reasons, among which were to add drama and urgency to what they're doing, but also to give them an emotional connection to the game world they've effectively left behind. My players will just have to trust me on this one, that it'll be a net positive in the end.
All of this is oddly synchronous with what's going on in this Story Hour as currently in progress. To wit:
As you may recall, I write my Story Hour by transcribing audio tapes of the sessions. The main benefit of this is accuracy (especially important for dialogue), but a side benefit is that I get to hear long-forgotten table talk from years earlier.
Let me tell you: after last run, when the Black Circle team arrived in the middle of the ritual despite all the precautions the party had taken, my players were quite upset – more upset than I may have ever seen them. Keep in mind that I had not yet sent them the piece about how the Black Circle had managed it; all they knew was that they had cast mind blanks on everyone, and that the Book of Lies would thwart any divinations about Mokad, and that Kibi had cast a wish (of the XP-using-up variety) specifically to prevent discovery, and the Black Circle had shown up anyway.
In fact, different players were upset for different reasons:
Kibi’s player was upset because she felt like she had blown a wish for no reason – that I was so determined to have this battle take place, that I was willing to break rules to make it so.
Piratecat was upset because he felt like I had broken rules regarding mind blank, and that there was just no way the BC should have been able to get there so soon.
Morningstar’s player was upset because I was breaking an unwritten rule about extra-party resources. Specifically, she pointed out that she theoretically has the entire Church of Ell at her disposal to help with the party’s adventures, but doesn’t call on them because that would be game-breaking and annoying to adjudicate. She felt there was a tacit agreement, then, that enemy churches wouldn’t do the same. As an example: couldn’t Morningstar call upon every 11th level or higher cleric in the church to cast regular communes to answer all the mysteries about the campaign? And since she doesn’t, in order not to derail things, the Black Circle shouldn’t do it either. Again, she didn’t know at the time that it was only a small party-sized group of BC adherents that were opposing them; I think she assumed that the only way the BC could have found them so quickly, was by pooling resources of an unfair magnitude.
Ernie’s player felt I had done something unfair in a general way, but described it more as a feeling, rather than point to specific things that were unfair.
And you know what? All of those feelings were completely fair, given what the players knew.
Only Aravis and Grey Wolf’s players thought it was okay. Aravis’s player specifically pointed out that they do the same kind of mind-blank skirting tricks on a semi-regular basis.
That very night, after the game, and knowing I had a bunch of disgruntled players, I wrote up and sent around that last piece of the story, mostly as damage control.
It’s interesting to consider all of this after the fact, because it exposes the weird middle ground between what the DM knows and can do, and what his villains know and can do. Like I said, there was a feeling at the table of: “Sagiro was going to have his battle no matter what we did, and so we blew a ton of time and resources for nothing.” And that’s not an unfair attitude for them to have had; I can completely see where they were coming from. But that kind of thinking puts me in a bind sometimes. Maybe it comes down to this question: should a DM have villains that are as smart and resourceful as the party, and possibly more powerful than the party, to a degree such that, in some cases, there really is effectively nothing the party can do to prevent some of the villains’ short-term goals?
That’s not to say the DM should break rules by fiat. Custom magics are great, but should be used with great care, and in such ways that they don’t set frustrating precedent. I did make sure that the villains had a legitimate way of finding the PC’s out, and they did have to blow a miracle that they then didn’t have in the subsequent fight. But I still can’t shake the feeling that I could have handled the whole thing better/differently, because my players really were actually, and legitimately, annoyed with me. I’d be interested in hearing readers’ thoughts on the subject.
Second, though you won't be reading it for a long time yet, I did something particularly rat-bastardy to the party last game. I think it left some of my players feeling angry and let down, which is something I can understand. Without divulging spoilers, what I did made them feel like they had gone through a whole lot of previous effort for nothing. I tried to assure them that that's not the case, but I'm not sure how much effect my attempts at mollifying them had. I did what I did for a number of reasons, among which were to add drama and urgency to what they're doing, but also to give them an emotional connection to the game world they've effectively left behind. My players will just have to trust me on this one, that it'll be a net positive in the end.
All of this is oddly synchronous with what's going on in this Story Hour as currently in progress. To wit:
As you may recall, I write my Story Hour by transcribing audio tapes of the sessions. The main benefit of this is accuracy (especially important for dialogue), but a side benefit is that I get to hear long-forgotten table talk from years earlier.
Let me tell you: after last run, when the Black Circle team arrived in the middle of the ritual despite all the precautions the party had taken, my players were quite upset – more upset than I may have ever seen them. Keep in mind that I had not yet sent them the piece about how the Black Circle had managed it; all they knew was that they had cast mind blanks on everyone, and that the Book of Lies would thwart any divinations about Mokad, and that Kibi had cast a wish (of the XP-using-up variety) specifically to prevent discovery, and the Black Circle had shown up anyway.
In fact, different players were upset for different reasons:
Kibi’s player was upset because she felt like she had blown a wish for no reason – that I was so determined to have this battle take place, that I was willing to break rules to make it so.
Piratecat was upset because he felt like I had broken rules regarding mind blank, and that there was just no way the BC should have been able to get there so soon.
Morningstar’s player was upset because I was breaking an unwritten rule about extra-party resources. Specifically, she pointed out that she theoretically has the entire Church of Ell at her disposal to help with the party’s adventures, but doesn’t call on them because that would be game-breaking and annoying to adjudicate. She felt there was a tacit agreement, then, that enemy churches wouldn’t do the same. As an example: couldn’t Morningstar call upon every 11th level or higher cleric in the church to cast regular communes to answer all the mysteries about the campaign? And since she doesn’t, in order not to derail things, the Black Circle shouldn’t do it either. Again, she didn’t know at the time that it was only a small party-sized group of BC adherents that were opposing them; I think she assumed that the only way the BC could have found them so quickly, was by pooling resources of an unfair magnitude.
Ernie’s player felt I had done something unfair in a general way, but described it more as a feeling, rather than point to specific things that were unfair.
And you know what? All of those feelings were completely fair, given what the players knew.
Only Aravis and Grey Wolf’s players thought it was okay. Aravis’s player specifically pointed out that they do the same kind of mind-blank skirting tricks on a semi-regular basis.
That very night, after the game, and knowing I had a bunch of disgruntled players, I wrote up and sent around that last piece of the story, mostly as damage control.
It’s interesting to consider all of this after the fact, because it exposes the weird middle ground between what the DM knows and can do, and what his villains know and can do. Like I said, there was a feeling at the table of: “Sagiro was going to have his battle no matter what we did, and so we blew a ton of time and resources for nothing.” And that’s not an unfair attitude for them to have had; I can completely see where they were coming from. But that kind of thinking puts me in a bind sometimes. Maybe it comes down to this question: should a DM have villains that are as smart and resourceful as the party, and possibly more powerful than the party, to a degree such that, in some cases, there really is effectively nothing the party can do to prevent some of the villains’ short-term goals?
That’s not to say the DM should break rules by fiat. Custom magics are great, but should be used with great care, and in such ways that they don’t set frustrating precedent. I did make sure that the villains had a legitimate way of finding the PC’s out, and they did have to blow a miracle that they then didn’t have in the subsequent fight. But I still can’t shake the feeling that I could have handled the whole thing better/differently, because my players really were actually, and legitimately, annoyed with me. I’d be interested in hearing readers’ thoughts on the subject.
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