I can't believe this is only Session 5 of the campaign, I feel like my players and myself are already immersed in this world. Regardless, here is Alf's (Angharad's player's) recap of the session. This session was only 2.5 hours long.
Session 5
Upon the first day of Summer, team B.A.D were heading towards their office, as Delft and Lady Saxby crossed path with the party, Saxby warning Delft that we mustn't cause an international incident, to which delft insisted that we wouldn't. But, for the past few weeks, B.A.D had been researching into Gale, with her finding and capturing to be our new Mission. But then, in an rapid change from our passive investigation, we were told that a young lady, identity unknown had jumped fro the 4th floor of the Danoran consulate, and impaled herself on the fence, maybe this woman thought she could fly, which has been a known trait of Gales underlings.
As the team rushed to the consulate via Carriage, Angharad handed out some masks in case the other members would have need to hide their face, but insisted that they would not tell people that he gave them. As they arrived at the consulate, a small crowd was nearby, as well as 4 uniformed officers fro the North Shore district police station, while one Alfred Belastair was in charge of them. Alfred told the party that the Danorians had taken the corpse inside by the time the police got there, while witnesses said they heard gunfire, saw this woman jump and then promptly be impaled. but apparently one person apparently stole stuff from her body and ran off, even as she was bleeding out. Once the party had entered the consulate, t hey met Julian LeBrix, the head of the security for the consulate. The staff was all shaken up as they were not soldiers, they hadnt seen war of death really before this. And it was Julian that told them who this lady was, one Nilasa Hume, who had been to the consulate a few times before, and was actually dating one fo the sercurity personnel, Braden. LeBrix had followed her upstairs today, on a hunch after she had brought food for everyone, and saw her pocketing some of the golden cutlery in her pockets, as he went to apprehend her, pistol drawn, she ran for the window, LeBrix apparently thinking she was going to commit suicide, shot her in the leg, but as thay happened, her feet lifted off the floor and she flew towards the window... LeBrix, worried she may actually get away, shot her in the back, which caused her to fall, landing on the spiked fence. As well as the cutlery, Lebrix is saying he found a valuble item that looked like an egg... Looking back as we fill out this report for Delft, if her body was ransacked, how did LeBrix find the egg.
After this, Team B.A.D spoke to Braden, who was crying by Nilasas body, who he had been dating for roughly 3 months now, and he informed us that they met at the 'Thinking Man's Tavern' where she has many friends and we should probably have a look there, while we should also visit her place of work, "Sechim's Alkahest and Alchemicals' who is known to be one of the more humane manufacturioes for its child workers. Braden said that Nilasa 'vanished' while people were eating, unclear on how that happened though. Ella, via use of magic, could discern that she had indeed made use of some type of flying magic, but not the source, as well as other magical auras that she could not identify. Hidden in a pocket on Nilasa's body was a empty elixir vial, that Ella worked out had previously had an extremely powerful potion of invisibility, potentially strong enough to be counted as illegal to civilians. Furthermore it was worked out that Nilasa did not have any magical skill of her own, but there was multiple lingering auras upon her body, as well as traces of illusion magic in her blood, such as from inbibing a potion. There was also healing and necromantic traces around a wound on her forehead, that seemed as if parts of it had regenerated Post-Mortem, and under the healed flesh, there was actually more wounds, LeBrix had no recollection of this head wound before she had gone through the window.
It was worked out that the invisibility elixir's worth seemed to be more than everything that had been taken, even including that strange egg.. And as Team B.A.D went to move onto other avenues of investigation, the staff now seemed rather upbeat, some of them literally dancing around, while others seemed cheery now, with some acting more skittish, nothing magical could be detected, until Lissandra wondering aloud hit it on the head, asking 'what on earth was in that food', this food had come from the Thinking Man's Tavern, and the left over food was found to have been laced with fey pepper, a plant that when processed would induce euphoria in anyone who consumed that food, and processed fey pepper such as had been dusted over the food is highly illegal. Perhaps knowing Angharad's problem with addictive things, Ella stopped Angrahad from grabbing a sample.
Lissandra decided it was time they spoke to Nilasa's spirit before they moved the body away.To Lisandra's eyes, the world had become bleached, all in black and whites while Nilasa's spirit muttered 'In death there is life. May the scorching wind carry the seeds of my legacy', and looked directly as Lisandra. The first question, what did you come here for, was answered with she came to investigate before hesitating, leading Lissandra into asking
what she came to investigate, 'when i first came here, it was just for Gale, i brought them this breakfast to distract them, running upstairs to where i thought they would keep their secret and important documents, which I'm sure i found, i didn't read them, there were a few heft reports, which i took and ran, hoping gale would be able to do something with it, those reports must've been a few hundred pages long. Interestingly, we didn't find those documents on her body, did that scoundrel take them, or did the consular staff. The last question, 'how did you meet Gale' to which Nilasa sighed, 'A few months ago, after the duchess failed to kill the king, Gale found me and recruited me, she gave me the task of the infiltrating this consulate, So i guess i didn't find her, she found me.' And with that, the spirit began to fade, but first, she jumped off the table, running up to Lisandra and pleading 'You have to protect Heward! I don't want any harm to come to him because of me!'
We think this may be Heward Sechim... Ella after hearing the phrase the spirit said, worked out it was tied to Seedism, but with vekeshi leanings added to it. Once again Team B.A.D spoke to Lebrix, asking what had been taken from Nilasa's body, he told us he saw a man briefly exchanging words with the dying NiIasa, taking the valuables and yanking a necklace from her neck, here we worked out that LeBrix was lying to us, about the cutlery, but didn't seem to being lying of his own volition, more like he was following orders he didn't agree with, and he denied that anything else was removed from her body after it was removed from the fence. Once again, apparently lying about the cutlery and the egg.
And that my friends, is what happened last time on Zeitgiest, The Dying Skyseer.
Post Session Discussion
I was a little worried about how the players would take to the investigatory aspects of Zeitgeist. However, the players adapted quickly, and were equally excited and overwhelmed by the information that slowly unraveled throughout the session. Things took a change in tone as one of the players
finally attempted a sense motive check against LeBrix...
Personally, my favourite moment was the constables and LeBrix exiting a storeroom after conducting a field autopsy of the body. I played
this music to describe the scene, as consulate staff danced throughout the corridors. LeBrix was gobsmacked.
To provide some scaffolding for this session, I provided the PCs with a task. They were to conduct a field autopsy report and return it to Delft by 5pm. This wasn't a huge deal throughout this session, but in the next session, it would help gently pressure the constables into figuring out what leads to prioritize and which could wait until tomorrow.
I've attached a handout which I gave players. I knew players would pass the "obvious" heal, perception, and spellcraft checks, so I worked these into a prop field autopsy report.
I've also attached a timeline of the events that transpire in
The Dying Skyseer. Maybe others will find it useful?
Lastly, I coordinated with my players to set up a Trello board. This is an analogue for a similar board the constables have in their office. I've attached a screenshot of the board as it looked before starting the next session. For those that don't know, each column contains several cards with information on them. As an example, I've attached Gale's card (which contains information I gave PCs at the start of the day).
I am
so hyped to run this book. When I first read of the adventure path, this book was the adventure I always wanted to play in Pathfinder, but never found. Eventually I decided if I couldn't play it, I'd just DM it instead!