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<blockquote data-quote="thekwp" data-source="post: 6908326" data-attributes="member: 56444"><p><strong>Session 03 - Sept 21, 2016</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Party Summary for September 21, 2016 session (session #03)</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>The Scouring of Gate Pass</strong></p><p></p><p><em>Act Two, Retrieving the Case - Spy versus Spy (continued)</em></p><p></p><p>The party checked with Rivereye on a few more details. From this, came a small amount of commentary on the strength of the forces opposing Gate Pass. "General Danava leads the 2nd Army, and he's a pretty good fellow, really. He's generally considered a friend of Gate Pass, so I think he is trying to take it easy on you right now. He's not like General Revulus or General Magdus, really." The party recognized that General Danava and Kathor Danava shared a family name, and suspect that Kathor may be a nephew or some other relation to General Danava. Some party members speculated, or perhaps hoped, that they might receive better interactions if they ever do interact with General Danava for not killing Kathor. There was also a brief discussion about the size of the army, with the revelation that the Ragesian 2nd Army is "slightly undersized" with about 10,000 soldiers, including a few air cavalry on wyvern mounts and some monstrous allies; compared to the population of Gate Pass total at 17,000 or so.</p><p></p><p><em>Act Two, Retrieving the Case - The Elvish Spymaster</em></p><p></p><p>The party headed across the next district to head to Gabal's School, or 'the Castle' as the students call it. On crossing the last gate, they were confronted by guards who were asking what their purpose was moving around this night. A diplomacy check persuaded them to let the party escort the students of Gabal back to the grounds of the school. One of the guards echoed support for the idea of gathering up all the mages to have them ready for the Inquisitors, which caused his sergeant to react by slapping him on the back of the head. The party moved on through while the ensuing discussion among the guards escalated up.</p><p></p><p>The arrived at Gabal's School to see one of the internal towers -- Gabal's personal residence -- aflame and partially collapsed. At the gate, the party found Diogenes looking out at the city and smoking a cigarette. Diogenes recognized Bromsby and Ceilthanus, greeting them. When the party asks about a trio of elves coming to the school, Diogenes told them there were no groups of elves that night, just a couple of individuals, Kisdeam and Shealis. However, when they asked about a tiny glowing fey figure, Diogenes identified it as "Shealis's pixie familiar." Explaining the involvement with the Resistance, and getting confirmation from Torrent, the party was invited by Diogenes inside the school to the kitchen on the first floor of the dormitory to have a drink and plan their actions.</p><p></p><p>The party debated attempting to confront Shealis in her rooms on the third floor of the dormitory, but settled on a plan to confront her during or after a spell duel between Diogenes and Shealis. The party planned to hide in the tower, with Dom and Krombholz hiding in a small chamber on the floor below coming out when the pair of duelers had passed, with the rest of the party in the dueling chamber behind a Silent Illusion of the wall provided by Bosma. Fortunately the floor to ceiling curtains on the floor worked well for this purpose, and Bosma's illusion pass without provoking any notice. Even with the assistance of the azata, Curriel, the party blocked her efforts to escape when confronted. Shealis threw off Diogenes' first efforts of a charm person. However, when he used Suggestion "You've been very clever about all of this. I suggest you tell everything about your spying to show us how clever and effective you've been," she failed her save.</p><p></p><p>Compelled to monologue about her activities, Shealis revealed among other things the location of her accomplices at Fulshiar Afedera Carpentry & Cabinets, in Gulshineas, an elvish ghetto in town. She explained also that she had been doing this for years, and had no hatred or dislike for Gate Pass, but believed the Resistance was doomed to failure against the Ragesian Army; only Shahalesti could stand against them. She surrendered to the party after asking Curriel, who said that the party did not really appear to be bad. Coming to believe that Shealis was the enemy of their enemy, even if not their friend, the party made arrangements for Diogenes to keep her bound until tomorrow, but to let her out before the army or the inquisitors could take the area. The party then searched her room for information, finding a note the wrote first in one script "Gulshineas Ghetto ~~ Fulshiar Afedera Carpentry & Cabinets", then in another "Remember precautions: Arborea before Elysium before Celestia," within her spellbook. Other than searching her room, and taking that note, the party did not take any of Shealis's possessions.</p><p></p><p><em>Act Two, Retrieving the Case - The Hideout</em></p><p></p><p>Following the clues gathered, they went to Gulshineas, noting with the secret doors disguising the entrances how insular the refugees from Innenotdar remained, even forty years later. During the travel to the ghetto, Krombholz spotted a raven watching the party, even following them down a few alleyways. Even once he mentioned it, no one else could spot it. Once inside the ghetto's secret entrance, the party looked made their way to Fulshiar Federa's Carpentry and Cabinets near the southern edge of the ghetto. Along the way, they found fewer bombings than in most of the rest of the town, and hardly anyone about even if numerous eyes watched them from windows and doors. One of the few areas of activities in the ghetto was an active fire obviously triggered by a firebombing, with a local fire troop and bucket brigade losing a struggle to put the fire out. Finding the woodworking shop, the party found no one around it save for a single rat that scurried away, but noted the smoke from the chimney. They successfully located the secret entrance without trouble. Bromsby's knowledge of the outer planes and their denizens made bypassing the security on the door possible.</p><p></p><p>Finding nothing of interest on the first floor, the group proceeded to the second floor, where they found four armed and armored elves huddled in a small circle and talking. The confrontation between the groups escalated quickly, when the elves challenged the assertion from the party that Shealis instructed them to turn over the case. Bromsby choose not to fight, saying that he was against the Inquisition, but did not want to make any more enemies. The party defeated the four warriors, but made a point to stabilize the wounds and not kill any of the elves.</p><p></p><p>End of Party Summary</p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p><strong>Game Mechanics, Adaptations, and Conversions:</strong></p><p></p><p>The use of Silent Image lead to longer than I liked mechanics discussion in the middle of the game. I asked for a skill check to be made to determine how well the image being crafted resembled the room as it was to function as an opposed skill check against Shealis; Rick (Bosma's player) was not really happy with that relying on the spell description that there was no saving throw if the illusion was not interacted with, and since she was not touching it, she should not get a saving throw. I ruled that this use more closely resembled something like Disguise Self attempting to match a particular and known person, giving the player the choose to describe to me what skill they were using to create their image, and granting a +10 on the the check, but that a person who knew the room might still notice something wrong with it.</p><p></p><p>Affronts of Opportunity started to get in game play, and the party begin to enjoy that function a lot.</p><p></p><p>I debated on adjusting Shealis up a level to keep her the same Challenge Rating as in the original adventure, but with Larion out of action, I decided instead to add some allies to her to bring the Encounter Level back up to the original. After some consideration, I settled on two Small Fire Elementals, hiding in Sealis's room as Continual Flame lanterns. The fire elementals will follow her orders to stay behind and block people who pursue her, and will not be affected by a fireball spell. With the change in skills between 3.5 and Pathfinder, I allocated some of her skill ranks into Linguistics, justifying both complex orders to the Fire Elementals with her speaking Ignan and being thematically appropriate for a spy who is gathering information and using cyphers on a regular basis. As for other adjustments for Shealis, I changed her prohibited schools, allowing Conjuration, and also updated her equipment. While the Hand of the Mage is a fun magic item in 3.5, but the unlimited use of cantrips in Pathfinder reduces the player value of the item; I gave her the Concealing Pocket, which seemed a useful item for a wizard spy, though I considered the Bookplate of Recall. However, the Bookplate of Recall would be generally of very limited value through the campaign because of the Burning Sky effect. All of this ended up being moot because of the way the encounter was handled; when they searched her room they did not even note the lanterns as of interest. Nothing else came into play</p><p></p><p>I really could not find a way to make the celestial badgers work. Unlike the azata, I could not really figure out a way that you would use Planar Ally for celestial badgers, nor was anyone using a Summon Monster or Servitor spell for them. As a result, I replaced them with additional Shahalesti warriors. This also make the battle with them much more reasonable of a challenge for the party's size.</p><p></p><p>I had the player's roll hit points and begin leveling up their characters for next session. They are not actually level 2 yet, but by the time they deal with the imp Kurychek, the Fallen Devil scene, and Mulysa Bahri at the next session before the safe house, they will be, so after they rest they should be at their next level.</p><p></p><p><strong>Tactical Notes:</strong></p><p></p><p>The fifteen feet length of the dormitory rooms with a five wide corridor created a nice option for using the fireball internally in the dormitory by standing in the far corner of the room away from the door and targeting the far back end corner of the square on the other side of the door. Detonating the fireball there covers ever square of the bedroom except that one the caster is in, and a nice forty foot section of the hall. The adventure suggests not having Shaelis use her fireball in her room, and there is some sense in that; there is also the professional spy who destroys all evidence on their way out the door. With the additional hit points the party has effectively at level 1 from the Wounds and Vitality alternate rules, I was considering using it. If her actions had gone a different order in the actual play, she might have used it in the tower, but the party got her fenced in pretty quickly.</p><p></p><p><strong>Music, Props, Images, Supporting Handouts, etc</strong></p><p></p><p>Music for this session was </p><p></p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Trailerhead: Saga by The Immediate </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dragon Age: Origins by Inon Zur </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Sneakers by James Horner </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Adventures of Tintin by John Williams </li> </ul><p></p><p>The Adventures of Tintin proved to be a mixed bag. Some of the music perfectly encountered the "thrilling action" and "hijinks" aspects of the session; but other portions ventured into more comic relief aspects or genre and period clashing. John Williams is great, and even his 'average' pieces are strong; I should have listened ahead of time and removed a few pieces from the list. As is, when those songs drew my attention away from the game, I just hit the "Next" on the shuffle play. Dragon Age: Origins also had a single song that I should have removed, the "I am the One - DJ Killa Remix." It did not match the mood at all.</p><p></p><p>Images were limited to the extracted picture of Diogenes from the source, and a Google sourced image for Shaelis of a blond elf woman in a red robe (albeit without any hint of armor).</p><p></p><p><strong>Supporting Handouts, Extra Details, and Story Deviations:</strong></p><p></p><p>I made a handout for Lyrion's spellbook, but nothing fancy -- just a page with the name of the book, spells, and total value. I did the same for Shaelis, but they did not take her book.</p><p></p><p>As noted in the previous summary, I gave a name to the azata (Curriel), as she was interacted with a few times, including by Shealis as she attempted to determine if she could surrender to the party and Curriel used her Detect Evil abilities on the party.</p><p></p><p>I had the handout for the note they found in her spellbook. In it, I identified both which Ghetto and which carpentry location; as indicated in the player summary above, I had named both. I used a different font for that than the additional note on the planar order, to hint that someone had provided the location, and Shaelis had jotted down the reminder. No one commented on it, so I do not know what conclusions they drew about the note. The used the handout as a reference when working to bypass the trap while opening the secret door.</p><p></p><p>I went looking to see what else is referenced in The Scouring of Gate Pass that shows up later. The largest amount of information shows up in adventure 9, The Festival of Dreams; unsurprising as that adventure brings us back to Gate Pass. The description of Gabal's School on pg 22 in The Scouring of Gate Pass does not match the map presented in The Festival of Dreams. I decided to go with the map from the later adventure, and have the collapsed tower be Gabal's residence, and possibly some of the other instructors. That's important because I wanted to emphasize it burning and being in the process of collapsing when the party visited 'the Castle' on the first night of the assault. I printed out the map of Gabal's School from the later adventure (though included in this section in the Complete Campaign PDF), and gave that to the Alex and Steven, who's characters Ceilthanus and Bromsby were students of the school. Not marked on the map in tFoD are the windows referenced in Shealis's planned reactions. Since no windows are marked on the map at all, I described the windows and made sure they understood verbally that all the rooms in the Dormitories had windows, and that none of the maps showed windows. I verbally commented and explained that the kitchens were on the first floor of the dormitory position; the map of the dormitory included neither the stairs or windows for the its multiple floors. Emphasizing that the maps do not show windows was very good, since it turns out that there is an ENORMOUS ALL ROUND WINDOW on the 3rd floor, the floor I used for the dueling chamber. That really should be indicated on the map.</p><p></p><p>As a result of looking ahead to the Festival of Dream, I want to talk about the presence of the Spire Clocktower. It did not come up in this session at all as the party did not get to Summer's Bluff. As the lair of the future dragon Vorax-Hûl in the Festival of Dreams, I feel it should get mentioned now on the party's first pass through. Given the DC of the frightful presence, the dragon that overflew the party in "Terror in the Skies" cannot be Vorax-Hûl; so I think it likely to one of his spawn working in the army now; that detail idea may never matter one way or the other though. The campaign time line for the presents Gabal's death happening while destroying the siege equipment of the 2nd Army, so I presume that Vorax-Hûl is involved now or arriving soon. As an early side note, the Mask of Vorax-Hûl is <em>awesome</em>. I am going to have to do some significant preparation with my change to divine casters being Words of Power casters, to make that battle as memorable as it deserves to be. When they pass through Summer's Bluff later, I will make a point about the Spire Clocktower.</p><p></p><p>I missed my very small window to have Kurychek interact with the party. I regret that, because now having the interaction will present less of a choice for the party. However, if it is an outright fight, it may pull Steven back into the party group better. I would really like to have a way to have Guthwulf, the Minister of Pain, referenced somehow to the group as part of foreshadowing. </p><p></p><p>I like the fact that we are given Shealis's contact, Clathan, but there are no other references to him. However, if I need to pull out a name for an elf wizard spy who has an opinion about the party, Clathan is now it.</p><p></p><p><strong>Notable Player Reactions</strong></p><p></p><p>Steven is wrestling with Bromsby's conscience in dealing with the elves of Shahalesti. They are the enemy of his enemy, but he feels like the party is going around making enemies instead of gaining friends. I feel gratified that at least one person in the party noted and feels that conflict. I found it interesting that Ceilthanus (Alex) had much less trouble attacking his fellow country men. The feelings of both as they discovery the true history of Innenotdar will prove fun, I think. I need to spend some time soon on fleshing out some more of the details of the character backgrounds to support this.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="thekwp, post: 6908326, member: 56444"] [b]Session 03 - Sept 21, 2016[/b] [B]Party Summary for September 21, 2016 session (session #03)[/B] [B]The Scouring of Gate Pass[/B] [I]Act Two, Retrieving the Case - Spy versus Spy (continued)[/I] The party checked with Rivereye on a few more details. From this, came a small amount of commentary on the strength of the forces opposing Gate Pass. "General Danava leads the 2nd Army, and he's a pretty good fellow, really. He's generally considered a friend of Gate Pass, so I think he is trying to take it easy on you right now. He's not like General Revulus or General Magdus, really." The party recognized that General Danava and Kathor Danava shared a family name, and suspect that Kathor may be a nephew or some other relation to General Danava. Some party members speculated, or perhaps hoped, that they might receive better interactions if they ever do interact with General Danava for not killing Kathor. There was also a brief discussion about the size of the army, with the revelation that the Ragesian 2nd Army is "slightly undersized" with about 10,000 soldiers, including a few air cavalry on wyvern mounts and some monstrous allies; compared to the population of Gate Pass total at 17,000 or so. [I]Act Two, Retrieving the Case - The Elvish Spymaster[/I] The party headed across the next district to head to Gabal's School, or 'the Castle' as the students call it. On crossing the last gate, they were confronted by guards who were asking what their purpose was moving around this night. A diplomacy check persuaded them to let the party escort the students of Gabal back to the grounds of the school. One of the guards echoed support for the idea of gathering up all the mages to have them ready for the Inquisitors, which caused his sergeant to react by slapping him on the back of the head. The party moved on through while the ensuing discussion among the guards escalated up. The arrived at Gabal's School to see one of the internal towers -- Gabal's personal residence -- aflame and partially collapsed. At the gate, the party found Diogenes looking out at the city and smoking a cigarette. Diogenes recognized Bromsby and Ceilthanus, greeting them. When the party asks about a trio of elves coming to the school, Diogenes told them there were no groups of elves that night, just a couple of individuals, Kisdeam and Shealis. However, when they asked about a tiny glowing fey figure, Diogenes identified it as "Shealis's pixie familiar." Explaining the involvement with the Resistance, and getting confirmation from Torrent, the party was invited by Diogenes inside the school to the kitchen on the first floor of the dormitory to have a drink and plan their actions. The party debated attempting to confront Shealis in her rooms on the third floor of the dormitory, but settled on a plan to confront her during or after a spell duel between Diogenes and Shealis. The party planned to hide in the tower, with Dom and Krombholz hiding in a small chamber on the floor below coming out when the pair of duelers had passed, with the rest of the party in the dueling chamber behind a Silent Illusion of the wall provided by Bosma. Fortunately the floor to ceiling curtains on the floor worked well for this purpose, and Bosma's illusion pass without provoking any notice. Even with the assistance of the azata, Curriel, the party blocked her efforts to escape when confronted. Shealis threw off Diogenes' first efforts of a charm person. However, when he used Suggestion "You've been very clever about all of this. I suggest you tell everything about your spying to show us how clever and effective you've been," she failed her save. Compelled to monologue about her activities, Shealis revealed among other things the location of her accomplices at Fulshiar Afedera Carpentry & Cabinets, in Gulshineas, an elvish ghetto in town. She explained also that she had been doing this for years, and had no hatred or dislike for Gate Pass, but believed the Resistance was doomed to failure against the Ragesian Army; only Shahalesti could stand against them. She surrendered to the party after asking Curriel, who said that the party did not really appear to be bad. Coming to believe that Shealis was the enemy of their enemy, even if not their friend, the party made arrangements for Diogenes to keep her bound until tomorrow, but to let her out before the army or the inquisitors could take the area. The party then searched her room for information, finding a note the wrote first in one script "Gulshineas Ghetto ~~ Fulshiar Afedera Carpentry & Cabinets", then in another "Remember precautions: Arborea before Elysium before Celestia," within her spellbook. Other than searching her room, and taking that note, the party did not take any of Shealis's possessions. [I]Act Two, Retrieving the Case - The Hideout[/I] Following the clues gathered, they went to Gulshineas, noting with the secret doors disguising the entrances how insular the refugees from Innenotdar remained, even forty years later. During the travel to the ghetto, Krombholz spotted a raven watching the party, even following them down a few alleyways. Even once he mentioned it, no one else could spot it. Once inside the ghetto's secret entrance, the party looked made their way to Fulshiar Federa's Carpentry and Cabinets near the southern edge of the ghetto. Along the way, they found fewer bombings than in most of the rest of the town, and hardly anyone about even if numerous eyes watched them from windows and doors. One of the few areas of activities in the ghetto was an active fire obviously triggered by a firebombing, with a local fire troop and bucket brigade losing a struggle to put the fire out. Finding the woodworking shop, the party found no one around it save for a single rat that scurried away, but noted the smoke from the chimney. They successfully located the secret entrance without trouble. Bromsby's knowledge of the outer planes and their denizens made bypassing the security on the door possible. Finding nothing of interest on the first floor, the group proceeded to the second floor, where they found four armed and armored elves huddled in a small circle and talking. The confrontation between the groups escalated quickly, when the elves challenged the assertion from the party that Shealis instructed them to turn over the case. Bromsby choose not to fight, saying that he was against the Inquisition, but did not want to make any more enemies. The party defeated the four warriors, but made a point to stabilize the wounds and not kill any of the elves. End of Party Summary [HR][/HR] [B]Game Mechanics, Adaptations, and Conversions:[/B] The use of Silent Image lead to longer than I liked mechanics discussion in the middle of the game. I asked for a skill check to be made to determine how well the image being crafted resembled the room as it was to function as an opposed skill check against Shealis; Rick (Bosma's player) was not really happy with that relying on the spell description that there was no saving throw if the illusion was not interacted with, and since she was not touching it, she should not get a saving throw. I ruled that this use more closely resembled something like Disguise Self attempting to match a particular and known person, giving the player the choose to describe to me what skill they were using to create their image, and granting a +10 on the the check, but that a person who knew the room might still notice something wrong with it. Affronts of Opportunity started to get in game play, and the party begin to enjoy that function a lot. I debated on adjusting Shealis up a level to keep her the same Challenge Rating as in the original adventure, but with Larion out of action, I decided instead to add some allies to her to bring the Encounter Level back up to the original. After some consideration, I settled on two Small Fire Elementals, hiding in Sealis's room as Continual Flame lanterns. The fire elementals will follow her orders to stay behind and block people who pursue her, and will not be affected by a fireball spell. With the change in skills between 3.5 and Pathfinder, I allocated some of her skill ranks into Linguistics, justifying both complex orders to the Fire Elementals with her speaking Ignan and being thematically appropriate for a spy who is gathering information and using cyphers on a regular basis. As for other adjustments for Shealis, I changed her prohibited schools, allowing Conjuration, and also updated her equipment. While the Hand of the Mage is a fun magic item in 3.5, but the unlimited use of cantrips in Pathfinder reduces the player value of the item; I gave her the Concealing Pocket, which seemed a useful item for a wizard spy, though I considered the Bookplate of Recall. However, the Bookplate of Recall would be generally of very limited value through the campaign because of the Burning Sky effect. All of this ended up being moot because of the way the encounter was handled; when they searched her room they did not even note the lanterns as of interest. Nothing else came into play I really could not find a way to make the celestial badgers work. Unlike the azata, I could not really figure out a way that you would use Planar Ally for celestial badgers, nor was anyone using a Summon Monster or Servitor spell for them. As a result, I replaced them with additional Shahalesti warriors. This also make the battle with them much more reasonable of a challenge for the party's size. I had the player's roll hit points and begin leveling up their characters for next session. They are not actually level 2 yet, but by the time they deal with the imp Kurychek, the Fallen Devil scene, and Mulysa Bahri at the next session before the safe house, they will be, so after they rest they should be at their next level. [B]Tactical Notes:[/B] The fifteen feet length of the dormitory rooms with a five wide corridor created a nice option for using the fireball internally in the dormitory by standing in the far corner of the room away from the door and targeting the far back end corner of the square on the other side of the door. Detonating the fireball there covers ever square of the bedroom except that one the caster is in, and a nice forty foot section of the hall. The adventure suggests not having Shaelis use her fireball in her room, and there is some sense in that; there is also the professional spy who destroys all evidence on their way out the door. With the additional hit points the party has effectively at level 1 from the Wounds and Vitality alternate rules, I was considering using it. If her actions had gone a different order in the actual play, she might have used it in the tower, but the party got her fenced in pretty quickly. [B]Music, Props, Images, Supporting Handouts, etc[/B] Music for this session was [LIST] [*]Trailerhead: Saga by The Immediate [*]Dragon Age: Origins by Inon Zur [*]Sneakers by James Horner [*]The Adventures of Tintin by John Williams [/LIST] The Adventures of Tintin proved to be a mixed bag. Some of the music perfectly encountered the "thrilling action" and "hijinks" aspects of the session; but other portions ventured into more comic relief aspects or genre and period clashing. John Williams is great, and even his 'average' pieces are strong; I should have listened ahead of time and removed a few pieces from the list. As is, when those songs drew my attention away from the game, I just hit the "Next" on the shuffle play. Dragon Age: Origins also had a single song that I should have removed, the "I am the One - DJ Killa Remix." It did not match the mood at all. Images were limited to the extracted picture of Diogenes from the source, and a Google sourced image for Shaelis of a blond elf woman in a red robe (albeit without any hint of armor). [B]Supporting Handouts, Extra Details, and Story Deviations:[/B] I made a handout for Lyrion's spellbook, but nothing fancy -- just a page with the name of the book, spells, and total value. I did the same for Shaelis, but they did not take her book. As noted in the previous summary, I gave a name to the azata (Curriel), as she was interacted with a few times, including by Shealis as she attempted to determine if she could surrender to the party and Curriel used her Detect Evil abilities on the party. I had the handout for the note they found in her spellbook. In it, I identified both which Ghetto and which carpentry location; as indicated in the player summary above, I had named both. I used a different font for that than the additional note on the planar order, to hint that someone had provided the location, and Shaelis had jotted down the reminder. No one commented on it, so I do not know what conclusions they drew about the note. The used the handout as a reference when working to bypass the trap while opening the secret door. I went looking to see what else is referenced in The Scouring of Gate Pass that shows up later. The largest amount of information shows up in adventure 9, The Festival of Dreams; unsurprising as that adventure brings us back to Gate Pass. The description of Gabal's School on pg 22 in The Scouring of Gate Pass does not match the map presented in The Festival of Dreams. I decided to go with the map from the later adventure, and have the collapsed tower be Gabal's residence, and possibly some of the other instructors. That's important because I wanted to emphasize it burning and being in the process of collapsing when the party visited 'the Castle' on the first night of the assault. I printed out the map of Gabal's School from the later adventure (though included in this section in the Complete Campaign PDF), and gave that to the Alex and Steven, who's characters Ceilthanus and Bromsby were students of the school. Not marked on the map in tFoD are the windows referenced in Shealis's planned reactions. Since no windows are marked on the map at all, I described the windows and made sure they understood verbally that all the rooms in the Dormitories had windows, and that none of the maps showed windows. I verbally commented and explained that the kitchens were on the first floor of the dormitory position; the map of the dormitory included neither the stairs or windows for the its multiple floors. Emphasizing that the maps do not show windows was very good, since it turns out that there is an ENORMOUS ALL ROUND WINDOW on the 3rd floor, the floor I used for the dueling chamber. That really should be indicated on the map. As a result of looking ahead to the Festival of Dream, I want to talk about the presence of the Spire Clocktower. It did not come up in this session at all as the party did not get to Summer's Bluff. As the lair of the future dragon Vorax-Hûl in the Festival of Dreams, I feel it should get mentioned now on the party's first pass through. Given the DC of the frightful presence, the dragon that overflew the party in "Terror in the Skies" cannot be Vorax-Hûl; so I think it likely to one of his spawn working in the army now; that detail idea may never matter one way or the other though. The campaign time line for the presents Gabal's death happening while destroying the siege equipment of the 2nd Army, so I presume that Vorax-Hûl is involved now or arriving soon. As an early side note, the Mask of Vorax-Hûl is [I]awesome[/I]. I am going to have to do some significant preparation with my change to divine casters being Words of Power casters, to make that battle as memorable as it deserves to be. When they pass through Summer's Bluff later, I will make a point about the Spire Clocktower. I missed my very small window to have Kurychek interact with the party. I regret that, because now having the interaction will present less of a choice for the party. However, if it is an outright fight, it may pull Steven back into the party group better. I would really like to have a way to have Guthwulf, the Minister of Pain, referenced somehow to the group as part of foreshadowing. I like the fact that we are given Shealis's contact, Clathan, but there are no other references to him. However, if I need to pull out a name for an elf wizard spy who has an opinion about the party, Clathan is now it. [B]Notable Player Reactions[/B] Steven is wrestling with Bromsby's conscience in dealing with the elves of Shahalesti. They are the enemy of his enemy, but he feels like the party is going around making enemies instead of gaining friends. I feel gratified that at least one person in the party noted and feels that conflict. I found it interesting that Ceilthanus (Alex) had much less trouble attacking his fellow country men. The feelings of both as they discovery the true history of Innenotdar will prove fun, I think. I need to spend some time soon on fleshing out some more of the details of the character backgrounds to support this. [/QUOTE]
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