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Tizbiz Zeitgeist Campaign
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<blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 7359321" data-attributes="member: 6816692"><p><strong>Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy</strong></p><p></p><p>We return to the hotel after the spiritual sending and have a fine dinner in their restaurant. After a while we notice that one after another Bree Kaldeckis and then Luc and Ottavia excuse themselves and leave the hotel. We decide to follow them a few minutes later and find them entering a carriage and departing the enclave. So we take the next best carriage and follow them carefully. We see that they stop at a prison near a lighthouse and ask our driver to drive us past them while we are hiding in the carriage's shadows. We than stop at a “beautiful sight” at the nearby cliffs and ask our driver to wait for us while we take an evening stroll. </p><p></p><p>Once we are out of sight, we turn invisible and approach the prison. We climb the prison's wall and see that Bree, Ottavia and Luc are greeted by a dwarf named Zoltan who leads them through the prison yard towards the lighthouse. So we decide to follow them at a safe distance and use one of Carlyle's flight spells to get up the lighthouse's wall and find out where the quartet went on the inside of the lighthouse. We spot them in a room that appears to be filled with maps of the region. On a table in the room's center we see a huge map of Drakr with some miniature buildings placed on top. </p><p></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(I joked that Xavious Foebane's game of Conquest might have found its way to Drakr somehow, so they may all just be there to play a good game with their friend...</span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">Which leads me to the question what the most popular board games in Lanjyr are? I guess that the Crisillyiri could have some sort of tactical game like chess while the Risuri could have learned a game or two from the fey. And Drakrans might be all about dice, so some sort of Backgammon, while the Berans - obviously - are more into sports.)</span></p><p></p><p>Luc then places his bag on the table, opens it and retrieves a big lantern which he calls a “prototype”. We silently try to determine its basic magic properties at a distance and find it both magical and stained with planar traces. Unfortunately, Zoltan and Luc are using very nondescript terms to describe their plan and the prototype, so we cannot really find out what the lantern does and how it could or should be used. We memorize the map and the minis (mostly lighthouses) though. </p><p></p><p>We return to the carriage and drive back to our hotel before the trio leaves the prison. When we return to our room, we are surprised to see Burton sitting on our bed, grinning into our surprised looking faces. He tells us that he trailed Cardiff for a while and found out that he's about to leave the hotel and attend to some sort of meeting. As there should be more people involved, he decided to tell us before trying to get to him alone. We thank him for his tip and ask him to stay in deep cover as we'd take care for the assumed spy. </p><p></p><p>So we take another carriage and ask the driver to follow Cardiff's. This time, our suspect leads us to Trekhom harbor where he enters a forsaken looking warehouse. We turn invisible again and follow our risuri's trails. Mr. Carlyle shows off this time as he manages to pick the lock silently and we enter the warehouse unnoticed. Inside we see Cardiff and six dwarves discussing some sensitive documents. It turns out that Cardiff has gotten his hands on some highly confidential danoran military documents he would like to sell to the Drakran secret service. So we decide that it would be better to have these documents back in Risur.</p><p></p><p>We wait until the deal is done. Supremely nervous Cardiff collects 200,000 gold from the dwarves and, as he's about to leave, casually mentions that he booby-trapped page 8 with explosives, so they better make sure to disarm the trap before reading. The Drakrans thank him for the tip, but call him paranoid in return because they are all professionals, aren't they. </p><p></p><p>As soon as we deem Cardiff to be out of hearing range, we use the element of surprise to kill the dwarves (<span style="color: #008000">even if Auryn is hesitant to do so, but we both see no other way to put our plan into motion. And the Drakrans surely knew the risks of being in the spy business.</span>). We then try to make it look as if Cardiff was the real culprit: We carefully disarm the trap on the documents, secure them, take the letter of invitation from the dwarves' leader and scorch it a bit. Then we wait a bit longer before we burn the whole building down, leaving nothing but charred dwarven remains and a slightly burnt letter concerning the meeting with Cardiff behind. </p><p></p><p>As we cannot let Cardiff get away with his treason, we decide to play a rather cruel trick on him. So we start looking for him in the harbor area and find him after a while when he's about to take a small boat. We use our hats of disguise to look like dwarves, beat Cardiff unconscious and get his money. Auryn then casts a memory-altering spell on him to make him clearly remember that it were his drakran business partners who robbed him. So now we planted our seeds to let both parties think the other side betrayed them. Maybe they're going to start a small spy vs spy war in the city... </p><p></p><p>(<span style="color: #008000">As a sidenote: I am so happy that this campaign finally offers creative uses for otherwise pretty niche spells like modify memory or claim identity or blood biography. Nothing against your good ol' fireball, but these kind of spells don't help you in a secret operation. Now I just need to find the time to learn apparent master...</span>)</p><p></p><p>We return to our room pretty late that night. Again, we find something on our bed, but this time it is a rose accompanied by the familiar smell of bath salts. From the looks of it, Mr. Mapple used our bathroom and left the rose behind in return, but at least he remembered to tidy up before he vanished. Auryn muses that she still does find this man pretty charming. Carlyle agrees with her assessment, but adds that she should try to remember that Mapple is still mentally a child. Or a teenager. Auryn says that she very much knows this and would thus never dream of seducing him.</p><p></p><p>As Auryn needs more sleep than Carlyle, he informs her that he will deliver the danoran documents to our contact on his own as soon as we finish our quick reading of the confidential pages. Some time later, he disappears through the window, goes to the harbor and hands over the case to the “emergency escape” contact. So these multiple escape routes were a good idea after all, even if we don't have to flee ourselves. </p><p></p><p>On his way back, Carlyle sees that Luc is standing in front of the train that's currently being repaired. He talks to Mrs. Carlyle, the manager of this train enclave, and insists that the train has to be ready tomorrow morning, even if this means overtime work for the maintenance team. Seems like someone has a rather tight schedule... </p><p></p><p>The next morning, both Amira and Luc seem to be rather tired. The eladrin takes this as an opportunity to joke with Luc about the joys of being newlywed, but the tiefling turns all red and doesn't dare to answer. </p><p></p><p>We accompany Luc and Ottavia to the train and talk about our travel experiences for quite a while. It seems like Luc warms up to us after a while and he looks almost happy and carefree. But then Ottavia frowns all of a sudden as if she's concentrating on something and we guess that she might just have received another sending. She then uses her sign language to talk to Luc for a longer while and then both retreat to their compartment. Luc seems a bit disappointed to leave his new friends behind though.</p><p></p><p>After the two left, Bree Kaldeckis joins us in the dining car. She talks a bit about the wounds she suffered in Yerasol IV and reveals that she lost both and arm and a leg in the war. But she was lucky to meet a miracle doctor named von Recklinghausen who reattached both limbs. It turned out that she's now also able to remove both arm and leg and control them at a distance. We find this rather curious and gasp when she demonstrates a “running arm” on the table. We ask her whether she allows us to use her story in a novel, even if we'd change her name for privacy reasons and she agrees. </p><p></p><p>Bree then asks us whether we've seen an invasion force when we visited Shale and we say that while we couldn't visit the city due to Amira's sickness, we didn't see any sign of a planned invasion or any kind of increased military presence. Hector adds that he didn't find anything dangerous about Shale, unlike the pirates who chased our ship in the Yerasol Archipelago all the way to Beaumont. </p><p></p><p>While we are talking to Bree we hear that Rock Rackus is planning a small party in the dining car, so we signal the veteran that it might be time to leave before truly strange things happen. Just as we are about to retreat, Rock starts his small concert by singing the hymn of Risur backwards which is even more confusing for Bree than it is for us.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lylandra, post: 7359321, member: 6816692"] [b]Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy[/b] We return to the hotel after the spiritual sending and have a fine dinner in their restaurant. After a while we notice that one after another Bree Kaldeckis and then Luc and Ottavia excuse themselves and leave the hotel. We decide to follow them a few minutes later and find them entering a carriage and departing the enclave. So we take the next best carriage and follow them carefully. We see that they stop at a prison near a lighthouse and ask our driver to drive us past them while we are hiding in the carriage's shadows. We than stop at a “beautiful sight” at the nearby cliffs and ask our driver to wait for us while we take an evening stroll. Once we are out of sight, we turn invisible and approach the prison. We climb the prison's wall and see that Bree, Ottavia and Luc are greeted by a dwarf named Zoltan who leads them through the prison yard towards the lighthouse. So we decide to follow them at a safe distance and use one of Carlyle's flight spells to get up the lighthouse's wall and find out where the quartet went on the inside of the lighthouse. We spot them in a room that appears to be filled with maps of the region. On a table in the room's center we see a huge map of Drakr with some miniature buildings placed on top. [COLOR="#008000"](I joked that Xavious Foebane's game of Conquest might have found its way to Drakr somehow, so they may all just be there to play a good game with their friend... Which leads me to the question what the most popular board games in Lanjyr are? I guess that the Crisillyiri could have some sort of tactical game like chess while the Risuri could have learned a game or two from the fey. And Drakrans might be all about dice, so some sort of Backgammon, while the Berans - obviously - are more into sports.)[/COLOR] Luc then places his bag on the table, opens it and retrieves a big lantern which he calls a “prototype”. We silently try to determine its basic magic properties at a distance and find it both magical and stained with planar traces. Unfortunately, Zoltan and Luc are using very nondescript terms to describe their plan and the prototype, so we cannot really find out what the lantern does and how it could or should be used. We memorize the map and the minis (mostly lighthouses) though. We return to the carriage and drive back to our hotel before the trio leaves the prison. When we return to our room, we are surprised to see Burton sitting on our bed, grinning into our surprised looking faces. He tells us that he trailed Cardiff for a while and found out that he's about to leave the hotel and attend to some sort of meeting. As there should be more people involved, he decided to tell us before trying to get to him alone. We thank him for his tip and ask him to stay in deep cover as we'd take care for the assumed spy. So we take another carriage and ask the driver to follow Cardiff's. This time, our suspect leads us to Trekhom harbor where he enters a forsaken looking warehouse. We turn invisible again and follow our risuri's trails. Mr. Carlyle shows off this time as he manages to pick the lock silently and we enter the warehouse unnoticed. Inside we see Cardiff and six dwarves discussing some sensitive documents. It turns out that Cardiff has gotten his hands on some highly confidential danoran military documents he would like to sell to the Drakran secret service. So we decide that it would be better to have these documents back in Risur. We wait until the deal is done. Supremely nervous Cardiff collects 200,000 gold from the dwarves and, as he's about to leave, casually mentions that he booby-trapped page 8 with explosives, so they better make sure to disarm the trap before reading. The Drakrans thank him for the tip, but call him paranoid in return because they are all professionals, aren't they. As soon as we deem Cardiff to be out of hearing range, we use the element of surprise to kill the dwarves ([COLOR="#008000"]even if Auryn is hesitant to do so, but we both see no other way to put our plan into motion. And the Drakrans surely knew the risks of being in the spy business.[/COLOR]). We then try to make it look as if Cardiff was the real culprit: We carefully disarm the trap on the documents, secure them, take the letter of invitation from the dwarves' leader and scorch it a bit. Then we wait a bit longer before we burn the whole building down, leaving nothing but charred dwarven remains and a slightly burnt letter concerning the meeting with Cardiff behind. As we cannot let Cardiff get away with his treason, we decide to play a rather cruel trick on him. So we start looking for him in the harbor area and find him after a while when he's about to take a small boat. We use our hats of disguise to look like dwarves, beat Cardiff unconscious and get his money. Auryn then casts a memory-altering spell on him to make him clearly remember that it were his drakran business partners who robbed him. So now we planted our seeds to let both parties think the other side betrayed them. Maybe they're going to start a small spy vs spy war in the city... ([COLOR="#008000"]As a sidenote: I am so happy that this campaign finally offers creative uses for otherwise pretty niche spells like modify memory or claim identity or blood biography. Nothing against your good ol' fireball, but these kind of spells don't help you in a secret operation. Now I just need to find the time to learn apparent master...[/COLOR]) We return to our room pretty late that night. Again, we find something on our bed, but this time it is a rose accompanied by the familiar smell of bath salts. From the looks of it, Mr. Mapple used our bathroom and left the rose behind in return, but at least he remembered to tidy up before he vanished. Auryn muses that she still does find this man pretty charming. Carlyle agrees with her assessment, but adds that she should try to remember that Mapple is still mentally a child. Or a teenager. Auryn says that she very much knows this and would thus never dream of seducing him. As Auryn needs more sleep than Carlyle, he informs her that he will deliver the danoran documents to our contact on his own as soon as we finish our quick reading of the confidential pages. Some time later, he disappears through the window, goes to the harbor and hands over the case to the “emergency escape” contact. So these multiple escape routes were a good idea after all, even if we don't have to flee ourselves. On his way back, Carlyle sees that Luc is standing in front of the train that's currently being repaired. He talks to Mrs. Carlyle, the manager of this train enclave, and insists that the train has to be ready tomorrow morning, even if this means overtime work for the maintenance team. Seems like someone has a rather tight schedule... The next morning, both Amira and Luc seem to be rather tired. The eladrin takes this as an opportunity to joke with Luc about the joys of being newlywed, but the tiefling turns all red and doesn't dare to answer. We accompany Luc and Ottavia to the train and talk about our travel experiences for quite a while. It seems like Luc warms up to us after a while and he looks almost happy and carefree. But then Ottavia frowns all of a sudden as if she's concentrating on something and we guess that she might just have received another sending. She then uses her sign language to talk to Luc for a longer while and then both retreat to their compartment. Luc seems a bit disappointed to leave his new friends behind though. After the two left, Bree Kaldeckis joins us in the dining car. She talks a bit about the wounds she suffered in Yerasol IV and reveals that she lost both and arm and a leg in the war. But she was lucky to meet a miracle doctor named von Recklinghausen who reattached both limbs. It turned out that she's now also able to remove both arm and leg and control them at a distance. We find this rather curious and gasp when she demonstrates a “running arm” on the table. We ask her whether she allows us to use her story in a novel, even if we'd change her name for privacy reasons and she agrees. Bree then asks us whether we've seen an invasion force when we visited Shale and we say that while we couldn't visit the city due to Amira's sickness, we didn't see any sign of a planned invasion or any kind of increased military presence. Hector adds that he didn't find anything dangerous about Shale, unlike the pirates who chased our ship in the Yerasol Archipelago all the way to Beaumont. While we are talking to Bree we hear that Rock Rackus is planning a small party in the dining car, so we signal the veteran that it might be time to leave before truly strange things happen. Just as we are about to retreat, Rock starts his small concert by singing the hymn of Risur backwards which is even more confusing for Bree than it is for us. [/QUOTE]
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