ZEITGEIST The affirmative action racial recruitment team of the RHC

The session starts with the team waking up just above the high water line on a beach near Vendricce at dawn. They take a short hike into town and begin to plan their operation to kidnap Luc and preferably his lantern. El Kevin wants to ambush the train before it reaches town, however no one else likes this idea as it risks all sorts of chaos and collataral damage.
They make contact with their Familias contacts and purchase some sleep poisons for Manuel to use on his patented none lethal bullets and arrange for several people to be available in the enclave to shadow Luc as he leaves the train , they make sure to have a carriage on hand as well. They also prepare their escape plans with a familias ship waiting to give them a covert lift out of the port. However they think that ship will not help if the local authorities close the port so they start on plan B. Nevla makes contact with the local fey who are sympathetic to an Eladrin and dislike the locals they tell her there is a warband of Eladrin in town already and she makes an arrangement to meet them initially alone but after thought she thinks they may grab her or something to take the hole team , ensuring uneventful contact. Before this meeting they brainstorm and decide that their favourite plan is to steal a train and then drive it at full speed through the city and onto the bridge crashing it off the end and doing all sorts of damage, Nevla is in favor of damaging the bridge as she is not keen on the clergy stealing more of Elfaivar. They speak to the Fey again and arrange for the local fey to save them if they plummet into the sea and dump them onto the deck of a Risuri merchant ship which will be leaving port just before sunset.
Then they meet with the Eladrin who seem a trifle odd and barbaric to Nevla but no one , not even the Lightning Weasel makes a knowledge religion check to recognize that they are were-tigers. They want the Eladrin to cause a diversion by attacking something else so the local authorities are too busy to respond to their actions, the Weretigers agree to set fire to part of the construction project for the bridge when Padme sends her familiar bird to them, largely they agree because they find the idea of someone driving a train off the end of the bridge entertaining.
Finally they visit the shoe shop recommended by Morgan Cippriano and purchase a selection of comfortable shoes as well as a few pieces of formal wear. The shop owners cope surpisingly well with providing footwear for a Kobold and a Goblin. Finally they are ready for the arrival of the train with the familias observers in position as well as Padme's bird and the lightning weasel. They discover Luc and Bree are not getting off the train and from the RHC man on the train that the train will be stopping at a small private station so they rush off in the carriage.

Arriving at the station they observe Lya , which gives them pause they believe she is dangerous combatant and also don't think they want the diplomatic consequences of killing her. Manuel takes position in a tree opposite the train station while El Kevin lurks on the roof Nevla, Ulvaar and Padme being less certain of their stealth skills (in Ulvaars case he is certain of his stealth skills) lurk behind the buildings behind the station. The lightning weasel hides under the floorboards to listen in on anything inside.

The train arrives and the spying begins, they are initially suprised by Lya providing some oil to Luc and the link to the bleak gate but soon realise that it gives them an opportunity Lya is inside and so cannot see much outside the station while the new guards cannot see them if they stay outside the lantern light. Ulvaar moves around to behind the train but outside the lantern light, realising that the train engineer may be able to see them Padme is sent forward to Sap the train engineer while Nevla and Manuel hide inside the train. As they start moving around they send off the bird to signal the diversion.
Inside Lya is explaining about the Obsurati to Luc and how his lanterns will be used in Lanterns and Clocktowers to change the world, Luc asks if it will make the world better for people, and she assures him it will and that she had doubts at first as well before she can explain further Nicodemus introduces himself and explains that the full explanation should wait until they reach their destination. The players pick up the point about the towers , the 'wisest minds of the last 500 years' they are picking up that a lot of things with Ashima-Shintu and the Ob seem to lead back to the 2nd Victory, finally they pick upon the name Nicodemus they has taken to calling the thing that possessed people and smoked Nicodemus but are suprised that is his name.
When Nicodemus produces the amulets they make the connection to Macbennin and his bleak gate amulets and decide to strike before anyone can move to the Bleak gate. Unsure of their ability to defeat the guards and Nicodemus they come up with a cunning plan. Manuel shoots the lantern with one of his alchemical explosive bullets destroying it and immediately seperating them from the threats in the Bleak gate. El Kevin opens the side door , Ulvaar and Padme move to support him as Lya moves out stabbing hin in the process, Manuel shoots Luc with a sleep poisoned bullet and he drops unconcious, Nevla teleports in next to Luc and casts hold person on Bree which she shrugs off, she stabs Nevla who parries. Meanwhile Ulvaar and El Kevin attack Lya and Ulvaar lands a good blow while El Kevin wings her with some revolver rounds as he backs away. Lya drops Padme with quick blows and wounds Ulvaar , Manuel shoots Bree with a poisoned bullet and despite her excellent save she goes down unconcious. Nevla looks around and then casts obscuring mist while grabbing Luc. Lya takes another hit from Ulvaar despite her parrying which is rolling badly moves across the room and strikes at Nevla who parries and counterattack wounding Lya , Lya's decoy ring activates as she drops to 15 hp and she disengages to get healing and reinforcements. In the confusion everyone pile onto the train and set off along the track as fast as possible. Manuel goes as fast as possible constantly sounding the whistle to try and warn people off. Manuel thinks that stealing a train and driving it off a bridge into the sea is going on his list of fun things he has done alongside ramming a monster with a subway train. El Kevin is less keen on this sort of thing as he was badly injured when they crashed trains into monsters they argue about it as they train head towards its doom. As they pass through the construction site they see fires and what looks a lot like a weretiger rampaging around. No one is able to respond fast enough to stop them and the train roars onto the bridge smashed through the barriers and then plummets 300 feet into the sea. Fortunately the water fey act fast and rescue the constables leaving them on the boat to Risur.

They discuss keeping their survival secret from most of the people of Risur but have not finalized a decision when we end the session

Wow, excellent extraction and mayhem.

How up to date is this? Do you post each week as the game happens?

Aside from their RHC-given missions, do any of the PCs have personal goals. Is anyone interested in joining the Obscurati?

It is up to date we play mondays and I post soon after while I remember what happened.

Nevla wants to find out what is happening to her, why she has weird memories and assiociations with events from the 2nd Victory of course thats part of the main plot.
El Kevin wants to be a dragon, he also wants to fly .
Manuel wants to be batman crossed with Iron man , have lots of gadgets, suits of steam powered armour and save the world while having fun.

Also after my last PF campaign were I did a lot of sidequests and personal goals that campaign stretched out for a very long time so I am trying to keep this one more on track

They have a fairly low opinion of the Obscurati . They found the activities of the Ob in Risur to be reprehensible but are puzzled as Ottavia seemed to be largely doing good trying to eliminate corruption in the clergy. They want to find out what the Ob plan is, At the moment they would not trust the Ob Leaderships definition of a better world and I don't think Nevla or Manuel would put up with the deeds the Ob needs to do to get there. However when they find details of the Ob plan that might change but I doubt it, El Kevin would be much more likely to go along, I think Ulvaar would be nearer to the opinion of Manuel and Nevla. Padme is a GMPC along to fill skill gaps and some other things so she tends not to have controversial opinions.
In the end I think they will come down against the Ob however I see quite a bit of squabbling about the shape of the new world. When a similar event came up at the end of a superhero campaign there was brief combat before we settled on a choice.

There are going to be a couple of breaks coming up hopefully they will come around the same time , one is when I have a minor operation and the other is after part 5 we will switch back to a star wars campaign for a few months before returning to this or at least thats the plan things may change but players are enjoying the campaign so we will be back to it.

We start off with some initial discussions about any further information they could get from Luc and Ottavia. In particular they try to work out how the rings work and screen from divination, they come to the conclusion that the rings are tied into some sort of large and ancient ritual and that they need more information to get a way of breaking it. They also have a general recap of the Obsurati and try and work out what it is up to , the come to the conclusion that they make a lot of use of the Bleak gate and that their efforts in Risur are Industrial which makes sense to them as the Bleak Gate in Danor is unusable, Crissilyr has little industry and the Dwarves are going to make Drakr difficult to work in and so thats why they are in Risur, they also think that the objectives involve messing around with the planes , EL Kevin is convinced there is a 'grand planar conjunction' coming despite all the astronomers disagreeing that such a thing is possible. They do have a theory that the Ob includes a Dragon and one of their objectives is to make flight possible although they think this seems a bit trivial for the Ob and they must have a greater goal. One theory is Nicodemus is an extraplanar entity similar but opposed to Sijim.
As this discussion stalls on lack of details they decide to prepare for the plot. They set off to meet the King and Harkover, where they express concern that sharing information with Harkover may not be secure as they don't quite trust him, I am not sure they entirely trust the king but they have decided he is the king and so they will follow him.
The ambush of their coach goes incredibly badly, El Kevin guns down the driver and the musketeer on the drivers platform of the coach behind them, Manuel spider climbs onto the front seat and takes control of the coach and Nevla Sound bursts the coach in front stunning the driver and front seat passanger. So at the end of the first round both coaches crash and our heroes escape to meet the king. They use the message wind to call for backup to arrest any survivors of the crash but do not stop themselves in case there is more of the ambush.
Reaching the Hotel Aurum they meet with the King and Harkover Lee, agreement is reached that they will lead the attack on Lorcan Kell they approve of having Harkover dominate Lorcan into talking when they catch him, El Kevin thinks that the attack on them was a bit blatant and is suspicous of some hidden motivation the others tend to think Kell is a violent thug and it was in character for him. Nevla reveals that she had a visit from Asraby and explains what he wants the King agrees that they should assist in dealing with Ekossigan and leaves it in their hands.
Meanwhile the B-Team are meeting the Beran ambassador they take the incident with the bear very calmly noting that the crew are not scared and avoid making a scene before escorting the amabassador to the Beran consulate,


To be continued

The B team then escort ambassador Brakken to lunch , the team are puzzled by Goat Fish until they spot the comma Carleo then enjoys a lunch which reminds him of the war, the dwarf Dema takes notes she has an obsession with paper and paperwork. At this point the bomb explodes derailing the train, as the constables react to the explosion they notice a strange dwarf walking down the road who draws further attention when a gargoyle falls on him. Moving over they realise this is a strange dwarf ,he has no beard. Soon Dema recognises him as an eschataological cultist and after removing the gargoyle they stabilize him and start interrogation , so he take poison, however Dema casts delay poison on him so that he does not die. They continue interrogation, meanwhile the alchemist Serrena is organising the police response and their team sniper moves up to the rooftops to look for problems, he soon starts to spot dwarven snipers. Carleo decides to intimidate his prisoner to discover if there is another bomb he threatens to build an orphanage in the dwarf's name and endow it with a lot of money to save many lives and make the world a better place, shaken the dwarf tells them that they will never be able to redeem his name once his other bomb goes off. They rush into the newspaper office and start searching Serrena starts to disarm bombs while Dema and Carleo evacuate the building, outside a fire fight starts with the snipers and the bomb detonates when Serrena has partially disarmed it combined with the evacuation and use of ice bombs to limit fire the only casualty is Serrena who is injured and trapped. The snipers are killed in a fire fight and the casualties are minimised, the B team is commended and Serrena put in for a gallantry award as her heroism in defusing the bombs saved many lives at risk to her own. Manuel is relieved to hear that his laboratory with his nearly completed steam suit was not blown up, however it will take some time to complete it so he will be dependant on his nock gun alone until then.
Finally the teams are able to interview the damaged golem , they try to get Harkover Lee to break the geas on him and are suprised to find he cannot, their presumption is that Nicodemus has developed some very powerful geas ritual. The interrogation goes ahead anyway and they are able to work out some useful things such as that he was accompanied by Kasavarina when he left and that Golems are being manufactured and that it took the mindmaker some time to nurture each mind. Nevla comes to the conclusion that this means the Ob must be building either a small number of powerful golems including the preposterous suggestion that they could be building one giant golem!!

Next week they begin the hunts for Ekosigan and Lorcan, I suspect the B-Team will handle the hunt for the eschatolgoists as they have done well so far

Andrew Moreton said:

including the preposterous suggestion that they could be building one giant golem!!

Click to expand...

They've looked at the adventure's book cover, haven't they?

It is possible, but I have not shown them it. Waiting for an opportune moment such as when they meet him. Planning to use myself as a scale miniature

At the beginning of the session they rehashed what they already new while not coming to many new conclusions they at least made certain they were all on the same page about Lorcan Kell and Ob activities. One new idea was that the Mindmaker may have been creating network command minds for a large golem army, they are still trying to work out what is being made in the bleak gate and match the discrepancy that it is a very large effort but the Mindmaker could only have built a limited number of minds , so they think it is either One Big Golem, a small number of very dangerous (adamantine or better) golems or the new theory a large golem army commanded by a number of smart command units. They also decided that the B-Team would continue to handle the eschatologists as they seemed to be on top of them while the main team dealt with Kell and Ekosigan.
On the morning of the 9th they sent teams of officers to check out each of the districts 2 teams to the Nettles and Parity Lake. Manuel and El Kevin checked out the theatre while Ulvaar and Padme checked out the Nettles compound Casa Machete at the same time Nevla went to work with their docker contacts to check out the docks and try and find out what if anything Lorcan was up to with the newly forming dockers union. The theatre showed what they expected a stronghold too tough for them to take on yet, Casa Machete on the other hand they decided they could take particularly if the concealed cannon were taken out of the picture they decided to hit it that evening, Nevla would call on her adoptive father and borrow a detachment of Elven rangers to support an attack by all available pc’s. At the docks Nevla determined that some cargo’s were vanishing from barges my magical means presumably going to the bleak gate at which point Manuel realised that this could involve Rusted Iron gates on bridges.
In the afternoon Nevla went into the cloudwoods to try and get some leads on Ekosigan and find out why she had difficulty getting in touch with Gale via messenger wind, Manuel and El Kevin went on a bridge inspection tour leaving Ulvaar and Padme to lead a hit on an illegal transaction while the majority of their constables scouted out the fronts and thieves den’s they had located. The sting was a bust as someone betrayed their approach however the spy was no match for Ulvaar’s eagle eye and was rapidly apprehended. El Kevin and Manuel found the Rusted Iron gates and concluded that as only some cargo was going missing it must be marked by magical runes of some sort and they decied that on the next morning they would track down some crates. El Kevin suggested they could put a bomb in a crate and send it through everyone else thought this was a really bad idea along with his plan to burn down most of Parity lake to take out the theatre, they did consider that as a last resort they could put themselves In boxes, although they think there must be a second stage after the gates to keep things in the Bleak gate and as they don’t know what it is that plan is a desperate plan.
Meanwhile Nevla went to the Cloudwood and started trying to track down trouble she rapidly noticed that her fey contacts were gone and that the local fey were being shaken up by something big in the area so she concluded Ekosigan was in the cloudwood. She also noticed the developing paranoia and social break down and heard about the dead child. She realised she could not get access as the local mayor would not deal with her as she was a known Fey sympathiser. Instead she tracked down Asraby and persuaded him to join her in getting access to the body as she suspected a link to they Fey the plan was for him to walk up and demand access on the theory that the local cops would not be crazy enough to stand in his way, and she would follow him in trying to soothe ruffled feathers and then take advantage of his access. They came to the conclusion he was the subject of a faerie curse and had been hanged from a tree but could not work out what the curse did, they then tried to track down some local fey and got a reply to a message drop form Gale agreeing to meet in the morning the tone of the note worried Nevla she and Gale had become friends and this note was not friendly. She became concerned that Gale may have got too close to Ekosigan and made an agreement by accident something she was worried about any time she dealt with powerful fey (we played a lot of Ars Magica so all of the group are paranoid about faerie deals). By the time she headed back into town to link up with the rest of the team they had launched their raids. The task force hit three thieves dens with overwhelming force taking down 15 thugs for no loss while Casa Machete was hit by 4 pc’s and a dozen elven rangers a force equivalent to 80 regular officers. Infiltrators took down the cannon and used them to blow the gates and doors , the waking thugs them encountered Elven rangers already inside the perimeter and were rapidly disarmed and captured taking another 21 of Kell’s men out of action.
When Nevla returned they reviewed the curse and between them the lightning weasel and El Kevin were able to work out that the curse drove the entire family to paranoia and infighting, Nevla thought that described the state of the cloudwood and then they made the leap to the child being a ward of state , Nevla contacted Harkover and they have a remove curse scroll to use on the body in the morning.

The deeds of B team to follow

I love when fey go foul.

The B team split their time between off camera diplomatic protection duties and following up on the Eschatologist investigation.
They headed off to the repair company whose documents they had found on their prisoner, on entering the office they intimidated the human clerk on duty but not sufficiently that he was deterred from signalling to the sniper maintaining overwatch. The dwarven cleric leapt down the trapdoor to avoid being shot while Carleo bodyslammed the clark behind the desk, their gunslinger and alchemist took cover while the gunslinger tried to stop the sniper to return fire. Carleo and the alchemist rapidly followed their cleric down into the tunnels while their gunslinger realized that the sniper had been showing off and not trying to actually hit anyone. He moved around to try and find the sniper while Carleo the tracking cavalier followed the trail of dwarves beneath the ground.
At about the same time the underground team located the trap of freezing doom between two portcullises their gunslinger was talking to the snipe and learning that the place was full of traps and that all the terrorists covered their boots in insecticide. Meanwhile down below the team was saved when Carleo proved strong enough to lift the portcullis before they froze. Fortunately it turns out army ants are somewhat easy to kill off with explosive fire bombs and the rest of the eschatolgists proved no obstacle to the B-Team they captured all the documentation and were trying to work out what the terrorists were up to before the session ended