Well, I think it's impossible to predict what random NPC DMs (or players) will latch onto - Catherine was indeed introduced here in the paper, and serves her purpose just fine as written. Though I'm definitely pro-"read the entire game from front to back before you DM it" in case there's that one NPC that really resonates with you for some reason. I've constructed an entire Romana Family Line sidequest that I'm excited to unwind. DMs just add their own flavor out of nowhere, sometimes.
Speaking on things to latch on to, I forgot to talk about my player's crisis of faith in Stover Delft. He's their favourite NPC, they even think his weird tobacco habit is endearing. But every time someone mentions he might be in the Ob, everyone freaks out. They talked about not telling Delft about the Obscurati for about one second, then immediately caved. They asked him if he would consider not telling the King about their investigation, but Delft reminded them what the Royal Homeland Constabulary was created for, and that not cooperating would be treasonous. (The party decided they'll play it by ear, and expect to have to jump ship at some point. They hope to bring Delft along.)
My players wish they could come to the forum and chat and share their theories, but me sharing caps of chat will have to do.
Oh man, Fake!Delft in Adventure 9 is going to be a very good time. For me. Hee hee.
Also Amielle's player (also plays Gatria) figured out what the rings mean and their pattern, and she's also not pleased that I (well, the story, but hey) manipulated her into setting up the Ob in Flint in Bonds of Forced Faith.
They're just about to meet him next session!!! I'm vibrating with anticipation to see how things go this adventure...
So, yeah, we finished Adventure 4!!!
Adventure 2, Always On Time: Oracle Unaware Her Companionship The Only Thing Stopping Man From Committing One of the Bloodiest Acts in Lanjyr History
We follow the Obscurati's trail overseas! The party's secret identities were:
Mona > Daisy Mossbrew, a woman who married into wealth and is now using her husband's fortune to fund her potion business
Marcel > Rachel Mossbrew, Daisy's whiny teenaged stepdaughter
Hoya > Tifapine, Daisy's private tutor
Cleone > Lydia Benest, deva merchant recently hired into Daisy's potion business
Gatria > Catherine Hunter, Lydia's business partner
They were all Risuri. The party more or less prepared perfectly (highlights include getting Delft to disguise himself as 'Daisy's' husband to pose for a painting with his 'wife' and 'daughter', which Mona brought with her on the train...), so I didn't give them any trouble getting into Danor. They also recruited Finona, who quickly became another party favourite.
Between adventures, Gatria checked in with Morgan Cippiano. After learning that Rock Rackus had some very unusual scrolls, she used her prestige with the Family to try and figure out if he had any villas or some such overseas that she could go rob. I didn't want her to get her hands on the scroll yet, but I thought I would reward her for her good thinking anyway, so I gave her an address in Beaumont she could poke around in. She found money and incriminating evidence about Gran Guiscard's failure to recruit the oblivious Rock into Gorgeous Cell (which I called Glamor cell before, oops! That's what I meant). Gran stopped short of outright saying what the cell's goals were, but I gave them a hint towards their intentions. Now that they've stolen both his gun and his stuff, "Rob Rock Rackus Blind" is now a major party goal.
The party realized pretty quick that they were kind of useless as a group, and decided to split up when stalking marks. Everyone instantly hated Boone (we just called him Olivert), and rather than stalking him when she realized she had no stealth talents, Cleone decided just to follow him around and harass him openly for being a creep. It was very funny, and also saved the young girl's life at the first stop, though from their perspective, he just grumpily retired to a cheap hotel with his date. Cleone's player actually said, "I bet you anything he's actually a serial killer who is hiding his love of violence behind womanizing behavior." After she turned out to be right, she renamed herself Broken Clock in group chat. Then she just kept... dropping truth bombs...
Posted pre-Nicodemus. Steph, I REALLY need you to stop!!!
Gatria successfully stalked Bree and Finona's carriage using a combination of magical disguise and invisibility on the way to the Jierre's, and in an incredible moment of mind-reading, had the foresight to get out of dodge before reaching the antimagic road to the mansion. Later, she literally dove out to sea to get to the Lighthouse where Luc was heading for his demonstration, and scaled the wall to overhear their conversation. Mona, in rat form, also managed to successfully perception-and-stealth her way to the meeting with Zoltan, where she got to see the meeting with her own eyes and witness Luc's uncertainty (Zoltan complimented his ingenuity for coming up with such a device; Luc seemed a little frustrated by the compliment).
Mona made friends with Damata, who eventually told her about his problems, but the party decided not to get involved for fear of not only blowing their cover, but angering their Family connections back in Flint. When Damata went off to die, the entire chat stopped the game to pour a drink and have a little toast to our poor, brave, dead half-orc friend.
Through the combined power of Message and plain intuition, they found out about Isobel's situation right away. Similarly, though, they decided not to get involved for fear of blowing their cover. Cleone discovered Mr. Mapple and tried to arm him to the gills, but he got arrested anyway. By now, the party was pretty upset with themselves for letting innocent people die, but Gatria and Marcel tried to reason with the good-aligned party members that they were probably going to save millions of lives by stopping the Obscurati. Out of character, the party is insanely curious to know what percentage of people decide to involve themselves with various plot threats, but I suppose that information is impossible to know.
Cleone also figured out something was up with Malia, but decided not to pursue it. After the train incident, she reported Malia's suspicious activities to the authorities, and felt horribly guilty when it turned out she was responsible for the Screaming Malice.
The party didn't involve themselves with Cardiff at all (rather, they tried once and failed their rolls to keep up).
If an Avery Coast Train goes at sixty miles per hour for six days, how many people should you let die in Nalaam? By the way, the 3D image is a Heroforge mock-up of Finona.
Hoya become close friends with Verzubak, who realized that they were the spies, and decided to have a straightforward, friendly chat with Hoya before he made a decision to come forward to his employer. Hoya successfully convinced him not to tell with some good Diplomacy rolls and some cash - but not before Gatria told a casino guard Verzubak had magic, cheating dice, and to arrest him at once. Oops!!!
Since Luc and Ottavia couldn't definitely prove that Mossbrew and company were the spies, they decided to throw their entire car into Nem. Olivert made a ruckus in the hall before the lantern was lit, and Hoya invited him into their car just to shut him up (there was no way the party would have let him in otherwise). Cleone and Mona made the save (I decided to let it be a one-time save, but the party outside could voluntarily decide to fail after that), everyone else fell into Nem. Gatria ran ahead to scout out the train, and Hoya confronted Boone about being a serial killer. Boone decided to attack her - I thought this was a good time to emphasize that leaving the two bards alone with a big bad serial killer was a bad play. Um, turns out they absolutely crushed him. Somehow. I was pulling out all the stops, but never underestimate the power of a good stunlock.
Back in the real world, Cleone and Mona figured out that shattering the car lanterns could save their friends. Just as Hoya and Marcel were arguing over what to do with Boone, the party woke up. Boone remained unconscious and eventually died. Hoya literally wept with guilt, feeling sorry for him, deciding that he might not have been so evil had it not been for the cursed gun. Oh boy, I'm giving her Triegene's Humble Hook in Adventure 7 for sure. Later, Gatria recovered the broken lantern for study.
The party was evenly split on whether to follow Ottavia to the Isle of Odiem. Look... I didn't want to let a good NPC go to waste, so I had Marcel vote to go, not gonna lie. They took Ottavia up on her offer to talk, and convinced her successfully that they had no interest in hurting anyone, but spent more time trying to convince Ottavia that the Obscurati was evil than trying to get information from her. Ottavia had no reason to believe them, so they ended up at a philosophical stalemate. Ashima Shimtu lured them to the Vault during the zombie attack, and the party gave her a little visit. Ottavia refrained from fighting Gene, and was reluctant to approach Ashima Shimtu. After the fight, the party had a talk with Ashima Shimtu alone, and asked her if she would see them safely back to Sid Minos (they declined to go to Vendricce, against Ashima's offer. Oh well!). They also asked her if she might drop Ottavia off at a pond in Torfield Palace with the intent of getting her arrested for tresspassing, so they could wrangle her later and question her. Also, it would be a threatening message to the King, if he really were a part of the Obscurati. Ashima Shimtu thought this was very amusing, and agreed.
To make a long story short, during the scramble from Sid Minos, the party split and only Mona and Gatria made it to see Lya and Luc reunite. The party absolutely refused to kill Luc, and since they already had the lantern, they weren't all that interested in taking him hostage, either. At the very least, Gatria wanted to extract poor Finona from the meeting, but then thought it would be great fun to become Invisible and pick Nicodemus' pocket for more of those Bleak Gate Amulets. He instantly perceived the attempt and alerted Lya. The party fled as fast as they could away from the scene, leaving Finona behind in their haste. Figuring out that Lya had a chainsaw and that Nicodemus could outroll a 31 spooked them enough, so I didn't give them any more trouble.
Back on the shores of Risur, the party interrogated Ottavia. I let Ottavia give them a teeny bit more information than recommended - she confessed that the lantern could harness planar energy to influence this world to protect the weak and oppressed in the coming reckoning - which might have been a mistake, because then three of my players all shouted at once "Oh, so this is Steampunk The Red Strings Club!" Hey, first of all, Zeitgeist came out before TRSC, and also, you guys can't just reverse-engineer the plot by investigating my interests. These gremlins, I swear. Anyway, this ending was very satisfying to them, so I don't really regret it, even if I tipped my hand a bit too much.
Well. Onward to Adventure 5!
Intermission
Marcel on the docks. ...I swear if I had been a player when some of the huge revelations happen in Adventure 5, it might have instantly incinerated my brain.
I know this post is already crazy long, but here's a fun minigame I did with my players. Back in Adventure 3, Hoya expended a favor for a list of all Yerasol Veterans with the initials A.G. who were treated for injuries in the 3rd Yerasol War. If your players somehow also ask for this, I made a spreadsheet in about ten minutes of work that lists randomized people. You can have it here (my google account name is just a pseudonym). By process of elimination, they figured out the name of John Doe was Alexander Grappa.
In the downtime between 4 and 5, I had a little intermission session where I let Cleone put the golem back together. (We also did a March of Kings minisode, which I'll share later, but I don't have time to get into it right now). When Alexander told them his name, they lost their freaking minds.
Gatria also shared her little "conspiracy theory" she had about Benedict Pemberton. As an ex-cult of the steel lord soldier, she found Flint News from Adventure 4 about Pemberton pushing for war and the simultaneous hiring of Ber immigrants in Flint factories VERY suspicious, and decided to investigate. She had enough intel from Benedict Pemberton's tent to know he worked with steel and that he probably had a factory here, and I let her find out from Cippiano by expending another favor that Pemberton sourced his steel from Ber. She then confronted the party with her intel, and said that if Risur goes to war with Ber, it'll be the rebels that benefit - and the Steel Lord Gradiax, too. Given that she's seen it is possible to house a soul in a machine, she believes that Benedict Pemberton is working with the Rebels to create a Metal Dragon that can house Steel Lord Gradiax's soul.
Group chat responded by making this meme:
That's all for now! I was supposed to have a major surgery in a couple weeks and was going to take a break from DMing, but it got cancelled, so, uh... let's finish Act I!!!
I don't want to hurt your players' feelings, but of more than a dozen groups that have had write-ups of adventure four, I think they're maybe the second that didn't save Isobel and Andrei. I recall a few more that didn't help Damata.
But damn, I love that trolley car meme. Good luck on the upcoming games. I can't wait to see how they respond to imperiled orphans.
I don't want to hurt your players' feelings, but of more than a dozen groups that have had write-ups of adventure four, I think they're maybe the second that didn't save Isobel and Andrei. I recall a few more that didn't help Damata.
But damn, I love that trolley car meme. Good luck on the upcoming games. I can't wait to see how they respond to imperiled orphans.
Yay, thanks for letting me know!!! You might not want to hurt my player's feelings, but I think this is hilarious and gleefully shared this. In response to the news about Damata being less likely to be saved than Isobel, one of my players said "well, the DMs of those games must not have made Damata as loveable as Worldres did." I responded by reminding her they let Damata die. Like, thanks for the compliment, player, but Damata freaking died.
Thanks! And to be honest, I'm surprised too! I can't believe we're already at 5. It's been a blast, and it's going by so quickly...
We play once weekly for three hours without fail. We have never once cancelled a session or had a player not attend. Sometimes we play twice weekly or more on holidays. So I'd say we've spent about 30-35 hours per adventure, so far?
I'm about to admit to some blasphemy, particularly because Zeitgeist's maps are great and I loved playing them when I was a player: I DM gridless. Most things are theatre of mind. I show people maps to orient themselves, and things like the Rainbow Bridge puzzle needed a map, but I don't have a lot of time to prep maps and stuff. (I also don't do naval combat.) This probably cuts down on time.
Also, my players are more likely to come up with peaceful solutions rather than barrel into combat guns blazing, which cuts down on the amount of encounters.
Out of curiosity - does anyone know if the Briefing Dossier template (still?) exists? It is mentioned in the pathfinder pdf, but I can't seem to find it online anywhere. Unfortunately the dossier as-is diverges way too much from what happened so far for us, so I have to start over. Worst case scenario, I can make a plain version.
I return! My cancelled surgery got un-cancelled, and then I needed a second surgery to correct the first one, and then one of my players also needed surgery, which is a statistically improbable amount of surgery in five months. So, anyway, this adventure took a little extra time to write up than usual. Which is still fast by most standards, granted, but. We're almost done Adventure 6, so I'd better write 5!!!
And before we get into it, let's just say that we took some... artistic liberties with this adventure. It's my game, and I am wont to make stuff up if I feel like it.
Adventure 3, Cauldron Born: I hope my baby doesn't come out all ****** up and ****
Fake Zeitgeist Portrait of Morgan's daughter, Antonia Cippiano, and the "Smug Gatria" server emote. All of the PCs have emotes in our group discord.
Between adventures, we had a mini-session where the players were introduced to Alexander Grappa. Cleone had requisitioned the golem and re-assembled him in her workshop; because the players were still suspicious of the King, they decided to keep his re-activation a secret. The party loved Alexander and befriended him; they enjoyed trying to work around the Geas to get as much information from him as possible, and assumed Alexander was cooperating to the full extent of his abilities. In reality, I purposely had Alexander mislead them about Borne and his brothers, out of fear that his sons would be destroyed if the RHC knew the truth. This was delicious, because they felt like they had been betrayed by a close friend, later, when they finally got to the facility.
During the March of Kings Festival, the party and Thames Grimsley attended a play written by Gideon Ambrose, my little homebrew addition to the docker plot. He was Catherine's brother who defected from the Obscurati and was rescued by a docker playwright in Flint. He became that docker's apprentice in order to spread secret anti-Obscurati sentiment in Flint under Roland Stanfield's nose. The Macbeth-esque play detailed the deception the early Danoran government utilized during the historic smallpox epidemic, and how they misinformed and manipulated their people to consolidate power.
Ironically, the two dullest party members (both in INT and WIS), Gatria and Marcel, were the only ones to pass the wisdom save to notice the play's implication that corruption and misinformation is not specific to Danor, and happens everywhere. The other characters more or less assumed it was anti-Danoran propoganda.
My players enjoyed these little "cooldown" episodes and asked if we could have them in between every adventure. Stay tuned for more random shenanigans.
Enjoy this art of Hoya and Delft one of our players drew. Even though he won't be their boss for much longer, the players still love him.
On to the actual adventure! It is safe to say that Adventure 5 was far and away the biggest hit so far, in a line of three already huge hits.
I let the players make their own B-Team and they ran away with it. The B-Team Constables were:
Diana, a former "Chosen One" Paladin who denounced her holy power after the trauma of the last Yerasol war. She is constantly harassed by her former familiar to get back on track. Maeve, a kind old skyseer farmer with a sassy chicken familiar named Ruby. Diana's mom. Nozomi ("Zo") , a spirit medium and secret Kell plant who leaks RHC activities to the Thieves Guild. Alais, an Eladrin and secret Vekeshi Mystic who was placed in town to watch over the Eladrin baby who lives at an A-Team PC's orphanage.
No party NPC this time for B-Team, unless you count Diana's annoying familiar.
The opening of Adventure 5 didn't diverge too much from the book. The players fought the Guild in the Carriage Race, narrowly missing a bomb detonation when the only party member with more than a +1 to strength rolled a Nat 20 to remove it, and then fumbled the start of the terrorist plot investigation, resulting in the Flint Tribune getting blown up.
So, it turned out Ruby was immune to bombs.
Because we have a Family Goon as an A-team PC (Gatria), this adventure was very Family-focused. The players met with Morgan Cippiano to listen to his demands, and they immediately agreed to all of them. Though the players struggled to succeed at the Kell Hunt mini-game due to Zo's interference, they did at least think to root out all of the police moles once they started getting weird results. But they never expected the call would be coming from inside the house...
The players connected with Brakken and he instantly became the players' second favourite NPC, with Finona still at first place in spite of her absence for two adventures.
Finona "not appearing in this adventure" Duvall. The version of Zeitgeist I have doesn't have a portrait for her, so a player made one. Yes, they like her that much.
I also regret to inform you all that someone came up with the following tongue twister about Brakken and Feroz:
Beran bears getting barred from barren bars deliberately bereaves Berans of the liberty of bears in bars and putting Beran bars at risk of unnumbered berserk sober bear backstabbers.
I hate my players. (Kidding, kidding)
Brakken caught on to Zo's affiliation with the Guild, and tried to warn the RHC as much as he could without tipping her off or giving away his abilities, but the clues fell on deaf ears, as the other players trusted fellow RHC members implicitly. This led to Quentin Augst no-showing at the Opera after Zo warned him that the constables were coming to trap him.
Amusingly, the fight with Lorcan Kell occurred virtually simultaneously to the final Eschatologist Terrorist plot. I told the players to divide their characters into Kell Team and Bomb Team. If Zo had been on Kell Team, Kell would have successfully escaped to the Bleak Gate, but by some stroke of luck, she was assigned to Bomb Team at the last minute.
The players assembled a proper army to take down Lorcan Kell once he was within Morgan's sights. They brought in most of A-Team and some B-Team, hiring Kvarti to fill the gap in Bomb Team. Other NPCs the players asked to rope in included the old Party NPC from when I was still a player, and... of all freaking people, Gideon Ambrose. Thames would have made way more sense, but I blame the play. Hoya's player had said she was friends with Gideon in her backstory, but knowing the party wouldn't approve of inviting him to the fight, she had him hide in the shadows and provide support if someone needed urgent rescue. She believed he was just a bard like her and had no idea he was, y'know, actually a witch.
The party's plan was to have Marcel disguise himself as Norm, the Guild's Ob liaison, and approach Kell at the meeting point, using Caius Bergeron's Obscurati Ring to "prove" his identity, with hopes that Kell was too stupid to notice the difference in ring color (he was). The party used the distraction Marcel provided to assassinate his Cleric and flank everyone else. Kell instantly rolled two crits right out the gate on poor Gatria, which would have made her very, very dead in a single turn if he had confirmed either of them (he didn't). Thankfully, the players brought the entire wrath of Flint down upon him so quickly and thoroughly that he didn't roll another crit for the rest of the encounter. Gatria tore out Kell's eyes and brought his half-dead corpse to Morgan, who used, ah, gentle persuasion to draw everything he could out of him before killing him. The RHC looked the other way.
Unfortunately, the RHC looked the other way so hard that Zo, after hearing Kell Team had succeeded, quietly used her authority to break Ottavia Sacradote (an old friend of hers) out of jail and fled the country. Whoopsie doodle!
To add fuel to the fire, since the party had used Caius Bergeron's Ring to convince Kell that they were legit, Gideon suspected the party of being Ob-backed. He confronted Hoya after the mission; the two then engaged in an extremely tense "battle of wits" in which the two friends, mutually affected by Zone of Truth and working against Gideon's geas, knew they would be forced to kill each other at the end of it if it turned out they were on opposite sides. Thankfully, after FOUR REAL LIFE HOURS of one-on-one debate (I promise you that everyone at the table had fun), Hoya uncovered Gideon's identity. They realized they were both working to bring down the Ob, and Gideon revealed that he had taken Margaret Saxby prisoner in the Witch-hunting-tunnels (of course Witches know about them, now!) after Saxby had shown up in Bosum Strand with an Ob ring on. The players went nuts. After interrogating Saxby, Hoya decided to leave her under Gideon's care, worried that she would be executed if they took her back to the King.
Approximately five seconds after discovering Saxby in the Witch Basement, someone dropped this in chat. She looks surprisingly good with longer hair.
Man, I don't even know what to tell you about Ekossigan. The players completely speed-ran that entire section and finished it in two sessions. They were indeed very stressed out by imperiled orphans, but saved the day in the end. But they were also inclined to believe Ekossigan's insane ramblings, and started to slowly turn on Alexander as a result.
The players returned to Alexander to ask him about what Ekossigan said. Alexander admitted that there were mechanical children he had created with Kasavarina inside the Bleak Gate, but that they were brought up with moral rigor and raised to think rationally and intelligently. He promised they were good children at heart, and said nothing about Borne being a 300 foot tall super weapon, nor their purpose. He asked the party to bring him with them so he could safely extract them from the Ob's hands, to which they agreed.
As for the bomb plot, Mona's player had written into her backstory that her fiancé, Vihan, had infiltrated a death cult in order to extract Mona's younger brother Leo, but Vihan decided to defect to the cult as well. Of course, I couldn't resist the cult being the radical eschatologists. So, Vihan was working with Zubov to set up the bomb. The party captured them, and Vihan warned Mona that the end of the world was fast approaching - and told her that if she asked the stars to confirm his beliefs, he would tell her where her brother was. Mona asked the stars whether the end was near, and saw Flint turning to ice. Terrified that the radical eschatologists were right all along, she decided to hide this from the party. Another secret Mona refuses to share!!!
While the party knew how to enter the bleak gate, they still decided to go through with the Peace Summit, partly under some naïve hope that Danor attended with some shred of sincerity. Burned by several friendly NPCs and now a PC, everyone was (quietly) at eachother's throats the whole time.
Artistic reconstruction. Of course, only A-Team was actually there.
When Asrabey interrupted the summit, he was demoted to Least Favourite NPC Ever, eclipsing even Rock. The party dragged him by the ear into the Bleak Gate.
Inside the Bleak Gate, the players took the vents and by sheer dumb luck, deposited themselves directly into the room with Borne. The players were literally speechless, and immediately took their anger out on Alexander. Leone Quital coaxed them out of their hiding place with a Cheesy Villain Speech, boasting that "one of their own" had turned tipped him off. Of course, this was Roland Stanfield, but the players assumed it was Catherine (who I also let come to the summit), because... they literally forgot to do anything about her after Asrabey interrupted, and only took care of Han's messenger. Nice going, guys. Oh well, works for me!
Now came a point where I'm glad my players aren't the brightest bunch. Again, by sheer dumb luck, Gatria crit against Leone's shield and took it out in a single turn. Before I could have Borne react, SOMEONE (Cleone) did a statistically improbable 150 damage on Leone Quital in the very next move. Pretending I wasn't freaking out internally, I bluffed and asked if she was shooting to kill - thankfully, she said no. They took Leone prisoner, but forgot him when the facility began falling apart. Phew. Close call.
Waking to Kasavarina's frightened screams, Borne accidentally crushed Alexander and tore a rift in the Bleak Gate. We then had a montage where we cut to the remaining B-Team members witnessing Borne emerging from the Hill, which tied everything together nicely.
I tried to move the Borne encounter out to sea to complete the Skyseer Vision Nevard had, but my players kept rules-lawyering my suggestions, resulting in, um, what happened next.
Hoya, the purest bean to ever live, felt sorry for Borne and his circumstances, and treated him as though he were her child - she begged Harkover and the King not to let anyone hurt or scare him, and arranged for Kasavarina to sing an Eladrin lullaby to calm him down; even if Kasavarina couldn't remember anything important, surely she could at least remember her own mother's lullabies. But memory-scrambled Kasavarina was frightened, so they had her teach the lullaby to the bards, all of whom can speak elvish. Since most of the party can play an instrument, at least two of them rolled perform checks >30 twice to put on a thirty-minute concert so Aodhan, who was on a boat nearby, could complete the ritual and save the day. Sure, it's not what was intended at all, but the players loved it.
Meanwhile, Cleone saved Alexander's other three boys from the collapsing facility. We call them the "Adamanteens." They now live at Maeve's house, out of sight of the general public, and are learning how to farm.
Now came the part where the party had to decide who to blame the construction of the Colossus on. They had Rosalind Taylor help with evacuating civilians out of Parity Lake, and were less than impressed when the King suggested blaming Danor (and not the Obscurati) for the attack, especially considering Cleone is Danoran herself. A-Team asked for some time to think. The players took ANOTHER FOUR REAL LIFE HOURS (we still had fun!) to decide whether or not to tell their country the truth, or to perpetuate government lies to maintain their advantage over the Obscurati. A player literally cried in real life. Eventually, they decided to lie and pin the blame on the Eschatologist Movement, sacrificing their relationship with the Eschatologist-sympathetic members of Drakyr in order to salvage things with Danor.
The players returned to the King with their answer, who arranged to meet them on the roof of the Hotel Aurum. He agreed to do as they suggested. Then he took them to the edge of the roof, overlooking a crowd he had summoned as witnesses, and asked them to kneel - to which Mona immediately refused, and left in disgust. The rest of the party was made Knights, witnessed by the people of Flint below.
The overwhelmingly unlikely Knights of Risur, plus Mona, who bounced. She's still a Constable, though.
If you managed to get this far, thanks so much for reading! Looking forward to writing up Adventure 6 soon, which has also been a scream. I had read that some players didn't like it (relative to other Zeitgeist adventures, anyway - which are all so much better than the typical AP), but my players love it. Hopefully that one won't be a beast to report, aha.
Did you draw, ink, and color her yourself, or was this some savvy Photoshop filters or something? Because it looks so much like Claudio Pozas's style for the Z portraits that I wondered if I'd forgotten we'd commissioned this.
