Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bill T." data-source="post: 6827218" data-attributes="member: 6795693">Adventure I, Act IIAdventure I, Act IIDramatis Personae<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Ari, a whisper gnome monk/rogue/swordsage mishmash</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Erina, a human evoker/druid/theurge mishmash</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Fitz, a human crusader/cleric/RKV mishmash</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Koba, Erina's owl familiar and urban companion</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Torrent, of course</li> </ul>The heroes walk into the depository and immediately see Rivereye Badgerface coming down to greet them. In conversing with him, they quickly realize something is amiss, and so are somewhat coy in their discussion, until Torrent spills the beans by pointing out that Peppin is dead. "Rivereye" tries to flee out the window under the covering fire of the archon, but Erina tackles him, and the rest of the party force the archon to flee. Erina and Fitz then head upstairs to eventually find the real Rivereye and the repository guard. Meanwhile, Ari tries to intimidate Larion, but, between her small size and her abysmal charisma, makes him laugh instead, so she settles for carving designs in his skin with her dagger. Having the party mage (she didn't have any druid levels at this point) tackle Larion was amazing and awesome. Larion would likely have gotten away otherwise, and the party would have been hard pressed to find the next lead. On the other hand, I was annoyed for weeks about Ari torturing Larion -- partially a case of a player feeling like she can act with impunity, and partially her failure to realize that this character, unlike the previous one, is incompetent at intimidation. I should have remembered that Torrent was there, as she would have reacted angrily and, if necessary, violently to Ari's actions. If it comes up again, I may have the Shahalesti demand Ari be turned over for Crimes Against Elvendom, but she's been acting decently since. Rivereye explains the situation, so the party returns to where Larion is being held to further question him. There attempts at interrogating fail miserably, and it's only the threat of spending the entire night listening to endless poorly-worded questions backed up by unconvincing threats does he eventually give up and say he's working for Shealis. The dice simply did not want the heroes to find out about Shealis, so I had to come out and tell them anyhow.The party tracks down and kills the injured Ragesian air-cavalryman in a fairly unremarkable fight. They then proceed to the Temple of the Aquiline Cross and Safe House. To stop the goth half-elf from playing her depressing tunes, Fitz tries putting an axe through her instrument's strings. That doesn't stop her, but he eventually convinces her to stop somehow. A bit later, when a fight breaks out, Fitz gives a "these people are not your enemy" speech that manages to placate the crowd. Once again, Fitz gets all the credit for being "heroic" -- although axing someone's musical instrument was an unlawful act (although he did reimburse her). He'll have to mention that at confession.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  The players also pointed out that, since their PCs were all citizens of the city, the could have simply gone home rather than to a safe house.The next morning, the heroes go to Gabal's school and Diogenes, recognizing Erina, lets them in. After a brief discussion, they go to talk to Shealis and agree not to try to take the case from her in return for a peek at it and further updates from the Shahalesti once they start examining it. That was much too easy, as others have noted. There's no compelling reason to take the case, so long as someone vaguely allied gets it and promises to share, which Shealis was quite willing to do. That said, it's good have ways for the party to accomplish its goals without drawing blood.They then, for reasons not recorded in my notes, get split up from Shealis and have to make their own way to her lair. They talk to the imp, make sense of its word games, but decline any further assistance from it. They enter the gatemaker's shop on their own and get to see the case's contents. Ari is unable to decipher the contents, but they do inspect the architectural drawings. Fitz speculates that the prison is being used to hold spellcasters captured by the inquisition, whereas Ari speculates it is being used to hold someone important. Say what? Players reading my notes again?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  These kinds of insights are not unusual in our group, and it's not surprising that Fitz thought of it.Fitz told Shealis about the imp but did not mention it was playing word games. I decided this omission had a couple of consequences: Since Shealis did not know the imp would have been happy with an empty case, she ended up fighting and killing the imp. As a result, the Ragesians had to call a second devil to hunt down Shealis in addition to the one sent after the PCs, since they did not know who had the case. Secondly Shealis told Fitz she owes him a favor -- anyone have any ideas on what it should be?Oof, that was a long act to type up. Enough for tonight!</blockquote>

Verification