ZEITGEIST Clockwork Zeitgeist

[mcmillan]

The title of my thread is referring to the store we play in, though it seemed pretty fitting for this campaign.

In case it's not obvious, posts will contain spoilers for the campaign.

Edited to show current party

Heskan - Dragonborn Warlord/Bard hybrid with Yerasol Veteran theme. Came from Ber to help as a mercenary. Particularly interested in being able to learn first hand new tales to tell.

Rain - Elven Rogue/Ranger with gunsmith theme. Hasn't really flushed out backstory yet, but is pretty much a straight mercenary. Working with the RHC for a chance to use the weapons she builds.

Faral - Stormsoul Genasi Swordmage with Technologist theme. Personally I think the most interesting character. He was born a human in Danor, and learned the basics of technology. During the last war he had a close encounter with the Father of Thunder which turned him into his genasi form. After this he chose to abandon Danor and began to follow the Old Faith, while trying to learn how to use technology in a way that would be consistent with nature.

Corin - Dragonborn Blackguard with Martial Scientist theme. Village was destroyed in the fighting while Bruse was coming to power, and was raised to be a slave of rebel's fighting against Bruse. Was freed as part of a joint Risur/Ber raid on rebel camp in the border between the two nations. The Risuri soldiers were led by a Colonel Harlock (the contact that shows up in the Digging for Lies adventure) who had fought with mercenaries from Corin's original home in the 3rd Yerosol war. Harlock offered to raise him since he had no family left, and eventually arranged to have him admitted to the Battalion Military academy in Flint.

Kris - human wizard with the Order Adept theme. Grew up in the malice lands and became interested in intelligent undead, particularly methods of becoming a lich. Traveled extensively researching this area, but currently serving as an outside advisor to the RHC.


Former party members:

Blayre - an elven monk who wanted to take the gladiator theme. Since I just finished reading Always On Time, I suggested he had been a fighter in Nalaam. He came up with the background of being a Clergy monk from near Nalaam, who had accidentally killed a fellow monk and was sentenced to fight there. I was also informed tonight that some his contacts in Flint will be a group of kobolds he began training who use their skills as parkour messengers. Left the party after his kobolds were implicated in illicit fey pepper smuggling (actual player switched characters to keep better party role balance).

Darrak - Warden/Blackguard hybrid with Yerasol Veteran theme. Another former Clergy member, he fell from the order after volunteering to help in the last war, though is trying to redeem himself after becoming a follower of the Old Faith. Was killed when explosion in MacBannin's manor eventually led to city being flooded by witchoil

I'll start the recaps when I get a chance, but figured I needed to start this after tonight's session. You'll get the details soon, but as a teaser - we just started the Dying Skyseer, and ended with a combination of incredible good and bad luck resulting in the party successfully kidnapping the Danoran consular, who they were convinced is an imposter, and the Nilasa's real killer. Now that they're having second thoughts the plan is to leave his unconscious body covered with beer outside some bar known for fey/eladrin sympathy, to hopefully make reports of his assault less credible to his superiors in Danor. This won't go badly at all right?

 

[RangerWickett]

Great to hear about a new group starting up.

It's interesting that you have two former members of the Clergy in a country where that religion isn't mainstream. I wonder if they'll be unified in their departure from their previous faith, though I'm guessing the gladiator isn't also a member of the Old Faith.

 

[d2OKC]

I absolutely love the idea of the kobolds parkouring around the city delivering things. I might have to steal that for a campaign in the future. Kudos to your players for creative ideas, and I can't wait to hear more about your story.

 

[mcmillan]

Great to hear about a new group starting up.

It's interesting that you have two former members of the Clergy in a country where that religion isn't mainstream. I wonder if they'll be unified in their departure from their previous faith, though I'm guessing the gladiator isn't also a member of the Old Faith.

I'm actually pretty surprised at the connections they managed to come up with before they knew what characters the other players were putting together. We have the two former Clergy, two foreign converts to the Old Faith, Heskan (the Dragonborn) and Faral (the genasi) have been playing up their shared affinity for lightning. Other than Rain, they're all non-native to Risur. It should help with the roleplaying, and I'm interested to see how those connections play out too.

 

[mcmillan]

Start with a some highlights from the first adventure:


The initial skill challenge went pretty well. They probably could have nabbed everyone, though I got the sense they were spoiling for a fight, so even though they had some more time I had them fight the last two.

The party on the ship was kind of glossed over, as they still seemed to be getting a feel of characters, though Faral has been hitting it off with Geoff Massarde, and his player asked to keep him around as a contact. Heskan's player out of character has engineering knowledge as well, so he was giving some commentary on how the Coaltongue might be further improved, which we played up a bit as being surprising to hear coming from his character.

Once the fight broke out it actually went quicker than I expected, and I actually had to fudge some damage to keep Sokana from dying before she made it out of the room. Once she could act the sprites broke up the focused fire, and made things a bit more interesting, and there was some tension when one managed to made a break for magazine, but was stopped by Blayre's high movement just after it removed a ward. Other than that, they took out all the enemies with enough time to figure out how to fire the brand that it was a little anticlimactic.

For the tower puzzle, they came up with the idea of having all the conduits go parallel to each other, and to each tower in sequence, which seemed to be similar in spirit to what Lya was looking for. Since I figured Faral was unique enough for Lya to probably have at least heard about his defection I played up a bit of tension between them, which he's hoping to patch up (which will come up again soon).

On the trip to Axis Island Rain got some enjoyment out of pranking Burton by creating messes that he had to deal with. When the tunnel collapsed, after bringing Burton back to the surface they thought it was a too much of a coincidence that the rocks fell right as the team was passing through, so thought the mission was already compromised and asked to get onto the island another way, so I came up with with the possibility of scaling some cliffs near the cave entrance, and needing to avoid some patrols through the woods. I was a bit worried that I'd need to come up with another way to introduce the icons, though they decided to go and check out the mines from the other side and found them anyway.

After entering the fortress, Darrak rolled a natural 1 on the first skill check, which he played as popping out of his hiding spot and challenging a patrol to fight him, though the rest of the party finished them off before too much alarm could get sounded.

I gave them the option of keeping the fight at the sea gate abstract, or playing out each wave, and they decided to go for the detailed fight. This gave Darrak a chance to take advantage of having the Icon of Avilona and the jump speed by jumping between levels to where different enemies were coming from. I jumped in with some meta-game advice though, when they all started contemplating dropping dailies, since I wanted to make sure they had something left if they ended up fighting Asrabey.

Once Asrabey made his appearance they followed, figuring they were headed towards the tower anyway to find the Duchess. When Ghillie Dhu made his appearance and threatened the party, they initially took a diplomatic approach, and explained they were trying to stop Asrabey. Ghillie Dhu followed that by saying, "Ah so you're here to help the Duchess?" to which Rain replied, "No we're here to kick her butt for trying to kill the King." After confirming she wanted that to be in character, I followed the inspiration of Ghille Dhu's "A Duel, Most Splendid!" power and had him say something similar to Rain, which she responded by quickdrawing her pistol and firing in a surprise round. The rest of the party took the mention of a duel literally and let Rain and Gillie Dhu fight each other, while focusing on trying to put out the hedge fire, to make a shortcut through the maze. After a couple rounds, the fire was out, but the fire and some good shooting from Rain had managed to bloody Gillie Dhu, while a solid hit had also bloodied Rain, so they both were ready to talk instead of keep fighting. He agreed to let them continue if they would ensure the Duchess wasn't harmed. I accidentally phrased it in a way that could be interpreted as only keeping her safe from Asrabey, which Faral called me on. It seemed proper for a fey creature to be a bit flustered, but accepting that was the agreement he had made.

They eavesdropped on the conversation in the tower, and were waiting for Asrabey to come up with the Duchess and Nathan. I had planned to run the high level version of Asrabey, and when I described him, the group decided they weren't up for the fight and starting negotiating, with some good diplomacy rolls. They convinced Asrabey to turn over the Duchess, with the condition that the Unseen Court could choose to enforce additional punishment if they wanted (though in the wrapup I had them agree to stripping her of power and emphasizing that she wasn't working on their behalf). I was somewhat surprised that they didn't have any objections to Asrabey taking Nathan with him, though when Lya showed up they admitted (both in and and out of character) that they hadn't made the connection that he was her cousin that they had been asked to look for. Faral was very apologetic for that mistake, and has said he would ask the Unseen Court for information about what happened to him.

I'm inclined to have Nathan be the source of info that brings Asrabey back in adventure 5, though I'm not sure if it makes sense that Nathan would know enough to be kept for that long. Though I suppose it's also possible he could request to stay with the court if he's concerned about being considered a traitor by Danor. So far I've just said that he's not in immediate danger, and beyond that the Court is politely telling Faral to mind his own business, since I got the impression that the disappearance of Kasavarina wasn't something that was being well publicized.

I gave the group a chance to check out the island some before Lya showed up, and Faral asked to go looking for the broken golem they saw earlier. He wanted to use the Icon of Nem to be insubstantial and get a look inside. While insubstantial =/= phasing, it seemed a cool enough idea that I allowed it, so he got some notes down about some of the machinery, and a close encounter with witch oil, to know there's something seriously wrong with whatever is being used to power it. I also had the group stumble on some of the the preliminary excavation of the seal, though all they saw was some stones carved with various unknown symbols. They broke off some pieces to take back home, I was tempted to have that result in some kind of effect on the seal, but ended up deciding this was just mundane stone markers. During their debriefing Delft asked for the stones to be shown to researchers at the University to learn more about what the Danorans might be up to - I figure that might be an excuse to introduce Xambria or Hans Weber before they make appearances in Digging for Lies.

 

[mcmillan]

As I hinted in the first post, the first session of Dying Skyseer was pretty eventful, so it's getting a bit more detail than I'll probably normally do.

When they showed up at the consulate, they immediately latched onto the problems with the body being moved. They also gave the police officers at the scene a hard time for trying to leave all the work to them, and had them round up witnesses while they went to talk to LeBrix. After getting his story, they went to look at the body, and found pretty much all the info they could from that, so knew things didn't quite match what LeBrix told him. Rain and Heskan went to look at the scene upstairs, while the Blayre and Faral confronted LeBrix about the inconsistencies. When he initially denied knowing anything, Blayre got a bit "forceful", afterward LeBrix said, "if that's the kind of questions you're asking it might be better for you to leave" and the group made the insight checks to realize he might be more cooperative somewhere else. So on their way out they made a special effort to mention that they had a lead to the Thinking Man Tavern and were planning to go there after leaving the consulate.

While this was going on Rain managed to roll a nat20 on a perception roll for the scene upstairs, and given her rogue class, I figured it made sense that she noticed the evidence of the consular's office door having been picked, along with more signs that didn't match LeBrix's description of events. This was when they started getting interested in the consular, figuring anybody that did something to Nilasa probably had come out of his office. They asked to get a look at the schedule to see if he was supposed to be in his office currently. I said he was, but since the group didn't show much interest in talking to staff other than Nilasa's boyfriend, I used that to drop that the consular had met with someone earlier in the day, but left it vague, just the initials CC. After this they wanted to try to get into the consular's office, but needed to figure out how to get around the guard I had with them in place of LeBrix, so I turned to Faral and Blayre while they made plans.

Faral and Blayre got info from outside witnesses, and Blayre got one of his kobold messangers to go check out the alley and try and track the person that was reported to have gotten the bundle while they went back to check with the rest of the party.

They all got each other caught up, and were still set on trying to get inside the office. Blayre tried to talk his way past the guard, with his +0 to diplomacy not helping a bad roll, so he fell back to his strength and knocked the guard out. They stashed the body, and Rain got to work picking the lock again, and managed to get exactly what she needed to succeed. When she opens the door, and the consular asks what they're doing, her response is, "I'm here for the meeting, I'm CC". He's clearly not fooled and tries to force his way past into the hallway to call for help, they then knock him out too, and immediately move into the office along with the guard's body and try to barricade themselves.

I have guard show up at the door, and am starting to think about what kind of fight I'll need to run on the fly, when Heskan rolls a 19 (total = 28) on a bluff check to imitate the consular's voice.

Hesakan:"It's ok, I just knocked over my bookcase."

Guard: "Do you need a doctor"

Heskan: "Everything's perfectly all right now. I'm fine, I'm all fine here now. Thank you. How are you?"

Since Heskan's bluff check was better than Han Solo's, the group now had free access to the office of a foreign diplomat, as Faral put it, "if we're going to have an international incident, we might as well go all the way" and started going through the desk, and sticking anything of interest in a bag.

The next question was how to get out, and they wanted to take the consular with them, since they thought he was responsible for Nilasa's killing. The answer they came up with relied on Faral's technolgist theme creation. He had said he wanted to spend to the time between adventures rigging his companion contraption to be a cooler (inspired by the story I found RangerWickett had posted on one the other DM's reports, where his patron, the Father of Thunder, was revealed to have a weakness for beer). While I had pictured a small container, when he asked to try stashing the consular's body inside the cooler, I realized he was imagining something larger. By this time we were all laughing too much, for me to want to shoot that idea down, so the group made their escape, with the consular hidden. Their plan is to interrogate him, then leave them outside somewhere that might be sympathetic to the more traditional views ("a fey bar" as they put it) while reeking of the beer that got smashed to fit him inside.

So now I get to figure what the fall out of this will be, and would be open to suggestions.

1. The response of the higher ups in the RHC - while realistically I could imagine pulling something like that would get someone fired, unless they want to go freelance, I won't go that far. But I'm sure this will come up during the audit. It will also probably hurt their credibility when they ask to go after MacBannin and could work as an excuse as to way they get moved off the main investigation of him after this adventure.

2. Response from the Obscurati - actually probably doesn't change things much, since Creed will be coming after them anyway. Just gives a bit more incentive, since they've already tipped off that they're not buying the official story, and know about a CC at least.

3. Info that they stole from the office - I figure the official response will be to return things and apologize. Delft won't specifically ask to know what's in there, but won't mind hearing if there's any insight into the Danoran government that the team happens to know about. I'm thinking there might be some letters showing people back in Danor are questioning Lya's loyalties given her connection to Risur. There might be a high number of passport requests for people with a background in archeology. Any other suggestions of things that might be of interest that weren't in the already stolen bundle?

4. What the consular himself may know - I'm thinking not much, he's probably a similar level in the Ob as Creed, so he'll have a ring, but not know the goals. He's just been working to coordinate contacts for Creed, probably thinking he's running a spy operation for Danor.

 

[mcmillan]

I've fallen behind with updates, and then put off writing more as I felt I needed more time to catch up. Finally started to get around to writing up a description of the rest of Dying Skyseer, and thought I had it saved as a file so I could finish up, which apparently I didn't. So this is the even more abbreviated highlights. Let me know if anybody wants more details of any sections. I updated the first post with some changes to the party that have occurred.


When I left off the group had just kidnapped the Danoran Consular, thinking he was tied to Nilasa's death. After leaving his unconscious body outside a bar they continued to their planned meeting with LeBrix. By the time they got back to RHC headquarters word had gotten back to Delft, and he wasn't too pleased. The party managed a somewhat successful bluff based on my (in hindsight incorrectly magical) description from LeBrix about not being able to describe the face of the person that had been meeting the Consular. They brought this fact up as support for their suggestion that someone apparently was interfering with memories, and might be trying to get them off the investigation. Delft wasn't entirely convinced, but it seemed plausible enough not to fire the group.


After getting involved in the fight between Reynard and the Kell guild fighters, the group had everyone tied up while they sorted out what was going on. When they learned the Kell guild was after Reynard, Darrak suggested they could get some side money by turning them over themselves, and stayed to guard the prisoners while the rest of the group went on to meet with Nevard. After they got on Kell's good side, I had him offer a job to intercept a shipment from the Family, letting me use those encounters since they didn't seem to be following the leads that would take them to the Waryeyes anyway. A complication I didn't forsee, was since this wasn't an official job, they wanted to keep the ships for themselves. At first I was a little skeptical, but Faral's player got really excited about the idea of outfitting the ship with modifications he would build. So instead I'm letting them keep the ships, though they got approached by Cippiano who threatened them with blackmail by letting RHC folks know they were working with the Kell guild unless they'd work for him as well. Since Darrak seemed the only one really interested in the Kell guild, and he has since had to drop from the game, they seem to find that arrangement better anyway.


While the group was waiting to meet with MacBannin the first time, Blayre got into a good conversation with the messenger/Nicodemus. I could barely contain a smile when he suggested the best way to direct the world in a direction you want was to find others with similar ideals, and try to build up enough of group who can influence things at a bigger scale. Since that player wanted to switch characters when we got a new player who would be our third striker, I got his ok to bring Blayre back as an NPC later on, where I'll reveal he got recruited into the Obscurati (all he knows at this point is I'll be bringing him back later).


During the trip up Cauldron Hill, Rain was the only one that took part in the ritual to bind herself to Nevard, and was rather disturbed by the shared vision she had of the the city burning. As soon as they got clear from the spirits, the group rushed down the mountain. When MacBannin tried to stop them for the purification ritual, they told him they didn't have time, but suggested if it was that important he get a wagon and do the ritual on the way to the warehouse. In hindsight I wish I had him interfere in the fight some, though I did have him secretly poison the two dragonborn as they were being transported. I was rather surprised the group didn't seem too interested in the fact that their two prisoners ended up dead.


Before Blayre left he was able to use his kobold messenger network to tail the messenger Recklinghausen was sending to Dr Kindleton and found out where he was hiding out. When they showed up and saw guards were people they recognized as working for Kell, they used their connection to convince them they were there to take over guarding, and thus got to Wolfgang without a fight. After filling him in about what they knew, and getting the notebooks Creed showed up, but died a much less noble death than he deserved, getting dominated by Heskan, when he scored a critical hit using Egal's wand and getting hypnotized to attack himself multiple times by Kris (the new wizard for the player that had been running Blayre) including the final killing attack. When they tried to leave and were stopped by Leone Quital, I was very glad I had statted him up high enough so that when Heskan made a ranged attack, his natural 20 was one less that his Will defense. This intimidated them enough to try a less direct method and found the second tunnel out in the latrine.


The fight with MacBannin ended up being a bit anticlimatic, with the metagame conversation afterwards even having the players speculating that there must be something else big coming, since he wasn't even statted as an elite opponent. They also killed all the Kell guild guards there to help maintain their cover working with them.


Once they started investigating the complex below, Faral got distracted by the Golem Lab, leaving Darrak and Corin to move ahead and be the first ones in the engine room. When they opened up the room that was listed as the cell for Wolfgang, I followed the suggestion of having a tech hiding from the jaguars in there since Wolfgang wasn't captured. I had the tech act somewhat panicked about the accidents, and want to leave immediately. Since Darrak and Corin didn't have the knowledge to understand anything about the engine they ran out with the the tech. The rest of the party saw them running, and decided to just run themselves. So without even trying to figure out how the engine was malfunctioning, the complex was left to flood the city with witchoil. Since this was the last session before Darrak's player left, we retconned things so that Darrak was killed by the witchoil flood.


With that result, I'm running Digging for Lies with the investigation into their background being a result of the incident at the manor, and the party has been temporarily suspended from the RHC while they determine if they could have avoided what happened.


As a transition, I ran a short filler encounter, where Cippiano hired them for some work with their ship, since they're not currently employed by the RHC. He had been approached by people he had previously worked with, asking for help recovering an item that had been taken from them and was currently being taken on a ship from the Malice Lands towards Crysilliri. In actual fact, this was an artifact from the Demonocracy that had recently been uncovered and the Clergy wanted to be brought to the Crypta Hereticarum (it hasn't come up yet, but I had figured Cippiano isn't high enough to know the Clergy/Family connection, so had been treating the cover story as what he was told as well).


They caught up to the ship and dealt with all the people on board. Once again, like Creed, an opponent I intended to be more significant died a ignoble death. I had thought up a decent background for the leader of the expedition for this ship, but first round, she was forced overboard. She got back on and was immediately forced off a second time. Then Kris hit her with Sleep, with the Orb of Imposition feature leading to her failing the saving throw and falling unconscious while still in the water and drowning.


While it didn't come up in the fight, I had looked up possible mechanics to be tied to what they fought being useful in the fight, in case they recovered it before killing the people on board. I got inspired by the alternate reward Asmodeus' Dread Authority, and the item they found would be Egal's crown, which provide similar effects. This fit well with the reaction when Rain picked up the box it was in, but at at first joked about not giving it to Kris when he asked to examine it. I decided to run with that and tell her she was being influenced to be more demanding of deference from others. When Kris eventually got her to let it go by being sufficiently apologetic, he only handled it with his Mage Hand spell. Once the ship arrived in Vendricce and was met by their contacts, the group was really suspicious, and didn't want to hand the crown over at first. I let a really high perception roll from Rain mean she spotted Clergy icons hidden under cloaks, and when she called them out on that, they explained the true reason for hiring them (though not the connection between the Clergy and the Family).


After this the group got a bit of a vacation in Vendricce. Corin asked to spend some time trying to observe the militant side of the Clergy training to try to learn new fighting techniques. Since they just hit level 5, I offered as an alternate to the normal martial scientist theme power he could choose monk or paladin at-will power to get as an encounter. We also explained Kris' Order Adept theme power being gained here as him spending time with a Order Lodge in Vendricce, and having some character development for Heskan. His player has been thinking of taking a cleric multiclass feat, and already took Pelor's blessing as one of his items. We've been showing this in character by having him get visions of a fight between the person he on the wand of Egal, and another person who seems to be radiating light. I'm planning on having this play out as being eventually being revealed to be Pelor, who played a role in defeating Egal. While in Vendricce he spent a bit of time trying to figure out what these visions might mean.

 

[RangerWickett]

Wow, that's a lot of stuff going on so far. Poor Flint. Gotta love ecological disasters.

In your estimation, how are the players enjoying the campaign so far? And since we're tweaking a few things for the hardcover compilation, any suggestions for revisions?

 

[mcmillan]

The players for Faral and Kris/Blayre seem to be really getting the most into it. I get the sense from the others that they just enjoy having a game, and don't have strong feelings one way or another about the details of the campaign, though when I tie them in a particular way they tend to get into things.

One thing working against the group is they tend to be a pretty combat oriented group, and lose interest in the longer stretches without major combat. I've gotten pacing worked out try to mix something into each session if possible, though the initial start of Dying Skyseer lost them a little as I was setting things up. This was particularly working against Darrak's player, since he didn't care about anything except combat anyway, so would at best would tune out for other parts, and at worst he would get disruptive, and things seem to run a lot smoother since he left.

As for adjustments, I know there's a dedicated thread for that, so I'll head over there to post a couple suggestions.