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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mcmillan" data-source="post: 6116007" data-attributes="member: 6681949">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.</blockquote>

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