“
We should set achievable goals”
Prior to this session (and after
the last one I posted), the party decided to change their group goal to returning the treasure hoard they found back to town. While Deirdre and Dingo went with Marjorie and her husband down the river and out the other entrance to the dungeon, Tama worked with the others to move the treasure to a staging area near the river in the dungeon. To make sure no one bothered it, they negotiated with the kobolds to guard it for a week at 100 kS. Since they got Complete Success on their Skill Check, no shenanigans were to be had regarding the treasure. The kobolds would do the job honestly. There was an interesting part where the kobolds demanded a full share of the treasure as their payment, and one of the players is like: but it only costs X much to hire guards. Yeah. The kobolds had leverage. Who else is going to guard the treasure for you?
Anyway, this session was the one where the party decided to execute their plan to bring the treasure home. Since they only had canoes, they couldn’t really carry it all the way back. The best they could do was take some of it out, travel through the swamp, then wait for their retainers to go back to town to retrieve their cart to haul the treasure back.
The way into the cave to retrieve the treasure was fun. One of the things that happened last session (after Deirdre and Dingo went down the river) is they returned back to camp via the swamp. When they got back, Dingo made a map, so they could follow the route back without having to roll to navigate again. He got a Mixed Success and accepted the consequence that the map was slightly off and would lead them by trouble. That’s what happened this session: they encountered some giant leaches.
The giant leaches revealed the monster tuning in my homebrew system is a bit busted right now, but it was still a fun encounter. When I equipped “flip the boats” in equip phase, the PCs were like: no, that’s bad. Their boats had their treasure in it. Flipping it into the swamp would have been
. Since I had converted Kitty, I played her in the fight. They were also amused when she equipped her boomstick. There are no crossbows in my setting, but there are firearms, and she has scattergun.
The fight started with Dingo using a
ring of plant control to direct some of the trees to grab one of the leaches. That worked to force it to waste its action squirming free. Tama and the retainers stayed back to keep watch. Kitty hopped out of her boat and advanced on the other leach, blasting it good. The other leach then moved up to try to flip Deirdre’s boat, but it couldn’t move fast enough. Deirdre hopped out and tried to use Forceful Blow to knock it back some, but the leach successfully resisted.
For the next round, Kitty equipped her cane instead of her boomstick. It had a nice, pink gem on the end. And she beat the hell out of the leach. I don’t know how you backstab with a cane, but she did it. After that, Deirdre ran over to mess with Dingo by going where he was planning to use Tumbling Attack to pounce on the leach. Dingo ended up having to jump to another side of the leach to execute his attack.
Overall, in spite of the leaches being ineffectual, it was fun.
At this point, they got the treasure, loaded up, and headed back to town. While the PCs waited for their retainers to fetch the cart, Dingo decided to climb up a tree to scout around. This was a Mixed Success. There was a clock for raiders in the area, so I brought that back into play. The PCs had mostly managed to tug that clock back, but they left it at one tick. Well, now it has two ticks. The raiders saw some vuple up in a tree. They’re going to circle back and start searching this area again.
The next few nights finally had some good luck on night event checks. The first night I got 17+, so I added two more ticks to the raider clock. The PCs’ location is
not safe. They’re definitely going to get into trouble if they aren’t careful and don’t take steps to hide their tracks. I also got a Mixed Success on the subsequent night, so they found the necromancer in the dungeon had brought in new stock. For the growing population of zombies, I added a clock (2 out of 4 ticks) for their intruding on the treasure hoard.
The session ended with a fight between the PCs and the zombies. The zombies weren’t yet intruding, but I decided to frame a scene on their way out that the zombies were going to have to be something they would need to navigate around. They could also try their luck going the north way, but there’s a nasty turtle up that way. The PCs decided to stop and set the zombies on fire. A couple of the janitor zombies had a plank. They got targeted first. Dingo used some of the flaming arrows he made to set them on fire. Tama got in a few good
Smites. Ah, burning zombie.
After that, they headed back to town. They did have to camp, but that ended up being pretty uneventful. They were able to return their treasure and complete their group goal. That was the second one in three sessions they completed. One of the players then remarks they should set achievable goals. Yes, definitely.
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