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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Daern" data-source="post: 5028173" data-attributes="member: 81800">I haven't done the write-up on Obsidian Portal yet, but I wanted to report on yesterday's game.  It was great!  Because the party was already 2nd level I skipped from the Flaganus Mortus encounter directly to confronting Shealis at the Wizard School.  At the entrance they immediately became interested in the dead griffin in the moat.  The fighter wanted to skin it, and asked if it was rotting.  I said of course not, it probably died and crashed mere hours ago.  It is frozen solid in this icy moat.  This lead to plans to revive the griffin, which became the "in" to getting into the school.  Diogenes showed them to the vivisectionist specialist "Ol' Aderol the Stuffer", who was happy to take on the project, though he couldn't promise it wouldn't end up a zombie.  Then they had tea with Diogenes and convinced him to cast a Detect Object ritual for their missing case.  I described this as seeing visions in a melted bowl full of gold (which they paid).  The gold drained into another dimension and then was consumed in a flash of fire!  They learned that Shealis probably didn't have the case, but her companions probably did. What followed was a great skill challenge / rp session wherein the players proved that they were completely paying attention and made great arguments to convince Shealis of their intentions and the wisdom of leaving the funny spy business to them.  In the end, she was happy to roll it over and be done with all this subterfuge.Of course, there would have to be a battle, and since I skipped the white wyrms encounter, I used the warehouse idea for the spymaster encounter.  I set up wood blocks on the map to represent crates and piles of trade goods.  They began with a negotiation with some very jumpy eladrin, but then a horde of rat minions invaded the party (I had been including lots of rat and crow sightings all session).  The giant rats attacked the party and eladrin equally.  Meanwhile Kazyk(Croaker) freed the Manticore Cub the eladrin had chained to a chest holding the case (on the other side of a wall of crates.  The manticore flew over and attacked the group.  The eladrin cried treachery and the fight was on.  After some tussling, the eladrin arcane archer got the case after the imp dropped it and ran for the pit.  I had decided that this pit lead to the excavation of the Singing Chasm.  The archer dove down the pit, followed by the imp.  The barbarian (new player) followed, scoring a fatal leaping attack on the archer as he jumped into the pit, and then invoking swift charge to run over and finish off the imp!  It was a bloody round.  The manticore cub was soon killed, and the eladrin soldiers surrrendered.  The party stripped them of equipment, tied them up and were off.  The next session will be the escape from the city, with Kathor as their guide!I described the entrance to the Singing Chasm entrance in the pit, having told them that it was a "forgotten path, very perilous", but they are not interested.  They are stoked on their deal with Kathor to sneak out the south gate.  I planned a bit in case the had decided to go there.  I thought I would use the "Navigating Golgorimth" challenge from DMG2, and include encounters with myconids and oozes and finally a negotiation with some duergar to escape...  They didn't go for it, but I was ready!To sum up, great session.  I really feel like this scenario has set up a much more complicated situation than I would have created myself.  The best part is that the players seemed very tuned into the complexities and possibilities of the game and are roleplaying it out very well.  Going forward, I'm probably do one  Black Horse encounter, maybe a random encounter, and then the Inquisition fight.  The party just made 3rd level.  I'm gonna make Boreas a doozy!</blockquote>

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