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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="dropbear8mybaby" data-source="post: 7167121" data-attributes="member: 6863518">My players have just done a couple of the sacred Uthgardt mounds to retrieve giant relics for the Eye of the All-Father. In my version of the story, the PC's left with the dragon cultists in their airship to speak to Klauth personally. By pure chance, I had previously rolled treasure and they'd found a Crystal Ball which they'd used to scry on Harshnag and Worvil. Klauth made a deal with them that he'd give them the airship and the crew, to do with as they please (even going so far as to say that the crew can be tossed off the side of the airship, at altitude, if they so please), because it suits his purpose, but only if they gave him the Crystal Ball in trade. I talked up his lair as having hundreds of crystal balls all over the place and Klauth talked about his scrying on everyone and everything and even he couldn't find King Hekaton. His primary interest, though, was that Iymrith was somehow involved and he hates her and doesn't want her to gain any power, or start a war between dragons and giants.Prior to all of this, I've run an extra encounter right at the start when they chased the orcs (goblins by default, but I made them tougher and orcs) back to their lair in the Dripping Caves and found a crevasse at the back of the caverns which led deeper. They'd questioned an orc and found out that the Kraken Cultists had been manipulating them into attacking Nightstone, and they were located deeper in the caverns. So they went down and found a bunch of Kraken Society cultists led by an aboleth. They wiped out the aboleth and cultists and found Golden Goose tokens on them.They ignored it and moved on. Eventually they end up in Bryn Shander and then get a bunch of quests, one of which is about Worvil, scry on Harshnag and Worvil, go back to Waterdeep, find they have to go back to Bryn Shander, and on returning they're met by the bounty hunters who are after Worvil. Since they've scried on Worvil they know that he's on some sort of gambling ship, playing with the Golden Goose tokens. The bounty hunters immediately know that to be the Grand Dame and tell the PC's about it. Again, the PC's ignore it and leave the bounty hunters to go collect Worvil.Now we get back to the Uthgardt sacred mounds. They've looted a couple (I added in beefier encounters since my PC's started at 7th-level in Nightstone and are now 10th-level) and were near Yartar in the dragon cultist airship the SS Klauth's Maw. For no apparent reason, they decided to go and restock in Yartar, not even caring about the Grand Dame or Worvil. Through several encounters with the Hand (I changed them to the Handmaids of Yartar because the new leadership is misandrist and likes the irony of the name, when it's them who are basically in control of the city), some Harpers, some Zhentarim and others, they end up deciding to "infiltrate" the Grand Dame and check out Khaspere.Then Nelvin is like, "Nope, no armour, no weapons, no exceptions," and the players are like, "OK then... DIE!"A massive battle that took all of one session then ensued. Again, I beefed them up so that Nelvin was a Champion (Volo's), there were six Swashbucklers (Volo's) as ship bouncers, Pow Ming was an Archmage, and Khaspere was a Kraken Priest. The town guards were knights but I rolled for them to arrive after six rounds. I decided that Pow Ming would prepare with a few defensive spells before entering and Khaspere was busy engaging with and calming the nobles before leaving and so both took three rounds before they joined in. It was a pretty epic battle that took six rounds before the victors were clear (the PC's) but then the knights turned up. They attacked the knights but realised that killing them probably wasn't a great idea and so they forced them to surrender and then stole the Grand Dame, with all the nobles aboard. They're now having it rowed upriver where they left the dragon cultists and the airship, looting it, and then leaving it.And just to be clear, they killed Khaspere outright. I made sure to ask if they were killing or subduing any of the enemies they felled.So, that now leaves me running like... I don't even know how many sessions, but they'll go back to the Eye of the All-Father with the giant relics, get the location of Sansuri, get the conch off of her, go to Maelstrom, learn from Serrissa that they have to go find the person involved with the Golden Goose tokens, and then learn that Khaspere was the only person in the entire world who knows the location of King Hekaton.I find that hilarious, don't you?</blockquote>

Verification