[LPF] The Mightiest Weapon

[jbear]

Relic looks around the smoke filled room trying to spot some source of water that Frickard might have used while working on his inventions, a barrell or a water basin of some kind... if he can't spot anything quickly he begins firing rays of frost into the heart of the fire repeatedly hoping to eventually quell the flames.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

The heroes work hard in controlling the flames as an unknown flow of time passes. Sweat beads up on their corded muscles and ash covers clothes and bare flesh as flaming materials are rolled up and cast outside, water from flasks are emptied upon flame, and rooms are broken into for possible stashes of water.

It is tough work, spent mostly with smoke-induced, tear-filled eyes and polluted lungs, but the men are able to keep the fire from advancing further past the room. Finally a fire team comes in to relieve the men, and the guild representatives guide them outside.

"The guild leaders have gathered tonight at the city center and wish to meet with you."

"I know you're exhausted, but you are being toasted and will want to make an appearance."

You allow yourselves to be led to the gathering place: a government building that was opened for your use. Inside are several different city leaders, richly garbed in a fashion that contrasts sharply with your bedraggled appearance. Yet your rough and manly appearance results in applause because of the physical evidence of your exertions. One representative speaks loudly of your accomplishments.

"We are gathered here today to thank several heroes for performing deeds we thought impossible. They tracked down Mr. Frickard's true murderer and brought him to justice, stopped riots between the guilds from breaking out, and rescued a portion of our city from being consumed in flames. Because of their actions, there is a temporary peace between the Craftsmen's Guild and the Merchant's Guild. A peace we hope will lead to a more permanent beneficial relationship. The guilds will deliver a total of 500 gold coins to the heroes as payment. The heroes were unable to stop Frickard's killer from destroying the inventor's life work and prototypes, but perhaps it is just as well. The city nobles have declared that Mr. Frickard's property will be placed into their permanent custody in order to ensure that his work does not create further animosity between factions. The nobles wish to ensure everyone that they are doing this with great reluctance, but will press forward for the safety and security of our great society."

The heroes are toasted and offered drink, and spend another exhausted but satisfying hour meeting with several city movers and shakers.

OOC:
If anyone wants to push their luck for a larger coin reward, go ahead and do so and make a DC Diplomacy check.

Each of the party members now has Gadral and Mimfred as contacts in the guilds. Both the Merchant's and Crafstmen's Guild are quite surprised at your success. They only hired you to make a show that they were trying to do something about the murder and unrest it caused. They didn't realize how out of control the rioting was becoming, nor did they realize some hired muscle would be able to use their brains to actually solve the mystery that the guilds could not.

Treasure:
500gp from the guilds (250gp from each)
Lord Wisten Feador's Silver broach with emerald's worth 350gp
Lord Wisten Feador's Ring of Protection +1
Lord Wisten Feador's Necklace of Fireballs (Type 1).... I never got to use this on you guys...

XP: CR5 encounter with Lord Wisten Feador, 1,600xp or 400xp for each of you.

While we wait to see if anyone wants to chance a Diplomacy roll, I will happily answer and questions on the adventure. And yes, you had different paths you could have followed to solve the adventure, and going to the geese farm or hall of records first would have resulted in an entirely different path.

 

[Systole]

While not usually one to pass up free food and drink, Daylily quickly tires of the civilized pomp and ceremony, and the offer of yellow metal fails to hold his interest. He slips away through the kitchens, grabbing a leg of mutton and a jug of cooking sherry on the way out. On the street, his wanderings bring him to Frickard's workshop, where the inventor was found dead. He tosses the picked-clean bone over his shoulder, takes a long swig out of the jug, and climbs the stairs.

In the workroom, Daylily looks around at the bloodstains and the mess. All this madness over a ... what did they call it? A frowning pen? He snorts and looks up at the various models hanging from the ceiling. Frickard was not a complete fool -- he didn't trust all of his ideas to the silly marks on paper. Did he make a toy frowning pen? He wonders which one it could be.

OOC: Wisten didn't miss something, did he? I've got a couple behind-the-curtain questions: 1. Our choices seemed to be either save the work or stop the riots. Was there a way to do both? 2. Was Boss Feador trying to delay us? It just felt that way. [sblock=Final battle suggestion (long)]May I make a recommendation? The thugs we saw earlier on the way to Feador's would have made some good hired muscle for Wisten. The problem with single bosses (especially mages) is that a group of PCs has multiple chances at crowd control, and they only have to get lucky with one of them, after which it's game over for the boss. Throwing a front line at us -- even a couple of CR1's -- would have delayed the rush for long enough for him to land a spell or two. With that said, Daylily does have an excessively unfair advantage here. I gave him the Knockdown ability precisely because of situations like this: single target where control is absolutely necessary. And Knockdown is one of the most overpowered rage powers out there, since it mimics a 6th level feat that has another feat as a prerequisite (Improved Trip). The fact that using a combat maneuver gets around all those magic armor buffs and hits a mage's physical stats is just gravy.[/sblock]

 

[jbear]

OOC: I'd quite like to know if the other Feador was delaying us deliberately as well. I'm sure is is fairly happy with the outcome. Would it be too much to ask for all the xp with time xp resumed in one place with the treasure and time gold? It makes it a bit tidier to refer to it on the character sheet that way. Relic will happily renounce his share of all the treasure for the necklace of Fireballs. I could understand if Quioan wants it as well. We can roll a die maybe if that's the case Kazanto is the only one trained in Diplomacy. Maybe she could drop the right word in the right ear before we head back to the Tavern??

 

[Deuce Traveler]

OOC: The elder Feador brother would not have admitted it, but yes he was purposely delaying you out of loyalty to his younger brother, Wisten. It was more out of brotherly love and the hope he might get away and destroy all evidence than it was out of maliciousness for Frickard.

If you followed up on clues that got you to Wisten Feador faster, you would have solved the mystery before the riots broke out and you would have saved a valuable book on his prototype inventions which could have been either sold privately or published openly for 'the people' as Frickard wished to have happened before he was killed. Same amount of treasure and XP opportunities, but a different path. By going down the path you took, you also gained a contact at the ink shop that you would not have otherwise gotten.

 

[Qik]

It's unfortunate we didn't save any notes on the item, but I like the fact that things were that fluid. We definitely didn't have a great search in his workshop, so it makes sense we dropped the ball there somewhat.

jbear, I'm fine if you want to take the necklace - Q's got his arrows. ; )

Also, if we are finishing up here - I might end up recruiting Daylily and Relic for the adventure I'm currently running. We were gearing up for a mini-dungeon crawl, and it seems as though HolyMan has left EnWorld, which leaves our party at three. I'll keep you posted.

 

[jbear]

OOC: HolyMan left EnWorld? How do you know that? I was wondering why the campaign he was runninghad suddenly screeched to a halt. I'm game to join. Just say the word! Okay then, as for treasure sharing, I'm guessing i'd be getting may more than my share for the Fireball Necklace. So divide the rest up amongst yourselves, and if the balance leaves things so badly disproportionate I can always just sell my wand of sleep which remained unused and give you what I can in gold. So time to work out xp methinks! 300 + 200 + 300 + 400 =1200 xp for me and 50 more for everyone else *mumbles something under his breath* Treasure: Neclace of Fireballs Type I 1650gp Gems 100gp each = 400gp Guild gold = 500gp Brooch 350gp Ring of Protection +1 = 2000gp So if someon take s the Ring that leaves only 1250 gp to share between the other 2 PCs: 625 gp each. Which means I owe about 910 gp and the ring bearer 1110 to the other 2 PCs. Divided by 2, I would owe appx. 460gp to each and the Ring Bearer 555gp to each. I'll use my timegold to pay for some of that once we know how much it is,and then I'll sell my Wand of Sleep to make up the difference. Use these calculations at your own peril!

 

[Deuce Traveler]

A couple of other notes. This adventure was based upon the Dungeon Magazine #29 adventure called 'Mightier than the Sword'. I stole about a third to a half of that entire adventure and made up the rest on my own. I decided to change the name so that you wouldn't accidentally stumble upon it in a internet search, and also because the name was too obvious.

In the TSR adventure by Willie Walsh, the fountain pen and the murder is a backdrop, along with the guild factions and such. But the murderer ends up being some random dude who was trying to gain Callery Frickard's land. Once the adventurers leave the murder scene, the whole backdrop of the fountain pen, the factional strife, and so on just goes away while the adventurers follow the clues to the real murderer. Even the set-up, the fountain pen, just lays about along with all Frickard's notes, meaning that this new and marvelous invention goes away as a part of the plot right after the first segment.

I changed things up to build upon the fountain pen. First, it's not such a large technological leap from a feather pen to a fountain pen, but it has such large potential ramifications. It is a completely different manufacturing change. A desktop computer and a iPhone may be the same basic device, but the changes in construction, accessibility, and usage are profound. Such a change has large social, economic and political ramifications.

I still kept aspects I liked. I could have went with the printing press idea, and I sure thought it over. I also considered going to a ballpoint pen. But I thought the large social changes caused by a slight technological change was more interesting. Also, although the printing press made reading more available, it did not necessarily free up writing to the same degree. Someone still had to purchase a large press machine and operating area to work a printing press. But having easy to use and procure writing material freed the regular person to express themselves and become great writers on their own initiative.

The Feadors can be viewed as evil, but they have their rationals to why they did what they did and believe that they were acting for the greater good. Wisten Frickard died believing he saved the world. If a noble could have looked upon the Gutenberg Press and seen a future where the descendants of his noble line would have been overthrown between the French Terror and World War II amidst horrific global wars of mass destruction, would he have ordered the press destroyed and Gutenberg killed?

I could have also made this adventure have a lot more plot twists, but I wanted it to be relatively short and it's hard to keep track of evidence in such an adventure over the long term of PbP. Finally, no matter what you did I never intended you to save the technology of the fountain pen, although you may have saved other concepts. PCs are perfect at kicking down doors and acting like an elite fighting unit, but there are fields that they'll never be superb in such as technological innovation and long-term strategic diplomacy. I wanted the PCs to be able to show their heroism, but at the same time realize that they cannot always fully win in everything.

You guys did great. My biggest pleasure was watching you refrain from violence being your first solution to each crisis. Your actions led to the murderer being killed, a neighborhood saved, a riot prevented, and two warring guilds who have gladly welcomed a temporary peace. Bravo!

 

[Systole]

OOC: Honestly, I (the player) wanted to grapple and pin Wisten. With Daylily raging, I was pretty sure we could. But I just couldn't justify Daylily doing that. By the way, this is the only final boss that Daylily has ever wrecked. I believe the honor of the Niam Caan takedown goes to Relic. Daylily just slaughtered a bunch of innocent wildlife along the way. Can we get a final gold & xp post from an official? I think we might be better off selling everything to the Pearl, dividing the cash, and then re-buying on our own so that the accounting doesn't get messy. I'd be up for it Qik. Soon as we finish up here. It's the one with the gnome?

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Once you got him down to 50% health, he was planning to throw his Necklace of Fireballs into the flaming pile of books. You would have had to continue to fight him while whizzing pearls of fireballs flew back and forth across the room, adding an extra explosive dimension to the finale. There's nothing wrong with the clean kill you performed. That's why I enjoy random rolls in DnD. The wizard could have gotten the initiative jump on you, cast his web and mass sleep spells to incapacitate most of the party, then started throwing around lethal fireball pearls at helpless PCs. It didn't go down that way, but it could have. That's the magic of the dice.