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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The1exile" data-source="post: 6728941" data-attributes="member: 6798820">I totally forgot to update this! We reached the end of adventure 2, and are on a bit of a break at the moment.With time to think about it, I avoided a lot of the difficulties of the golem by suggesting the use of some lightly reskinned called shot rules. Since the golem was already at stage 2, it was possible for the 3 surviving party members to take aim and fire into the chest cavity at the witchoil container. The speed boost in the final stage made it very dramatic as the PCs scrambled to get away from the golem as it tried to charge them down across the catwalks, terrified they were going to make it explode! In the aftermath, they found nearly everything intact and witnessed a few of the technicians fading as one of the PCs went to go fetch a meatwagon for Less' corpse. The druid tried to stop the apparent teleportation with the wand of Egal, to no effect, but they did manage to catch sight of the amulets. After going through the evidence, I was delighted to have Less' player figure out MacBannin's involvement (while of course, being unable to say anything) while the rest of the party were still wondering <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />I opted to introduce the new PC as an employee of Sechim's but the players agreed it didn't really work, so without a better suggestion, we retconned it to be someone else on the case. It was generally quite difficult to justify having someone else involved since the whole investigation is so delicate (and leads to the conspiracy) and I'm still unsure if there's a better way to bring someone in mid-adventure. The new character is a Slayer called Isamar Castillianos.The rally was well handled but the characters were nearly murdered by the skeletons, so after they handled the jaguars ("bomb jaguars" as one player rechristened them, in light of their witchoil containers) I had them hear a scream of rage through the rusted rings and the skeletons collapsed. This also helped explain the role of the rings, which I thought they were a little unsure of. They didn't try to rip the chest plates off, since they're not a very Strength-heavy party but I did occasionally let them take called shots to the plate and make something up on the fly for extra damage. I made a newspaper report to spread Sechim's visions, which also doubles as a handy reference document for player notes.Eventually the party arrange to meet Cippiano, who strikes a deal with them and generally does a decent job of convincing the party he's the good kind of bad guy primarily because my party loves cakes. They strike a deal to trade captain Bandia for the escaped half dragon, conditional upon being able to contact her if she's needed for evidence. Since the party was pretty merciful when they seized the ship and allowed the bravuras etc to leave and give a good report, it was a pretty genial negotiation on both sides. The half-dragon is delivered, along with the coffee press, which the party immediately conceals in Silas' alchemist lab <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Finally, having got their man, the party has everything they need to put the pieces together and form a case. They interrogate Valando, who is terrified of Silas and refuses to talk when he's in the room, but quickly cracks and agrees to tell them everything about his hire in exchange for his deportation to Ber rather than being kept to face the wrath of Risuri natives. COmbined with the notes speaking of the manor reservoir and the paper trail from the documents recovered from Recklinghausen, the party has enough of a case to question Macbannin - they want to confiscate his documents to compare the handwriting with that recovered from the warehouse - and arrest Creed for his role in the arsons (source: Valando) and original embassy chase (source: LeBrix, but unofficially). They run it by Delft, go to Saxby to lay out the case who after some delays and questioning signs off their warrant, and they head to the Nettles to confront Macbannin.The showdown goes perfectly. The party is nervous about stepping on Macbannin's toes, whose jovial nature and offers to show them around are definitely making them have second thoughts, but they are certain they have Creed over a barrel and aren't about to let up. As they're going to force the matter, the earthquake intervenes, allowing me to use the Druid's Knowledge (Geography) check - which had been a minor running joke through the campaign so far - for only the second time as the manor began to calve in twain.The fight was brutal. MacBannin was closed down by Isamar but with the bonds of forced faith wasn't having to make concentration checks and was firing out curses and hexes. The first cackling madness curse caused Asimov to lash out, and he crit (with confirmation) Arla, who had been less careful than she should have been about staying near him, takng her out on the second or third round. The doppelganger curse handled the slayer nicely as her poor will saves but high damage meant she was going nuts. I didn't want to use the final curse until the house staff were down, but the party nova'd the hell out of Macbannin through the last couple of staff with use of sneak attacks (rogue and slayer) and touch AC pistol shot, so it didn't get used. Silas mostly fought with the Kell goons, one of whom ran off once Macbannin went down.The party rushed to the shed (well, they took their sweet time healing up first until another tremor and Macbannin yelling at them suggested it might be time to hurry up) and they fought their way past more bomb jaguars and resisted the ambush by Creed and co. Silas' engineering knowledge allowed him to figure out most of the engine stuff, but even with me reading pretty much verbatim from the book, it was a struggle for the players (rather than the characters) to follow what they should be doing, which was a shame. Mostly the confusion came from the fact that turning the engine on upstairs didn't obviously solve all their problems. They failed the knowledge (planes) check for the eldritch machine, but did manage to get the whole apparatus working again properly and avert catastrophe.</blockquote>

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