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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rangda" data-source="post: 6020152" data-attributes="member: 86125">9/22 SessionGaming resumes with the party pondering whether to do Cippiano's “tiny” favor.  In the end they decide doing what he wants has short term benefits and minimal long term drawbacks so they fudge their reports.  This will get the Bravura's charges dropped in a few days but that isn't the party's problem.  So they spend a couple of hours at RHC HQ fudging their reports.  The party has leveled up to L3; they get their L3 requisition money, their pay, and a “bonus”.  They stock up on supplies and Carlie, Savanna, Ford, and Laci try to requisition magic items.  Ford is the only one with a prestige of 1 so his item is going to take a week (sad face).  They next decide to head into the Nettles to try to find Kell to see if they can buy Wolfgang's location from him.  They are hoping to offer their services and really aren't looking forward to paying money.  Since Carlie has a history with Kell (she worked him into her background as the gang leader of the gang she betrayed) she decides that going to talk to Kell is a bad idea unless the party is trying to get themselves killed.  So she gives shows them the places and people to talk to and then heads to Parity Lake to talk to some factory owners to see if any will admit to talking to the “strange smelling man”.The party spends some time in the Nettles and manages to catch Kell's attention, which triggers the scripted “mugging” trap.  But Lacy spends a bull**** detector point to see through the trap and the party manages to avoid being the on-stage entertainment.  They talk with Kell as the “show” goes on on-stage; a poor docker that Laci recognizes getting beaten to within an inch of his life.  They try to offer their services as dirty cops for Wolfgang's location but Kell has none of it.  “I already have dirty cops, what else can you give me.”  Honestly at this point the party doesn't have much to offer that random RCH employee <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=673" target="_blank">#673</a>  cannot offer; the only thing that came to my mind was to bluff and overstate their ability to influence Delf (and thus the RCH in general).  But they don't think of that so 1,000gp it is.  In my game with inherent bonuses this isn't so bad, but in a normal D&D game this seems particularly brutal.  But it doesn't stop the scripted event from really pissing off one of my players.  Kell makes it to the top of their grudge list, but I think it's as much the frustration of the encounter as it is the pure evilness of Kell.  Anyway they hand over some cash and 2 magic items (Cyrus and Savanna giving up items) and in return get an escort to Wolfgang's location (but no guarantee of safety).  To keep Carlie from getting left out of the encounter(s) with Wolfgang I have them meet their escort early next morning.Carlie meanwhile tries to get some information out of the factory owners.  Most are not so willing to talk, even off the record.  But a good diplomacy check gets a couple to open up and admit that a “strange smelling man” did ask to buy alchemicals off the record.  One of the owners had his factory burn down when he refused, and a subsequent inventory showed that the requested items were missing from the factory.  This clues them in that the factories burning down may not actually be Gale and may be someone else trying to get alchemicals one way or another.At this point they call it a night and pick up next morning, the 6th of summer.  On the way into work Cyrus stops buy Cippiano's coffee hous to leave a note asking if he can find Officer Porter.  They then head to Parity Lake to meet their escort; the plan is for the escort to guide all but Carlie with Carlie tailing; this way if there is an ambush they have someone in reserve.  They are led to the abandoned churh in the Nettles and head inside for their talk with Wolfgang.  The guards leave to give them some “alone time” (for reasons they will soon find out).  Carlie and Ford try to sneak up on Wolfgang to see what is going on, but Ford stumbles into one of the saw blade traps, which hits him pretty hard (about 2/3 of his HP).  This of course alerts Wolfgang that something is going on and with a cry of “Kell's betrayed me already has he” combat ensues with the reluctant party.  A few rounds of uneventful combat occur; the party doesn't really want to attack Wolfgang and he misses on his attacks; but finally Ford gets to a position where he can talk to Wolfgang and spend his Diplomacy point to calm him down.Once they convince him they really are RCH and really will protect him they decide that any extended conversation is best carried out later and head out.  They are quite pleased to see the stack of papers from the embassy that he has.  However on the way out they get discover the bars in the doorway and get ambushed by the “shadowy figure” and minions.  This goes about perfect for the bad guys.  I roll an 18 on the stealth check for the NPC's so they get surprise.  Creed gets a 29 initiative result and goes first.  He uses the surprise round to drug Wolfgang, and the minions use the surprise round to take down Cyrus (the only person between Creed and the exit).  Creed then uses his first full round to drag Wolfgang through the exit.  Partially to make sure the PC's have zero chance of following and partially to show just how callous the organization they are fighting is, I make the amulets of all of the minions fakes, so when they try to follow Creed out they bounce off the steel bars in the doorway.  Combat is swift and bloody, a couple of PC's get pretty beat up but all of Creed's escort is taken down.  The only problem (for the bad guys) is that Carlie was carrying Wolfgang's papers and in the heat of the moment Creed didn't notice; by the time he figures out it's too late.  So Leone has to try to get the papers the hard way but the PC's play hard ball.  The one player was still really pissed about the Kell encounter (and the on rails trap and kill the PC's encounter just pissed him off that much more).  I honestly thought he was going to start smashing things.  I figured I better not push it so rather than dragging a hostage that they cared about I had Leone use Dr. Kindleton (figuring going into this he was looking for a hostage valuable to Wolfgang).  The party callously stands there w/o giving up the papers watching him slit her throat (correctly assuming he'd slit her throat no matter what, but this may still haunt them later).  While all this is going on they look for a way out, Ford has Detect Secret Doors so casts it and searches for a secret door, finding the escape route.  They wait until Leone leaves and while the explosives are being stacked at the entrance they make their (careful) exit, watching from a safe distance while the church is blown up.  At this point I'm hoping things get better before my player goes postal.  The party does see the “shadowy figure” and Officer Porter in this encounter though, clueing them into the fact that these individuals are linked together (but not that they are the same person).The party heads back to RHC HQ and puts the papers in storage.  Carlie had read some already and knows that Lebrix was investigating something, since they now have something new they take some (but not nearly all) of the papers and go to talk to Lebrix.  Lebrix refuses to see them but a note with one of the missing documents in it convinces him that he should talk to them.  They head to a cafe nearby to have some coffee and chat.  Lebrix admits he was investigating a series of accidents at Danoran backed factories, and that he discovered the witchoil vials.  (As a side note it wasn't clear to me how well known witchoil was in the game world, I went with it being an obscure substance that was not well known at all, so the party learns of its effects from Lebrix and his notes.)  He tells them that his investigation was buried, and that reading between the lines he knew it would be unadvisable for him to continue.  He had the witchoil analyzed on his own (unofficially) to learn of its effects.  Once he figured out he was dealing with something that potentially consumed souls he figured he was getting in too deep and decided to no piss off whoever wanted this line of questioning to stop.  The party, of course, are free from such compulsions (for now anyway).   They make a quick trip back to HQ to look the rogues gallery over for Leone but find nothing.  They call it a night and head home to get some sleep.The next morning Ford wakes up and discovers that he has received a package.  It has some fine coffee beans, a couple of cannoli's, and his suit of armor (they did the favor for Cippiano so prestige 2 with the family which gets him his item in 1 day).  To take some of the sting out of the Kell encounter Cyrus also wakes to find a package with coffee, cannoli's, and a replacement magic item along with a note “sorry for your loss”.  Cyrus stops by the coffee shop again to see if Cippiano can find out who Leone is and discovers a note waiting for him “His name is Leone Quital.”.  I admit I'm having a lot of fun playing up Cippiano as an information broker who seems to know pretty much everything.At this point the only solid lead they have is Heward's request for them to see Nevard to talk to Gale, so they head to the Cloudwood and stumble on the fight between the carriage with its screaming female occupant, the carriage guards, and the Cloudwood bandits.  The party is smart here, w/o any clear idea who the the players are they don't attack and instead try to close in to see what is going on.  Cyrus gets close enough to realize that the reason the woman isn't leaving the carriage that is about to fall off a cliff is because she's tied up and can't.  Once he informs the rest of the party, Carlie takes a long hard look at the carriage guards, figures out they are Kell's men, and promply goes postal.  Suffice to say that Renard never gets a chance to kill them for kidnapping his wife as Carlie turns them into ash (literally).  She carefully gathers up the ashes to make a care package for Kell.  She ends up sending the ashes in jars to Kell with some flowers and a note “I believe these are yours, my condolences.”  Renard is slightly miffed at not being able to kill them himself but decides to not press his luck with the crazy, cackling lady that is in the process of burning the bodies down to ash.  Cyrus recognizes Renard from reports he's seen and knows that he's wanted for banditry and murder but decides that he “cannot recall” any such details.  They meet Nevard who agrees to setup the meet with Gale if they will escort him to the top of Cauldron Hill.  Nobody is particularly happy with that idea but they head off to see mayor MacBannin to get permission.  He gladly gives it to help out “Flint's most famous skyseer” but cautions them that the hill is dangerous and that they should prepare.  It's only 1pm at this point so they decide they'll head to Parity Lake and search Heward's factory to see if there are any witchoil vials there.  They keep Heward in the dark of the specifics and just say they are looking for things related to the “strange smelling man”.  Heward trusts them and gladly lets them search the shop.  As luck would have it I had a bag of several hundred test tubes laying around (use them for physical reps of potions) so when the said “how many vials of witchoil did we find” I dump a bunch on the table and say “that many”.  Made for a great moment, and also caused a fair amount of angst.  Heward of course cautions them of all the dangerous things in the factory that they should avoid but of course that is where the find all the witchoil, so does Heward know about it or not???  The grill him a bit and he seems clueless of it and its effects and appears horrified when informed that it is used to trap a soul to turn it into an energy source.  This combined with the fact that his factory is so safe (relatively speaking) convinces them that he is telling the truth.  But at this point they really want to look in another factory.  Heward is on speaking terms with another factory owner (generally Heward doesn't get along with the other owners well they resent his treating his workers so well), he writes them a letter of introduction.  This gets them by the guards but they are on their own for convincing him to let them search the factory.  But they play this well; they ask to search the factory for explosives.  With so many factories burning down this scares the owner and he agrees.  They find another dumping on the table's worth of witch oil vials.  They show these to the owner as the “explosives” and he's horrified, he DEMANDS that they immediately search his other factory a couple of blocks away.  They find even more witchoil so they figure out something really bad is going on, but this hurts them a lot later as they spend a lot more time in Parity Lake than they intended.They pick up Nevard and agree to participate in the ritual to lend Nevard some of their life force.  They head to MacBannin's, get the protective amulets & goats blood and head up Cauldron Hill. And this is where they pay for all that time in Parity Lake.  They get up the hill just in time to make camp before darkness falls, so other than the ring of goats blood to distract all the ghosts they have no prep time at all.  They decide to go without a camp fire but do cast Endure Elements before night falls so are spared the effects of the chill.  I play up the haunted house SFX and it actually seems to have a bit of an effect on (at least some) of my group, and they usually pretty much ignore such things.  The encounter with Nilasa's ghost went well, and as they all linked to Nevard they all got the vision of Heward's factory burning down.  Anyway things go OK up until the “shadowy figure” once again shows up and throws a sunrod at them.  This of course triggers the combat with the ghosts.  The really big set piece battle actually worked pretty well here; I played it where every couple of rounds more non-minion monsters would show up until they threw the light source away.  So they had to choose between continuous monsters or losing their light source.  They did OK here, holding onto it until they got all of the non-minions except one then thew it away and finished him off.  Actually beat them up fairly well and was a nice tactical fight.  Biggest draw is it went 3+ hours so it was 1am by the time the fight finished (we generally try to end at midnight and have a couple of hard core morning people so 1am is really pushing it and the early risers got cranky at the end; but at the same time they didn't want to end mid-fight).They head down the hill, and get the cleansing ritual from MacBannin.  The session ends with the party quickly heading to Parity Lake to try to prevent the arson of Heward's factory.At this point they've figured out:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The shadowy figure that was present when Nilasa died had claws, and is what clawed Nilasa.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The shadowy figure killed Nilasa and he “wears many faces”.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The shadowy figure, Officer Porter, and Leone Quital are working together on something fairly big which may or may not include Kell.  This something involves buying large quantities of restricted alchemicals off the books, and factories of those that refuse to sell are burning down (with the goods then going missing).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Factory accidents (including factories burning down) are being used to harvest factory worker souls as an energy source.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Leone Quital spends his off time impersonating Magneto; they are all hoping he cannot accelerate the iron particles in blood.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Kell has to die as of yesterday.</li> </ul>The action items are:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Get Lebrix to open up about what really happened when Nilasa died (he's still too scared to talk about it).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Stop Heward's factory from burning down.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Talk to Nevard about his vision.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Kill Kell.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Try to piece the pieces together to get a picture of what the “big thing” is that is going on.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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