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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="rangda" data-source="post: 6050222" data-attributes="member: 86125">11/17 sessionThis session starts with the party pondering what they've learned.  They decide to head to Pardwight University to talk about the Ancients.  They meet with Professor Hans Weber who gives them far more trivia than they really want to know about the Ancients.  He also tells them about Xambria and her expedition and recommends they talk with her.  They don't reveal that they have the Ancients relics yet as they wish to keep them just in case.  Chatting with Xambria they learn of her expedition to the Ancient's ziggurat, that Caius Bergeron (who vaguely matches the description of the tiefling Kaja saw in the Bleak Gate) backed and and was interested in a “golden seal”, that the seal was found and tiefling spellcaster (odd that) came to examine it, and that after leaving camp for a few days she returned to find everyone dead.  And also that she has a time gap in her memory and that she is still suffering from some sort of mental side effects.  I offer the opportunity to spend 2 bull**** detector IP to learn something and the party does, learning that Xambria appears to be suffering from some sort of mental compulsion or control.  But exactly what it is cannot be determined.  The party determines that a field trip to the country will be in their near future which will change the items they requisition at level 6.  Between investigating the golem last session and this trip they've ended the day so the break for some rest.The next day they decide to use Cippianto to try to learn about the cloth sample; Cyrus heads over to the Coffee Shop to drop the sample off.  They then head off in search of the “strangely dressed man” (Isaac).  Some IP are spent which allows them to locate a carriage driver that recalls someone wearing outrageous clothes.  They backtrack to where he was picked up and start canvassing.  Their luck holds and they find a cheap boarding house where Isaac is staying.  He's not there so they settle in a nearby bar to wait for him.A few hours later some obvious thugs wander into the bar and start watching the same building.  All are in for a long wait as Isaac doesn't come back until 11:30pm (rolled 2d6 for # of hours and rolled a 12). The party waits to see what the thugs do and sure enough they head over to the boarding house.  (The thugs are in the service of Kell and are being sent to tie up the loose end of Isaac.)  Most hide while one talks to the old woman running the boarding house, once he convinces her to let him in he promptly clamps a hand over her mouth and drags her inside, at which point half of the thugs enter leaving the other half as guards outside.  At this point the party intervenes and violence ensues.  The fights inside and outside the building go as expected, challenging but not really life threatening.  The important things to come out of this are 1) the PC's keep Isaac alive, 2) the PC's keep the women running the boarding house alive, 3) moderate fire damage is done to the building from Carlie casting some area fire zones, and 4) 3 thugs die in said fire zones (knocked out but then left in zones to burn before PC's could get to them).  The deaths certainly won't look good on their report (and the 15 or so prisoners give them more publicity than Delf would like).  Laci heads towards the local police precinct to call in a favor some Bobby's and a paddy wagon (probably 2) for the prisoners.The party then questions Isaac about his rusted amulet.  He's of course reluctant to talk about it.  But sufficient threats (high intimidate roll) plus assurances of safety (that they know they can't really provide) convince him to open up once in the “safety” of RCH headquarters.  He fills them in on his job as a research assistant and that he left when the earthquake hit the factory taking some odds and ends including the Ancients artifacts with him.It's not a lot but the party can now connect the ancients items to the Bleak Gate facility and a tiefling who at least vaguely matches Caius Bergeron's description (of course it could have been some other tiefling, for example the 'advisors' that went to the dig site are also prime candidates).  This in turn ties into Kaja's illegal arms sales which appeared to be at least somewhat backed by Kell.  Caius is linked to an expedition that recovered the Ancients items which coincidentally just happened to show up at the Bleak Gate facility (making him or one of his advisors prime suspects). They level up and put in requisitions, items will take 2 days to arrive.  This gives them a couple of days to try to chase Caius down who is surprisingly hard to find.  With the upcoming field trip nobody is willing to spend IP which means they are not successful in finding Caius before they leave, but they do end up with a short list of leads so they will probably be able to find him when they get back.  They do get some information from Cippiano about the cloth though; Cyrus receives an invite for himself + 4 guests to a formal brunch party being thrown for the city's rich elite.   Their Cyrus meets a Crysilliri countess who engages him in a fascinating talk of fashion, including the subject of ancient Eladrin female attire.  It turns out that before the Great Malice Eladrin women would sometimes wear lovely dresses of a mixed cotton and silk fabric (just like the sample the party found, what an amazing coincidence!), and that sometimes this fabric would be enchanted with extremely powerful magics which could cause faint residue to be left behind on even the tiniest scraps.  After giving this fascinating chat, the countess wanders off to mingle leaving Cyrus and the rest of the party to be ignored by the other attendees (even having sprung for the 30gp fine clothes in the PHB they are short at least one zero from what everybody else is wearing).  Once again I am having far too much fun with Cippiano. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />With all of the immediate local threads tied up and their requisitions finally in, it's time to head out to the dig site.  Delft provides some tickets and expense money and puts them on the train (thankful to be rid of them for a few days so all of their publicity can die down to get Saxby off his back).  The train ride to Bole and then trek to Agate are uneventful.  In Agate they do some investigation and manage to cooberate some of Xambria's story, and pin down that her gap in memory occurs between her leaving to head back to the dig site (where she remembers showing up with everyone dead) and her coming back to Agate on her way to Flint.  They also spent a Streetwise IP and find out that two weeks ago another group of outsiders came through and came back with a cloth covered object that appears to match the description that Xambria provides of the seal.I have two players that have Arcana + History IP, that is enough for them to be recall legends of the Voice of Rot and that giving a sacrifice to him might appease him on their journey through the swamps.  The party makes the appropriate sacrifice and sure enough their trip to the dig site is uneventful.  They investigate the site and the bodies, learning that there is no obvious cause of death (an autopsy on one of them reveals internal tumors).  They also learn that the bodies have been already searched (and premably the campsight has been as well as Xambria's journal is nowhere to be found).The session ends with the party contemplating the questions to ask with a Speak With Dead ritual.Things do do next session:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Investigate the ziggurat </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Don't die in the ziggurat</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Find Caius when they get back to civilization</li> </ul></blockquote>

Verification