ZEITGEIST The affirmative action racial recruitment team of the RHC

[Andrew Moreton]

We spent most of this session fighting monsters on the hill.

At the start of the session Nevla wanted to re-iterview Nathan Jierre about events on Axis island, they did not get much more from him as he really does not know a lot but she is very interested in Kasavarina Varal( Which is a good thing) and on asking about her companion the man from Cyrillar , they noticed he was chain smoking cigerettes and linked it to the courier, the accents puzzled them but they have decided he must be an international spy. They considered trying to track down the courier but decided that would not get them very far. I will probably let them make some dice rolls to notice that a dead body matching his description has turned up in town. Interestingly they have not discussed why this international spy was meeting with macbennin, they may kick themselves later.

They then went to the Mayors manor, listened to his explanation of what to do to stay alive and then quibbled. Manual wanted to polish the rusted iron amulet but was finally convinced the rust was a symbolic part of it's linakge to the Bleak gate, which I think should come in handy when they come across the rusted iron portals in various places . El Kevin first wondered how much Goat blood was needed and were they got it all from after some discussion they discovered the bodies of the dead goats went to feed the poor, they approved. Then he was told that the spirits were attracted to red things, he is a red Kobold. So he and Manual got together and Manual painted him Blue , Manual keeps blue paint on him in case they need to repurpose something as a police possession. The final part of the discussions with the mayor were held with a naked kobold being painted blue in the background.

Going up the hill was uneventful and they camped in the expected spot set up the ring of blood with protective religous charms, and just barely scraped by being noticed by the creatures . Roger the Bat, Ulvaar the Clunky and Nevard all failed stealth rolls. The gathering monsters worried them as did freaky supernatural effects, seeing a mirror image of their team also concerned them, they had serious doppelganger worries.

Finally they had their warning and the man in black appeared and prepared to throw a sunrod, Manual shot it out of his hand, he tried again this time manual missed the sunrod and it landed in the circle triggerring an attack. The first thing that happened was that Manual shot Creed again with an alchemical musket shot and critted him, the massive amount of damage was almost an instant kill and may actually have been one, but I decided killing him would be a pain in the neck for me, so he ran off vanishing into the shadows, Manual is on the list and first chance he gets Manual is going down.
The cacking crawler and the mites proved harmless, the crawler never rolled more than an 8 all fight and never hit anything. The lion and Ulvaar fought it out until Manual shot it for lots of damage , ennabling Ulvaar to kill it. Nevard healed Ulvaar several times to keep him in the fight. The aspect of death critted El Kevin dropping him to cha 1 and making him run away for the rest of the fight before being killed by several ghost blanch bullets and Nevla using a magic weapon spell on her sword, and also channelling the energy of the Gyre to hurt it and kill off most of the mites.

Overall the fight was not a major threat to them , but felt like it was which makes for a good fight scene.

Going down the hill they mat Lt. Dale and his men, talked to them and then got purified by an annoyed mayor. Then we realised we did not have time to start on the fight at the factory so left the session there.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

We printed out the map on an A3 printer but it got rather blurry , are there any higher definition images of the maps around other than the pdf ?

 

[RangerWickett]

The only maps that are really high res enough for printing were made for Cauldron Hill and a couple ships. What map are you interested in?

 

[Andrew Moreton]

We plan to print out most of the maps for the set piece battle scenes, so most of the battle maps in the appendix. This comes about after we realised that during the battle with the cloudwood bandits I and the players thought that the characters were in different places , fortunately their tactics worked with both interpretations of the map. Also one of my players has a new big printer for creating these larger battlefield maps to use with figures/tokens.

For next week I expect to print out the maps of ships and jetty for the smugglers as I expect the players to try and intercept the smugglers next week although they may gt diverted by chasing after Doctor von Recklinghausen, they are getting rather tight on time to get things done

 

[Andrew Moreton]

The session were the players neatly avoided actually using any of the maps we prepared.

At the start the team was rushing to prevent the arson at the alkelest factory, a messenger was sent to the local police station and the main body of the team accompanied by Lt Dales soldiers raced towards the factory . Manual soared ahead on Roger to investigate at this point the dice turned on him. Manual overflew the factory and noticed a wagon on the side next to it, so he landed on the factory roof on the far side from the wagon and moved stealthily towards the wagon however he had been seen landing by the brother Valandro (the bloodrager) who saw him and the bat and moved to intercept, in his high pitched squeaky voice Manuel challanged him and then seeing that was being ignored ducked away as the now large Valandro charged after him, seeing a large Half dragon with a greatsword bearing down on him he leaped from the roof top aiming to catch Roger, he missed by 1 and plummetted 40 feet down, that hurt, Valandro glided down after him and he turned to run to Roger now waiting for him and ate an attack of opportunity , fortunatly we use the hero point rules and 2 hero points later Manual was unconcious on Roger's back flying back towards the rest of the party.

By the time everyone reached the factory everyone was gone the arsonists new Manual was an RHC officer from his challange and fled thinking his reinforcements were closer. The party assumes that they were part of the conspiracy and finding the incendiaries in the wagon are certain that most of the fires were started by these guys not Gale, they find in the RHC records information about the 2 half dragon mercenary arsonists and make a note to try and track them down .

They then move on to trying to find Dr Von Reckinghausen, they are worried they are under surveillance after the man in shadows found them on the mountain top and if they try to follow the messanger to him they may lead the assassin to him. So Padme and Nevla creep out of the RHC in disguise while the rest of the team go and have breakfast with two of the secretarial staff dressed up as Nevla and Padme. These two track the messanger into Eastern parity lake where they encounter a fake robbery , Nevla does not believe it for a minute and they fail to chase the criminals however they except the invitation of a dozen thugs (although they mention the joy of visiting low level opponents in about 10 levels to revisit this conversation). Lorcan Kell offers to help them find the doctor to the backdrop of his brutal show , Nevla never promises to help him but works out this must be the same shipment they plan to intercept tonight and says he may hear of something later this night. She leaves mutterring to herself about hiring the arsonists to burn down this theatre. They hate Lorcan Kell and will be happy to deal with him later.

The group meets back up at the breakfast bar , where they hear from Gale, they agree to meet and consult their calanders they realise they have Smugglers to intercept tonight, the letter to the doctor asked for a meeting this afternoon and tommorrow Nevard is staging his rally so they decide to meet immediatly and send only Nevlar and Manual while the other three and some constables aim to meet the doctor , as the doctor never shows up as the invitation was not delivered they don't do much.

Nevlar and Manual meet with Gale, Manual stops Roger eating the Hummingbirds because it may offend Gale instead he gets Bat-Treats. Gale talks to them she suggests avoiding politics and explains she is aiming to move away from direct action to politics and gives them her information to aid their investigation and promises to assist further if she can. Nevla and Manual believe her , they ask her some questions confirming that she is not invovled in the arsons and why she attacked the tax collector, they think she is misguided but her heart is in the right place and encourage her to move away from direct action. It is revealed that Gale can talk to birds but not to bats , much to Rogers disappointment, they ask how she flies on El Kevins behalf and as expected discover she does not know, they stray briefly into politics and accept they disagree but agree that Gale moving away from direct action is a good thing.
Gale offers a hand of freindship to Nevla as they have similar backgrounds in fleeing Danor and a general distrust although Nevla raises the example of Nathan Jierre as a good danorran. Finally Gale hands over her spell for tracking planar energy and the message wind (for the purposes of this game the Kinetecist, cleric and Alchemist will be able to use it) Nevla then asks Manual for a private conversation with Gale he agree's she hands over the mirror and in discussion emphasises that she does not feel the Vekeshi require violence hence her own role in the RHC seeking justice. As they head back to town Nevla persuades Manual not to report the meeting (Actually she say's that Gale will be a confidential informant and so they should not mention it outside the team, Manual produces a form for registering confidential informants and gives it to Nevla, who takes it and then completely fails to hand it in only the team are aware of the meeting and results , although Manual things the paperwork was handed in)

They quickly check the oil samples they have and confirm bleak gate traces on the oil and along the canal, they think this confirms Gale's story . El Kevin and Manual want to share the spell with the mayor of cauldron hill, Nevla does not I think this is general paranoia rather than a distrust of Macbennin but it could be, they argue for a while until Nevla convinces them that the mayor must have something similar or better already and in any case this spell would not work well around such a nexus of energy as Cauldron Hill.

Later they move to shadow the Gnomes to the smuggling hand over, as Lorcan Kell told them were the jetty is Ulvaar and a squad of cops wait on a sailing cutter (they decided it was steathier and arranged for the steam cutters to be visibly elsewhere) while the others trail them to the wharf once they have confirmed they are at the wharf Manual stays to watch the wharf the others take a rowing boat out to the cutter , once the boat sails from the wharf, Manual flies to the cutter and they follow see which ship the boat meets up with and then shadow the boat ambushing it half way to the shore, Manual burns the sail with alchemists fire and some chain shot is fired into the mast to stop the boat. In the boarding action the captain and one bravura are dropped before the rest surrender as the constables have a clear advantage.

We stopped then , they will process the smugglers next week before Nevard's rally and Morgan Cipriano

Edit
They named the cutter Undocumented feature as they could not find a map of it and apparently in a celtic theme that is Nodwedd heb eu Dogfennu

Also Nevla tried to use the planar energy detection spell to try and identify the energy she channel which is the energy (or entropy) of the Gyre but could not find anything similar.

They also wondered if the cigerette smoking courier was the shadow man

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Finally the players aquired the wand of Egil the shimmerring however it is called the wand of Oswyn the Magnificent. The pc who has acquired it played Oswyn during a previous Way of the Wicked campaign at the end of which he became a Pit fiend commanding legions of hell in conquering worlds. They are now worried they will meet him or his colleagues as they were all power gamed killing machines. One of these former pc's will command the forces in the Gyre

 

[Andrew Moreton]

The team returned to HQ locked all their prisoners up and got some rest , they planned to process all the smugglers as soon as possible but......

In the morning they received letters from Morgan Cipriano, they decided to meet with him over breakfast as their day was looking busy. They met and talked briefly about fashion Manual discussed fashion in black and fashion for bats, Roger has been Dyed Black Blue night camouflage after Manual spoke to humans to discover what people without excellent night vision see in the dark he also has a headband and general stealth costume. El Kevin is a Kobold and has neither shoes, lips or fashion which made drinking coffee and talking fashion difficult, Ulvaar was dressed in his new suit of Full plate armour , and Nevla was dressed in fashionable business wear which unfornatly looks a bit masculine but ladies fashions are not good for sword fights, morgan suggested a few touches but she is naturally stylish (High charisma)

Then they talked business hypothetically and decided that the 2 family bravura's would be fined and deported which Morgan found most satisfactory , he sent them to a cousin oversee's and received replacements. He mentioned that he new someone who could get in touch with some arsonists and arrange for them to burn something down , the constables said they would let him know when and were tommorrow as they were busy all day. They then discussed Death oil with him , he recognised it as witch oil mentioning it as rare , valuable and evil it was not something his family dealt with but he did say a cousin in the local clergy church would be available to discuss it. They parted on favourable terms enjoying the pastries and coffee.

A message on the wind from Gale arrived asking for the gnomes who were her associates to be released, the constables discussed and decided to drop the assault charges and give them fines for smuggling which would be they thought paid off with work from the alchemists, instead it was paid off with sunken treasure from Gale, the constables considered this a success as it kept Gale as an ally (they are certain she is an enemy of their enemy and so can be trusted, Nevla also likes her) and it contributed to the budget.

A messenger from Lorcan Kell arrived telling them were to find Wolfgang they decided they had to deal with this before the rally and could do so before the rally started , rushing over they entered the church and Nevla talked Wolfgang down managinf through persistance to avoid a fight he knew he was badly outnumbered and thought she probably was a police officer. While getting the document they were attacked by 3 slayers and Creed in a fierce fight all three slayers were killed and Creed escaped into the bleak gate, Nevla and Wolfgang went down unconscious and several other constables were injured. While they were healing and recovering the documents Quital turned up and blocked the entrance , this annoyed them as they wanted to run off before reinforcements turned up. A wind message was sent to Gale requesting help, they tried to parley and decided that Quitals offer was unnaceptable, they also thought he would attack when the hour was up and they would lose, escaping by the secret passage was not practical as they would be seen, after much discussion they decided on a cunning plan. They gathered all their grenades, Wolfgang and Manuels alchemical muntions, and combined with with some lightning and entropy damage and rigged the entrance to blow up. Manual then sent his decoy in so it could be seen by Quital and it made an attempt to rig explosive boobytraps and made a mistake then the mistake blew up the entrance and it looked like most of the church, half an hour later Manual sneaked out of the secret door and met Gale saw that everyone was gone and they headed off to the rally running into RHC reinforcements who replaced their ammo and took the documents and Wolfgang back to HQ.

They plan to disguise themselves as druids at the rally as the bad guys think they are dead , and protect Heward.

They have determined their is as secret industrial project going on involving Witch oil and that their are 2 groups involved one with the shadow man , one with Quital although they do consider it possible both groups have the same higher up but know that Creed is working for someone other than Quital. They want accountants working on the paperwork.

When I mentioned the project may be working on some sort of Warship or other industrial project one player decided it was probably a Mecha..........

The other thought by one player is that the King is behind it all, I hope to encourage this thought and maybe keep it going until Stansfield is revealed although I suspect they will stop suspecting the king before then.

We have one more session before we break until at least June I hope they will discover Macbennin before then, although one player is working on a conspiracy board . So one more report and then an 4+ week gap as I have surgery and recuperation which will slow things down, last time it was a 16 week gap 3 sessions before the end of a several year campaign hopefully this should be shorter

 

[RangerWickett]

I hope you heal quickly, and that you have limited stress during your recuperation, giving you an opportunity to read ahead and prep for the campaign.

"Gale pays the fine with sunken treasure." Nice.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

At the start of the session the players are discussing how they are going to disguise themselves when protecting Nevard, they plan on Nevla and Ulvaar looking batterred and wearing black armbands while the others are in disguise as druids. It takes some effort to convince Manuel and El Kevin that standing on each others shoulders with a robe over them both is not a good disguise and that they instead can be hooded halfling druids. The players insist on a guarantee that disguising themselves as hobbits will not result in lightning strikes as they know I have an unreasoning anti-hobbit/gnome bias.

Most of the group take a coach to the rally while Gale flies Nevla to the rally as they approach Nevla and Gale both notice a creepy warehouse reeking of bleak gate energy. Nevla lands there and Gale heads off to follow the trails from the collapsed church to see were the bad guys went. The rest of the team arrives and they break into the warehouse via the back door , the front door being so big they worry they are not strong enough to open it (Ulvaar is fairly strong the rest of the team are strength 11 or less and have difficulty carrying much) The settle on the door at the bottom right of the map because there is a laptop blocking access to the bottom left back door. On entering they see the Golem and the shadowy technicians they quickly determine the Golem is something experimental and not an actual Iron Golem which would have kicked their asses/

Manuel and Nevla engage the Golem while the rest of the team attack the technicians and are suprised to discover how defenseless they are , fortunatly house rules allow them to not kill otherwise they would have massacred them all. In the meantime the Golem is critted by Manual for minimum damage, Nevla engages in melee and gets mauled she retreats and it follows her while trying to circle round to rescue the techs eventually a mass attack brings it down although it mauls Ulvaar badly fortunatly he has many hp (42 at 3rd level rising to 60 at 4th level).
With the golem down they start to secure their prisoners when they realise that the techs are actually magically present in the real world and are going to pop back to the Bleak gate even without going through the rusted Iron circle. Immediatly they try to intimidate one into talking and Nevla gets some answers apparently the technicians work for the Risuri military and are part of a project to weaponise Witch oil and there is a big reservir at cauldron hill then he vanishes. This further convinces El Kevin that the King is behind all this Nevla disgree's believing the Skyseer vision of the Duchess indicates he is being duped, Manual suggests the Grand Vizier but there is not one, but perhaps Principle Minister Harkover.....

They read the documentation from the tech's and suspect the Jaguars are going after Heward they rush there , they are immediatly suspicous of people dressed as druids as that is their disguise also they expect rusted iron gates so Manuel climbs into the wagons stealthily and locates the gates he puts time fused thermite on them and sneaks out, both he and Ulvaar spot the skeletons , El Kevin is sent over to Gale who is watching to see if she knows a nearby cleric as the RHC Clerics are too far away and Nevla cannot channel positive energy. She does and a young cleric arrives to channel energy at the skeletons, meanwhile Manuel looks at the map and thinks that the Fountain may have a rusty Iron ring in it he rushes over and finds it as he is fixing thermite to it the other charges go off the skeletons get blasted with positive energy and 3 Jaguars charge out of the gate the other 2 never arrive as he wrecks the ring. The 3 charging Nevard are cut down by the constables.

Looking at what they know they decide that Macbennin is either a total incompetent or involved in this, they decide he is not incompetent and go to drelft to get a warrent they don't have enough but over the next day or so they will get it from the files recovered. They warn drelft to be cautious in his reporting as they think someone senior must be involved they are right of course Manual says they should have faked evidence of Mimics being weaponised with Witch oil to convince Drelft of the danger , they are nor going to encounter a withc oil enhanced mimic somewhere.

Also the team found in police reports that the body of the courier Nevla encountered was found and had died of cutting his own throat, they checked carefully and discovered he was not a chain smoker even though he was when met. They think the man Nevla met was either an imposter or something possessing the dead guy a Wizard, Demon or maybe a Ghost.

Next time they will get their warrent and go after the Mayor . I wanted them to get this far as they will lose momentum on the investigation over the next few weeks and I Want a set piece to get things moving again in June.

I plan on giving them a chance to meet the fey at Bosum strand between 2 and 3, let them chase down the arsonists and the bandit who escaped and run into future El Kevin again while having El Kevin mugged by some cult of steel Gnolls checking is he is the head spy of Ber under cover if he is he will explode them if not they can beat him up

 

[Andrew Moreton]

I have been doing some preparation while recuperating . Looking ahead to part 5 I expect my players to capture or kill Kell before he can reach the Ob in the Bleak gate, it is the sort of thing they are good at. So I think I will need a replacement for Kell in the final confrontation, at the moment the shadow man (Creed) has managed to annoy them so I am thinking of bringing him back, when they defeat him in book 2 I intend to try to ensure he falls into a pool of witch oil and bring him back as an even more negative energy infused creature possibly a wraith or void kinetecist.