ZEITGEIST The affirmative action racial recruitment team of the RHC

[Andrew Moreton]

I forgot the interaction with the lost pyramid of Avilona , they received the Stargazer vision from Padme and immediately worked out it was a vision of the death of flight magic. Nevla remembered the Vekeshi initiation involving burning sacred fire into a mystics hands and was able to confirm that the hand seen in the vision had similar scars to her. They concluded this meant that it was probably Kasavarina who broke flight but could not decide it it was a deliberate attempt to screw the Dragons or some sort of accident, if it was deliberate they were uncertain if she was working for the Ob that long ago. Nevla believes the Ob deliberately broke flying to get the Daragons and hopes to use this to persuade Pemberton to hate the Ob.

Getting back to the attack on the pump room they opened up with Ulvaar hasting everyone, El Kevin launching a fireball which injured 6 archers and then Nevla charging in to use a detonate spell and kill those 6 archers, Manuel shot a priest and Padme moved towards the control panals on the catwalks.
The remaining Gnoll archers shot Nevla , and the Priest (reclassed as a kinetecist) blasted Manuel with fire which hurt, a second priest started the timer on the bomb.
El Kevin with Padme's help cut down the 1st priest and an archer, Ulvaar charged another archer wounding him and Nevla hit the last 3 with a Burst of radiance blinding them. The last priest blasted El Kevin with fire.
Manuel again shot a priest (his incendiary bullets were not doing as much as he hoped as the priests had a fair bit of fire resistance) , El Kevin ran forward and put 1 pistol round in the priest. Ulvaar dispatched the archers and Nevla ran up to the last priest and stabbed him with Padme arriving just after the priest went down, then the bomb went off flooding the room and electrocuting Manuel and El Kevin the rest being on the catwalks. El kevin dashed onto the catwalks picked a control panel at random and turned off the electricity.

They moved forward to Discover Kenna and the other hostages had been freed by Kobold Ninja commando's (I did not feel like throwing a wave of berserk Gnoll warriors and priests at them). So they pressed on and encountered the steam cart and duplicant head of Tinker, they somewhat carefully took the tram being careful to look out for traps. The conversation with Tinker did not get very far although Ulvaar took some offence about the Dwarf pet idea. When Pemberton took over the conversation they were polite but finally decided that they had to have Tinker and were not willing to try and sink the Beran fleet although Manuel had a bomb which he did not mention. Instead they pressed on to fact the music.

In a side conversation Manuel's player provided a convincing argument that Harkover should be a Blue dragon based on his personality so I may well change him over

 

[Andrew Moreton]

The constables and Lya's team arrived at the same time with the constables on the rail cart and Lya's team who had come in via a secret entrance just behind.
We could not work out how the Crusher would fit onto the main map and ignored it which was a pity as I really wanted to push a PC through it. Everyone thought the Cart was a trap and would plunge into the lava at the earliest opportunity so they all got out (before it plunged them into the lava).
Nevla held back summoning a Bralani Azata for further healing and spellcasting support and a few buffs on herself, Ulvaar hasted all the constables ,Manuel activated his Mecha suit and considered himself the Dark Knight, Padme rushed forward and took cover behind a pillar and El Kevin moved up to the conveyer belt (but not close enough alas for the grabber arms, no one came in reach of them all fight) Tinker introduced himself by chaingunning El Kevin. This made them all consider that Tinker had a very good steamsuit as El Kevin was badly hurt. Lya had moved out behind another pillar leaving a cluster of Merten, Rush, Ulvaar and Manuel who got flamed as a Steam enhanced dragon swept down from the roof flamed them and glided on to land on the platform. Unfortunatly all of both teams had used Communal protection from Fire scrolls and so were not paying much attention to fire damage. (Every round the Tyrant beam hit someone for negligible damage)
In the second round Padme and Ulvaar moved to engage the dragon and Manuel shot her with a none lethal rifle round while getting closer for a Nock Gun shot. El Kevin was unwilling to hurt a dragon and shouted to his team to take her alive while closing in on Tinker. Merton also moved to engage the dragon while Lya skirted the dragon hoping to close on Tinker, Nevla and the Bralani as a mist cloud came around the corner, Nevla moved towards the dragon. The dragon gave Ulvaar a viscous clawing and pushed him back, Tinker chain gunned him as her had hurt the dragon.
In the 3rd round Nevla cursed the dragon so it had a 50/50 chance of doing nothing each round, the Bralani cst Blur on Ulvaar which Manuel protested as racism. Padme broke of from the dragon on moved towards Tinker, El Kevin reached the top of the platform, Lya joined Padme at the base of the stairs. Ulvaar charged the dragon agian hurting her, she did nothing , Manuel Nock gunned her on none lethal. Rush was invisibly brachiating around to get behind Tinker and find his body , it was slow going, Merton flailed at the Dragon his dice rolling would be abysmal.
Round 4 Manuel got chaingunned by Tinker who also moved over to El Kevin and punched him off the topplatform fortuantly he landed on the lower platform. Padme and Lya rushed Tinker both getting in a single attack Padme missed Lya hurt him quite a bit, the party marked Lya down as being absolutely lethal in melee(she is a 14th level swashbuckler 4 ahead of the pc's with great stats and pc level gear). Nevla closed on the upper platform , the Bralani moved to heal El Kevin but would do that next round. Manuel fired at Tinker missing , Ulvaar and Merton attacked the dragon Ulvaar did a fair amount of damage, Merton gave him a flanking bonus. The dragon retaliated and hurt Ulvaar, who fortunatly has a lot of hp.
Round 5 Tinker hit Lya in melee but failed to knock her anywhere, and missed her with a raygun , his chainguns hit Merton I believe. Lya , Padme and El Kevin let tinker have it leaving his suit very badly hurt so he fired time bombs hitting Manuel and Ulvaar disconcerting them. Nevla reached the platform and prepared to engage Tinker. Ulvaar and Manuel both removed the bombs (in Manuels case by taking off his steam suit) and both attached them to the Dragon, Merton flailed and the Dragon did nothing

Round 6 Pemberton walked out and told everyone to stand down or he killed the gnome he was carrying. Padme stood down until later in the round, Lya rushed over and stabbed Tinker for half his hp, Rush broke invisibility and fixed the Tinker suit in place with a rod. Padme and Nevla rushed to fight Lya, Merton through a sonic bomb at Ulvaar and Manuel nearly dropping them through the floor. Manuel moved to disarm the bombs on the dragon, Ulvaar healed himself , El kevin moved around to get a clear shot at Lya. Tinker suit chaingunned Lya and punched Rush into the laval although he avoided falling because he used one of his rods.
Round 7 Merton actually hit the dragon triggerring her rocket burst flight upwards to a perch taking Manuel with her, Ulvaar charged over and hit Merton. EL Kevin emptied his revolvers into the helpless Rush who fell to his doom in the laval (I may bring him back as a magma monster) Nevla and Padme laid into Lya who due togood rolls by Padme and poor rolls by herself was killed (Padme 'forgot' to take her alive). Manuel finished disarming the bombs with not much time to spare. Pemberton insisted that everyone stand down while they negotiated. The constables all backed off but remained in position to kill the dragon if they wanted too.

Then in a suprise change of pace , we cut to a scene of Ob officers arriving on a deserted island as I wanted to get this in this week and could leave the wrap up till next week if neccessary. Manuel was McDruid, El Kevins player (El Kevin will actually be retiring until Pemberton returns in book 10) too the Monster killing warrior, Ulvaar too the Dwarf Wizard and Nevla the Risuri court elf they were accompanied by the hitman who is probably possessed by Padme. The discovery that a lot of the Ob leadership were ghosts suprised them as did the appearance of Macbennin they had thought him gone but his appearance made sense of his death scene to them, Confirmation that Han Jierre was very senior interested them, and meeting Nicodemus in Andrei/Mr Mapples body had them interested , they could think that a construct may be a perfect hoste.

We pulled back to the present were it was negotiated that El Kevin would take a job with the dragon starting by teleporting his daughter who had been quelled by bwing hurt and her dad's anger leading the constables to conclude they had jsut beaten up a teenager and feeling slightly guilty except for Ulvaar who had nearly been eaten by this teenage dragon In return Pemberton promised to not send assassins after them, hand over Tinker and said he would look into the Ob and be back in touch if felt the constables could help him deal with them.

There was then speculation as TInker talked about the specifications of Bourne and they concluded that its job was to raise some sort of plate possibly a seal set up by the ancients and possibly linked to axis island although probably underwater . They also heard the Mindmaker was alive and living in the steelshaper and decided to try to find him ASAP as the Mindmaker knew more about the Ob and was helpful, Nevla also thought this may give Xambria a chance to move into a robot body. Tinkers inventions intrigued them and they think to help the Risuri militay particularly the navy they want advanced explosives, radios and analytical engines ASAP

 

[RangerWickett]

Sounds like a crazy fight. Did it take the party the whole time to realize Lya and company were not really on their side, and just had orders to silence the gnome?

 

[Andrew Moreton]

They never trusted Lya but the majority opinion was that the Ob would want Tinker back, so they expected a fight for Tinker after they captured him, there was a minority opinion from Nevla that the Ob would want Tinker dead to both keep his secrets and stop him building another collossus. It was very close when she went down Lya was due to act next and her full attack would shred Tinker.
It was an interesting and complicated fight

 

[Andrew Moreton]

First a new Constable joined the team this session , with El Kevin being on 'detached' duty with Gradiaz the Steel Tyrant the RHC went looking for another constable who could keep up with this the most powerful and capable team of the RHC. William Plantagenet currently assigned to the Dreaming version of Shale to keep an eye on the Fey and to keep him out of the way of politics, William is an elf with strong fey ties who was one of the supporters of the Duchess although not involved in the actual assassination attempt, he is also the Nephew of Nevla's foster father although at the age of 121 he is somewhat older than her the two have met before many times and he is somewhat familiar with her . He possesses somewhat unusual abilities having the ability to empower himself each day by calling on one of the spirits of the former Monarchs of Risur. This means that given a days notice he has incredible flexibility when channelling one of the monarchs he change his surname to their name to honour the monarch he is drawing on.

In game terms he has the spirit medium campaign feat and is also following the Relic channeler medium class , he is always fairly competent in melee and a skilled diplomat but can either become a much better warrior (King Broyal the Dragonslayer), A charismtic leader (King Kelland), a sneaky trickster with different skills each time (Queen Zidi), a druidic priest (King Kelland again), a competent mage (The king who left the the black sword behind and whose name I foreget), draw upon the power of the divine(no king selected yet), or if utterly desperate gain the awesome power o wear heavy armour which the player has never bothered statting out it is so useless.

It is distinctly possible El Kevin may return in the future if and when the players ally with Pemberton

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Things started with the wrap up of the events in Ber. The team learned that the Beran army had taken the island form the Gnolls and Ber had started a new policy of displacing the rebellious Gnolls with loyal settlers from other tribes. Again in their debrief with Harkover they failed to ask the Big Question Are You a Dragon? They decided they did not need to know.. Wimps.
They also made sure Tinker was secure in a research complex and already he was starting to produce advanced explosives. Manuel gleefully updated his arsenal to include Grenade launchers , explosive cannon shells and a spare demolition charge just in case.
They then headed back to Flint to catch up with their freinds and relatives there while Constable William Plantagenat travelled back from the Dreaming to join them. While there they arranged to send the B Team, an Archeologist , and Livia Hatfield a magical scholar from the royal court with Gale to investigate the floating island in the perpetual storm as she was the only person who could carry a team of investigators up inside their painting. Gale having the power to fly and also control storm force winds landed on the island and located the Ziggurat, they got a report back that the Ziggurat was clear of traps and undead and showed signs of earlier intruders (destroyed undead and traps) and the Gold Seal was still there but had been moved from its proper location which lead them to conclude with Padme's vision that the Ob had broken it and that was why things could not fly. It seemed to them that the link to the plane of air must have been particularly fragile as messing around with the other 2 Ziggurats they knew of had not changed the world.

William joined them as they met with Governor Stansfield to discuss the situation in Flint. When he laid out the problems with Cauldron hill they remembered that they had only had 2 of 3 catastrophes but came up with a solution to cut down the number of monsters from the Bleak gate coming through. Luc Jierre would be asked to build some Lanterns fixed to the energies of the normal world and the Hill would be bathed in their light thus stabilising it in the real world and stopping transits from the Bleak gate. They chickened out of discussing with him the fate of his sister ....... only pc's with a decent bluff skill met with him.

The ongoing industrial unrest concerned them although the industrial trust they had set up was helping, and seriously considered going out to a series of meetings to try and stabilise things. Derlft was unconvinced that the unrest was actually getting worse and when the later learned of the deadline on finding the steelshaper they decided not to do anything.

The ships being wrecked and building a lighthouse did not seem to concern them.

William was introduced and welcomed to the team , particularly when it turned out he had a positive charisma so producing another constable who could talk to people!

After they left the meeting and were in one of Minister Harkovers 'secure' carriages Drelft explained about the letter from the Mindmaker and they realsied they needed to move immeditaly in order to make sure they could get to the Ob Symposium. They were excited to discover that William could do object reading but then very dissapoined that he could only track the letter back as far as Drelft's secretary instead they agreed it made sense to pick up his trail in Crissillyr and headed for the dock and their ship.
On route Drelft gave them the sending rings which they spotted the use of immediatly.

At the ship they were surprised to see Beshala with a gift for them and immediatly suspicous , they rapidly came to the conclusion that she had some ulterior motive so WIlliam and Nevla kept her talking while Manuel inspected her gift and discovered the trap. Then as Rock and Copperhat turned up they began an arguement with Beshala insulting her and pointing out how miserable her attempts against the Ob had been while they had struck multiple blows and even knew the name of their enemy instead of getting confused like some sill squid. In the end she decided not to smite them and instead begrudingly recognised their expertise and offerred her assistance if they ever needed help against the Ob in the seas around Risur.

Copperhat applauded them , and asked if they could do him a favour and look after the absurdist web for him while he escorted Rock to his afair with the Queen of the Fey. Also he thought they would need it as he could tell they had corpses in their future , they concluded this linked him to the voice of Rot but could think of no reason not to take it , and once they examined it , and determined no nasty suprises had been hidden in it they concluded it was really useful. By the end of the session they had discovered so many uses for it in prisoner storing and kidnapping .

The Sea journey to Crissilyr was uneventful , William channled Queen Zidi and became an expert sailor but the captain was already performing brilliantly so that did not help much
(At this point we discovered that it made sense for each ship of the Risuri Navy to be issued a Hat of the Master sailor which gave a +5 bonus in profession sailor to the officer wearing it for a mere 2500gp)

Arriving at Crissilyr the team realised that they were almost entirely illegal and controversial as they had a large number of guns and Siege cannon, a Steamsuit, an Eladrin possibly related to the most wanted Eladring terrorist in the world, links to stealing a steam train and crashing it off an incomplete bridge while kidnapping someone, and probably a few other malfeanses. Fortunatly with a quick channelling of Zidi, William was a master of disguise and combined with their various extraplanar resources they were able to hide all of the above. Seeing the Volcano they wondered what someone would have to do to make it erupt..... (I will remind them of this later)
Nevla has an item which tells her what spell of a particular level would be useful , today it recomended delay poison communal. So feeling somewhat suspicous they set out to meet their contact. Their Nevla pretended to drink, William and Ulvaar drank (fortunatly William was under the influence of delay poison, Ulvaar just has a fortitude save so high that drinking hemlock in a pure form would be largely harmless), Manuel deployed his steamsuit in a shadowy corner to dispense him coffee, only William noticed the giant Mecha in the corner further confirming Manuel as the Night.
After a short conversation they noticed that their host seemed suprised that none of them were ill , and William politey inquired if he had poisoned them , so he jumped put of the window of his office warehouse and landed in a pit trap repared by Kobold Ninja's which made capturing him easy. The Kobolds invited them to mee the boss, they briefly tried to work out how to transfer their prisoner without being spotted and then remembered the Absurdist Web and so stuck the Assassin without equipment in the Web until they had time to interrogate him.
They then met with El Extrano, they were indeed impressed , Manuel applauded as he vanished in a puff of smoke and they began to plan on working with the Kobold to track down the steelshaper. They knew he had been seen at the cathedral but decided that was a bad place to go, but that he had probably visited the family estate nearby. So they and the Kobolds went out to the estate. THere Manuel, William Zidi and the Kobolds crept in with a lowest stealth roll of 35 no one in the estate had a chance of noticing them. They looked through the papers and it looked like Leone had stayed there several months ago but they had no clue where he had gone from there. They considered this and stuck his nephew who seemed to be in charge in the Absurdist web and crept out to prepare memory modification spells for the interrogation and release.

 

[RangerWickett]

Couple questions.

Maybe you mentioned it before, but what is the mechanic of William channeling Zidi?

What's that item that suggests useful spells?

Why have I not yet made a kobold ninja PC in any game I've played in?

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Vellum of Guidance(spell level) gives you advice of what cleric spell of that level would be useful in the next 24 hours in this case communal delay poison and the lack of combat expected meant they were expecting an assassin or similar.

William is a Medium from the Occult classes book which means his main ability is that each day he can channel one of the archetype spirits
Champion (Broyal)-- Makes him a very good melee combatant
Guardian (None chosen_- makes him useless
Marshall (Kelland)-- lets him boost other pc's
Hierophant(Druid-Kelland) gives him druid spells
Hierophat(priest no king selected) gives him cleric spells
Archmage (The king with the black sword) gives him wizard spells
Trickster(Zidi) -- Gives him 3 extra skills at max skill points and some rogue abilities

He can change the abilities each time he channels a spirit so on 24 hours notice he can be pretty much anything although he is weaker than a specialist , Nevla is a better cleric than he can be with Hierophant for instance. But Zidi lets him be a master of any skill he needs when he needs it

And only you can answer the Kobold Ninja Dilemma, although there was a Kobold with a pistol in part 7 he just did not get to use it

 

[Andrew Moreton]

In breaking news El Extrano's train schedule is not in the POD or PDF of the combined Zeitgeist book.
Coming soon interrogation via Mystery play

 

[Andrew Moreton]

They started off sneaking out of the Quital family mansion and took Pannini (the cousin) to an abandoned barn some distance ago which had been prepared. Disguises for all of them and the Kobolds were ready with most of them being background characters from the clergy's legends, while Nevla too the role of Saranae the fiery goddess of redemption and William the archmage took the role of Oswyn Lord of the shining Legion a figure of darkness and damnation. Some mild hallucinogens were provided and with the help of the Perform(Improvided scenes) skill of some of the Kobolds, Illusiw out he was a pious soul and soon believed his involvment with the dark conspiracies of his cousin placed him at risk and told them everything , Which was sadly little, they worked out the courier was from the Ob but could think of no magic which could let them eavesdrop on the conversation so they stuck panninni back in the Absurdists web and Manuel sneaked him back into his own bed past the heightened security of the mansion with absurd ease (stealth 51)
d
They went to the station and soon discovered Leon had gone to Naalam this relieved them as had instigated large scale arson and train crashes at the other end of the line. Once again they disguised themselves before boarding the train, Ulvaar just took an ironwood scimitar, combined with his Iron wood plate armour he was clearly some sort of mad dwarven druid, Padme dressed as the Stargazer companion of the druid. William was a nobleman from Crisslyr once again channelling Zidi, with a heavily veiled companion suggestive of being one of the enslaved eladrin *Nevla). Manuel put on a Kobold mask and hid with the kobolds.
On arrival at Naalam the unortunate ambush sort of happened , almost all the pc's saw the assassins before they attacked and ambushed them, the fight was brief , the local authorities accepted that it was self defense and arrested the surviving assassins, interrogation revealed the Satyr Krampus who had hired them and he was also arrested and revealed he reported to someone he only knew by his ring code which is how he used sending.
After this the party investigated Divination blocking and concluded that at their level the only defense was none-detection and they would burn through wands of nonedetection at a rate of about 10000gp per day. They procured one for emergencies and otherwise trusted the kings limited power to block divination of royal agents abroad to give them some protection.
They departed for Trekholm and this time the Kobolds did pay for their tickets before hiding, this reminded the players why they had not broken the law in Trekholm last time. Necromantic wizard law enforcement. Again with the help of the Kobolds and El Extrano they tracked Leon to Mirsk. Again El Extrano impressed them and they began to think the reason no Kobolds were seen in Ber was because all of them were highly effective agents in every other country.
They then planned on their take down of Leon going under nonedetection for their approach. They considered taking him down in the station and rejected it as going to lead to disaster . I described the station as being Similar to York station which we are all familiar with and they realised he would pull the roof down showering the entire array with broken glass, they would survive it but hundreds of bystanders would not that he would then throw trains at them was a secondary reason for not fighting him there. Next they considered derailing his trian on approach but could not think of a certain way to avoid a train crash and many dead. Finally they settled for creeping onto his train the next day , sneaking to cargi wagons then detaching the passanger wagons and attacking William channelled the archmage with spells specially selected for taking down the Steelshaper, Nevla prepared her spells for the same target , everyone dumped metal armour in favour of mage armour spells or Ulvaar's preprapared Iron wood armour and the same for weapons.

Edit
After the session Manuels player deduced from Tinkers inventions that magic must intefere with technology due to the planar conguration. He and Nevla's players are certain that before this ends either they will reconfigure the planes or have to fix it after someone else has, probably involving a Giant golem lifting a seal underwater or in a Volcano