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The chronicles of Team Big-hearted And Determined (B.A.D.)
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<blockquote data-quote="Echolocation" data-source="post: 7948917" data-attributes="member: 7011911"><p><em>"Thank you! Thank you doct-" - Effie's last words</em></p><p></p><p><strong>NPC Glossary</strong></p><p><em><u>Effie </u></em>- Ella's mother</p><p></p><p><strong>Session 12 (Courtesy of Ella's player)</strong></p><p></p><p>We began in an abandoned church, looking at a dirty, exhausted Doctor Wolfgang Von Recklinhausen.</p><p></p><p>He asked us to accompany him to the kitchen, so that we might talk in comfort, and there he shared his story. It was much as we already knew or suspected. Wolfgang hadn’t met Nilasa prior to the morning of her death, and he didn’t know about her association with Gale. When he approached her on the fence, he was simply trying to help her, but she gave him the documents and told him to run. A gunshot convinced him to do so, and as he left Nilasa told him to take her necklace. As he ran he heard a second gunshot behind him, but he didn't look back.</p><p></p><p>In the alley near the consulate he was attacked by a shadowy creature made of impossible angles, but he fought back and escaped. After that he retrieved his belongings from the hostel and headed to Parity Lake to make a deal with Kell. And so he came to be here.</p><p></p><p>Upon examination, the wound he took from the creature in the alley was very similar to the one found on Nilasa's forehead: four slash marks, as of claws, imbued with necromantic energy.</p><p></p><p>There was an awkward moment as the doctor asked what we’d paid in exchange for his life. Angharad broke it, looking at Ella and Avvakir pointedly and saying. “One, oddly enough, just did one's job. We stopped a smuggling ring… <strong>and that is all</strong>.”</p><p></p><p>Having finished his tale, Wolfgang handed over the documents - <em>all 240 pages of them</em> - and the necklace Nilasa had given him. Ella examined the necklace while Avvakir looked at the documents, but couldn't discover anything other than that it was quite a powerful Divination and Evocation item.</p><p></p><p>The documents were a report penned by Julian Le Brix, detailing a suspected smuggling operation targeting Danoran-owned factories. Le Brix believed that the smuggled items were being funnelled to some kind of construction project - perhaps a large warship. But his investigation was shut down due to lack of financial information from the Flint side of things.</p><p></p><p>His last set of notes detailed a visit to a factory where he found several flasks of strange black oil, with floating motes of white light within. Wolfgang recognised them from the description as “witch oil”: a substance produced when the energies of the Bleak Gate bleed into this world. He said that it was rare to find the oil in such large quantities, and that it was a valuable but immoral spell component that could be burned as a substitute for other spell components at the cost of consuming the souls of the dead.</p><p></p><p>Unlike normal magic, witch oil functions in locations like the Malice Lands where spellcasting usually fails, and that makes it especially valuable.</p><p></p><p>As we spoke, Lisandra spotted flickering shadows approaching - one of them wielding a syringe - and realised that these were not shadows at all. Three figures shrouded in dark energy rushed forward: two of them mostly human in appearance but the third composed of unnatural, impossible angles. They all had a necromantic aspect, and the third figure in particular smelled strongly of burning oil.</p><p></p><p>Lisandra managed to blind the angular creature, and Avvakir made short work of one of the others. In desperation, it flung out a hand toward the fireplace, which exploded with shadowy energy. This wasn't the limit of their powers though, as they exploded in a deafening cacophony upon dying. One of them managed to explode Angharad's cigar and stab Wolfgang in the gut before going down, but both of the men seemed… relatively fine afterwards.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile Avvakir was beating the angular creature to a pulp, and it quickly turned incorporeal and retreated, hissing, “Do not think this is over.” Shortly after it left we heard a series of crumbling noises coming from the entrance. Upon investigation, Lisandra found the front entrance blocked by metal beams. The angular creature was standing outside, talking to a man in a purple cloak.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]120167[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>As she watched, the shadows around the creature flickered and cleared to reveal a human in a police uniform with a pencil-thin moustache: the so-called “Officer Porter”. The purple-clad man patted it on the shoulder and thanked it, then said “Tell Lorcan Kell I appreciate the deal, then go tell your boss I have the situation under control.” Officer Porter’s flesh unravelled into nothing and vanished, as three metallic carriages approached the church.</p><p></p><p>The purple man gestured and a metal chair, a bucket with a wine bottle, and a goblet tumbled out of one of the carriages toward him. The chair sat itself down and the bucket floated in the air beside him. He poured some wine into a floating goblet, took a sip, and called out, “Constables! I would like to parley!”</p><p></p><p>While the others scoured the church for alternative exits, Ella attempted to sneak a peek at this Magneto-wannabe. She failed abysmally however and was immediately spotted. The man in the purple cloak beckoned her over and introduced himself as “Steelshaper, master of metal.” He requested that we hand over the doctor and the documents within one hour, or else. Despite his… melodramatic manner, Ella detected many magical auras on his person, suggesting he wasn't someone to take lightly.</p><p></p><p>Nonetheless, we decided we weren’t giving this arrogant metal twat anything, and dug ourselves in for a siege. Angharad sent Gariad to the Nettles police station with a message, while Avvakir, Wolfgang and Ella created a barricade. Lisandra spent the time copying as many of the documents as she could, also taking a few loose deeds out of the folder in the process.</p><p></p><p>As the designated hour drew to a close there was the sound of another carriage arriving outside and Steelshaper’s voice rang out once more: “Constables, I have altered the agreement of our trade. You may want to see what I have to offer.”</p><p></p><p>Lisandra and Ella cautiously approached the entrance and Steelshaper gestured with a dramatic flourish toward the newly arrived carriage. He snapped his fingers, the door flew open, and out stepped… Effie.</p><p></p><p>She ran to the barricade, and as mother and daughter reunited through the bars, Steelshaper smiled and issued his ultimatum: “Hand over what I want, within an hour, or I <em><strong>kill her</strong></em>.”</p><p></p><p>Team BAD retreated to discuss their options - Ella uncharacteristically bereft of ideas. There were precious few options to be had…</p><p></p><p>Eventually, we decided to hand over Wolfgang and the documents, but have Lisandra keep the copies she'd made and the loose deeds she'd taken. We'd keep a lock of Wolfgang’s hair, to aid in Scrying, and Angharad would have Gariad follow Steelshaper’s carriages so we'd know where he went. </p><p></p><p>Preparations made, we paused for a moment more, as Wolfgang offered his Malice-wrought rapier to Lisandra. She was taken aback by his generosity but... he insisted that he wouldn't need it, where he was going. He also told Ella to keep Nilasa’s necklace. And as he turned to go, Avvakir put his hands on the doctor’s shoulders and promised him that we would find him. Then, with nothing more to do, we returned to the entrance.</p><p></p><p>As we approached Steelshaper was asking Effie about the solstice party, but seeing us he smiled and turned. “Is that what I think it is?” He beckoned and nine shadowy figures with rifles appeared, aiming at the entrance. He warned us that if anyone other than the doctor and the documents left the church then we would be shot to death.</p><p></p><p>With little choice, we agreed, and Steelshaper opened the bars, “Good luck. Make them pay,” Wolfgang said as he walked through, and then the bars closed behind him, leaving Avvakir and Ella to watch the proceedings from afar.</p><p></p><p>As Wolfgang approached, Effie jumped up, thanking him profusely, and Steelshaper snapped his fingers. A cheese knife flew through the air… and slit Effie’s throat. As the blood poured from her body, Steelshaper stood over her, taunting her, before kicking her dying body towards the church. “The druidic healer has used all her magic on the locals. <em>Poetic</em>.”</p><p></p><p>Ella screamed as the light left her mother’s eyes, and Avvakir tried to pull the bars apart in rage, but Steelshaper… just smiled. And cleaned his cheese knife, as his shadow lackeys piled explosives around the church entrance. </p><p></p><p>He bid us farewell, telling Avvakir that he’d see him in another life, and kill him some other way, then he strolled away. His lackeys started to lay out a fuse for the explosives, and Angharad and Lisandra yelled at Avvakir to get Ella out of there. The deva snatched up the screaming tiefling and retreated to the back of the church with the others.</p><p></p><p>They took shelter in the sturdiest place Lisandra could find, and as the explosives blew and the cavern rumbled, we found ourselves relatively unharmed - <em>physically </em>at least.</p><p></p><p>A few hours passed, the police arrived and managed to dig us out. Lisandra made a sketch of Steelshaper while Avvakir comforted Ella. Once we were freed from our almost-tomb, Ella ran to the entrance and collapsed beside her mother’s body. Hours passed as the rest of the team quietly discussed what to do.</p><p></p><p>Lisandra and Angharad volunteered to return to the office and complete any paperwork, while Avvakir, with great care, laid his Pebble on Effie’s body. As we watched, her terrible throat wound closed, vanishing along with the blood on the ground and flowers appeared in their place.</p><p></p><p>Avvakir escorted Ella home, as Effie’s body was taken to the Nettles police station, and the deva broke the news to the family. Ella slipped away during the proceedings, to find her brother and mourn. </p><p></p><p>Meanwhile Angharad and Lisandra had arrived at the RHC headquarters and found Delft, sharing a nightcap with Pete. They shared their story, and Delft vowed to bring Steelshaper to justice, before setting off towards Ella’s house. Lisandra went home, Angharad fell asleep over paperwork, and Avvakir eventually left the gnomes to their grief.</p><p></p><p>It was late at night when Delft knocked on Ella’s family's door. She reluctantly agreed to speak to him and he gently offered his condolences, encouraging her to come to work in the morning, and reminding her of his comment from a few months ago. With her exhausted agreement, he left, and Team BAD’s darkest day… came to a close.</p><p></p><p>And as the sun rises on the next day, we can only hope… it's brighter than the last.</p><p></p><p><strong>Discussion</strong></p><p></p><p>What a horribly delightful and depressing session. Party tensions are at an all-time high, perhaps only unified by the desire for vengeance against Kell and the Steelshaper. With every session, the players become more and more invested in the game world.</p><p></p><p>Unfortunately, Avvakir's player is no longer finding TTRPG's enjoyable, and has taken an indefinite break. This didn't come out of the blue, with the party knowing it was a possibility for many months. I'm not sure if I'll try to find a fourth player at this point in time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Echolocation, post: 7948917, member: 7011911"] [I]"Thank you! Thank you doct-" - Effie's last words[/I] [B]NPC Glossary[/B] [I][U]Effie [/U][/I]- Ella's mother [B]Session 12 (Courtesy of Ella's player)[/B] We began in an abandoned church, looking at a dirty, exhausted Doctor Wolfgang Von Recklinhausen. He asked us to accompany him to the kitchen, so that we might talk in comfort, and there he shared his story. It was much as we already knew or suspected. Wolfgang hadn’t met Nilasa prior to the morning of her death, and he didn’t know about her association with Gale. When he approached her on the fence, he was simply trying to help her, but she gave him the documents and told him to run. A gunshot convinced him to do so, and as he left Nilasa told him to take her necklace. As he ran he heard a second gunshot behind him, but he didn't look back. In the alley near the consulate he was attacked by a shadowy creature made of impossible angles, but he fought back and escaped. After that he retrieved his belongings from the hostel and headed to Parity Lake to make a deal with Kell. And so he came to be here. Upon examination, the wound he took from the creature in the alley was very similar to the one found on Nilasa's forehead: four slash marks, as of claws, imbued with necromantic energy. There was an awkward moment as the doctor asked what we’d paid in exchange for his life. Angharad broke it, looking at Ella and Avvakir pointedly and saying. “One, oddly enough, just did one's job. We stopped a smuggling ring… [B]and that is all[/B].” Having finished his tale, Wolfgang handed over the documents - [I]all 240 pages of them[/I] - and the necklace Nilasa had given him. Ella examined the necklace while Avvakir looked at the documents, but couldn't discover anything other than that it was quite a powerful Divination and Evocation item. The documents were a report penned by Julian Le Brix, detailing a suspected smuggling operation targeting Danoran-owned factories. Le Brix believed that the smuggled items were being funnelled to some kind of construction project - perhaps a large warship. But his investigation was shut down due to lack of financial information from the Flint side of things. His last set of notes detailed a visit to a factory where he found several flasks of strange black oil, with floating motes of white light within. Wolfgang recognised them from the description as “witch oil”: a substance produced when the energies of the Bleak Gate bleed into this world. He said that it was rare to find the oil in such large quantities, and that it was a valuable but immoral spell component that could be burned as a substitute for other spell components at the cost of consuming the souls of the dead. Unlike normal magic, witch oil functions in locations like the Malice Lands where spellcasting usually fails, and that makes it especially valuable. As we spoke, Lisandra spotted flickering shadows approaching - one of them wielding a syringe - and realised that these were not shadows at all. Three figures shrouded in dark energy rushed forward: two of them mostly human in appearance but the third composed of unnatural, impossible angles. They all had a necromantic aspect, and the third figure in particular smelled strongly of burning oil. Lisandra managed to blind the angular creature, and Avvakir made short work of one of the others. In desperation, it flung out a hand toward the fireplace, which exploded with shadowy energy. This wasn't the limit of their powers though, as they exploded in a deafening cacophony upon dying. One of them managed to explode Angharad's cigar and stab Wolfgang in the gut before going down, but both of the men seemed… relatively fine afterwards. Meanwhile Avvakir was beating the angular creature to a pulp, and it quickly turned incorporeal and retreated, hissing, “Do not think this is over.” Shortly after it left we heard a series of crumbling noises coming from the entrance. Upon investigation, Lisandra found the front entrance blocked by metal beams. The angular creature was standing outside, talking to a man in a purple cloak. [ATTACH type="full" width="528px"]120167[/ATTACH] As she watched, the shadows around the creature flickered and cleared to reveal a human in a police uniform with a pencil-thin moustache: the so-called “Officer Porter”. The purple-clad man patted it on the shoulder and thanked it, then said “Tell Lorcan Kell I appreciate the deal, then go tell your boss I have the situation under control.” Officer Porter’s flesh unravelled into nothing and vanished, as three metallic carriages approached the church. The purple man gestured and a metal chair, a bucket with a wine bottle, and a goblet tumbled out of one of the carriages toward him. The chair sat itself down and the bucket floated in the air beside him. He poured some wine into a floating goblet, took a sip, and called out, “Constables! I would like to parley!” While the others scoured the church for alternative exits, Ella attempted to sneak a peek at this Magneto-wannabe. She failed abysmally however and was immediately spotted. The man in the purple cloak beckoned her over and introduced himself as “Steelshaper, master of metal.” He requested that we hand over the doctor and the documents within one hour, or else. Despite his… melodramatic manner, Ella detected many magical auras on his person, suggesting he wasn't someone to take lightly. Nonetheless, we decided we weren’t giving this arrogant metal twat anything, and dug ourselves in for a siege. Angharad sent Gariad to the Nettles police station with a message, while Avvakir, Wolfgang and Ella created a barricade. Lisandra spent the time copying as many of the documents as she could, also taking a few loose deeds out of the folder in the process. As the designated hour drew to a close there was the sound of another carriage arriving outside and Steelshaper’s voice rang out once more: “Constables, I have altered the agreement of our trade. You may want to see what I have to offer.” Lisandra and Ella cautiously approached the entrance and Steelshaper gestured with a dramatic flourish toward the newly arrived carriage. He snapped his fingers, the door flew open, and out stepped… Effie. She ran to the barricade, and as mother and daughter reunited through the bars, Steelshaper smiled and issued his ultimatum: “Hand over what I want, within an hour, or I [I][B]kill her[/B][/I].” Team BAD retreated to discuss their options - Ella uncharacteristically bereft of ideas. There were precious few options to be had… Eventually, we decided to hand over Wolfgang and the documents, but have Lisandra keep the copies she'd made and the loose deeds she'd taken. We'd keep a lock of Wolfgang’s hair, to aid in Scrying, and Angharad would have Gariad follow Steelshaper’s carriages so we'd know where he went. Preparations made, we paused for a moment more, as Wolfgang offered his Malice-wrought rapier to Lisandra. She was taken aback by his generosity but... he insisted that he wouldn't need it, where he was going. He also told Ella to keep Nilasa’s necklace. And as he turned to go, Avvakir put his hands on the doctor’s shoulders and promised him that we would find him. Then, with nothing more to do, we returned to the entrance. As we approached Steelshaper was asking Effie about the solstice party, but seeing us he smiled and turned. “Is that what I think it is?” He beckoned and nine shadowy figures with rifles appeared, aiming at the entrance. He warned us that if anyone other than the doctor and the documents left the church then we would be shot to death. With little choice, we agreed, and Steelshaper opened the bars, “Good luck. Make them pay,” Wolfgang said as he walked through, and then the bars closed behind him, leaving Avvakir and Ella to watch the proceedings from afar. As Wolfgang approached, Effie jumped up, thanking him profusely, and Steelshaper snapped his fingers. A cheese knife flew through the air… and slit Effie’s throat. As the blood poured from her body, Steelshaper stood over her, taunting her, before kicking her dying body towards the church. “The druidic healer has used all her magic on the locals. [I]Poetic[/I].” Ella screamed as the light left her mother’s eyes, and Avvakir tried to pull the bars apart in rage, but Steelshaper… just smiled. And cleaned his cheese knife, as his shadow lackeys piled explosives around the church entrance. He bid us farewell, telling Avvakir that he’d see him in another life, and kill him some other way, then he strolled away. His lackeys started to lay out a fuse for the explosives, and Angharad and Lisandra yelled at Avvakir to get Ella out of there. The deva snatched up the screaming tiefling and retreated to the back of the church with the others. They took shelter in the sturdiest place Lisandra could find, and as the explosives blew and the cavern rumbled, we found ourselves relatively unharmed - [I]physically [/I]at least. A few hours passed, the police arrived and managed to dig us out. Lisandra made a sketch of Steelshaper while Avvakir comforted Ella. Once we were freed from our almost-tomb, Ella ran to the entrance and collapsed beside her mother’s body. Hours passed as the rest of the team quietly discussed what to do. Lisandra and Angharad volunteered to return to the office and complete any paperwork, while Avvakir, with great care, laid his Pebble on Effie’s body. As we watched, her terrible throat wound closed, vanishing along with the blood on the ground and flowers appeared in their place. Avvakir escorted Ella home, as Effie’s body was taken to the Nettles police station, and the deva broke the news to the family. Ella slipped away during the proceedings, to find her brother and mourn. Meanwhile Angharad and Lisandra had arrived at the RHC headquarters and found Delft, sharing a nightcap with Pete. They shared their story, and Delft vowed to bring Steelshaper to justice, before setting off towards Ella’s house. Lisandra went home, Angharad fell asleep over paperwork, and Avvakir eventually left the gnomes to their grief. It was late at night when Delft knocked on Ella’s family's door. She reluctantly agreed to speak to him and he gently offered his condolences, encouraging her to come to work in the morning, and reminding her of his comment from a few months ago. With her exhausted agreement, he left, and Team BAD’s darkest day… came to a close. And as the sun rises on the next day, we can only hope… it's brighter than the last. [B]Discussion[/B] What a horribly delightful and depressing session. Party tensions are at an all-time high, perhaps only unified by the desire for vengeance against Kell and the Steelshaper. With every session, the players become more and more invested in the game world. Unfortunately, Avvakir's player is no longer finding TTRPG's enjoyable, and has taken an indefinite break. This didn't come out of the blue, with the party knowing it was a possibility for many months. I'm not sure if I'll try to find a fourth player at this point in time. [/QUOTE]
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