Time: 8/27/22-9/7/22, active 9/8/22
PCs: Blair, Bigtoe, Bralen
Hench:
Session 13 saw the B Team taking on another of Teutch the Alchemist’s missions, this one to infiltrate and steal a tin scroll case out of one of three dragons’ hoards in a petrified redwood tree guarded by trolls. What could go wrong?
Teutch’s hench Lockleaf had laid the groundwork for the heist by securing an agreement from the dragons’ Troll minions that Lockleaf’s associates could camp at the petrified tree where the three dragons lived if they paid 700gp a night. Expensive hotel. The crafty elf was also able to case a few items from Judy the Green Dragon’s hoard, including the tin scroll case, Flava Flav’s diamond encrusted clock necklace, Ivanka Trump’s tennis bracelet, and a fine chess set with jeweled eyes on the pieces. Just in those few items was a fortune, and that was part of one hoard of three.
The party was offered a Potion of Invisibility for the mission and a favorable cut of the profits if they were able to obtain the scroll, so high risk high reward as all good heists should be. They had a good map provided by Lockleaf, fast horses, didn’t get lost and were not waylaid by sphinxes or bandits or anything on their travels to the tree, which was a massive petrified redwood that was hollow on the inside and tiered in crazy random platforms and spirally walkways where the dragons laired.
The trolls did not care for the adventurers, but the party was able to keep from being put into cookpots by mentioning Lockleaf. The trolls unenthusiastically honored their agreement and took the bribe to let the party camp the night, but they were not interested in playing hosts.
The scheme was Bigtoe and Bralen would socialize with the trolls while Blair “went out hunting”, hopefully securing an alibis for the party. They lamented not having just had Blair be invisible from the get go since it lasts for 24 hours, but hey live and learn. She drank the potion and snuck past the troll guards and into the tree den where she could see Sleeping Judy on a pile of treasure low down, Punch eating on a deer carcass a bit further up, and little Dennis way up high where the platforms weren’t as stout for the parent dragons and their bigger hoards.
While Bigtoe and Bralen went from troll to troll annoying them loudly and singing drinking songs, Blair the Nightblade crept and jumped along the haphazard little platforms until she could get close enough to Judy’s hoard to pick out individual items, quickly seeing the same things that Lockleaf saw. She had targets, now to execute the theft.
The thing about Thieves is that although they’re extremely vulnerable in combat and not particularly tough, they have the full complement of Thief skills including Pick Pocket. Nightblades, Assassins, and the like do not, so Blair trying to ease the items out of the hoard while Judy slept was going to be a challenge. I ruled an untrained thief-like character would have the same PP chance as Hear Noise at 18+ and went with that.
Blair was able to target and lift the tin scroll case out of the hoard, but she woke the dragon! A huge reptilian eye popped open staring right at the elf. Invisibility states that an item is only invisible when picked up if it’s concealed by the invisible person’s clothing, so she tried to stash it away before the dragon saw it floating. A save vs. Paralysis was my ruling to make that happen fast enough, which she made, stashing the scroll case before the dragon saw it.
I used a reaction check to see how Judy responded to being woken up or to see if she realized the theft. She was groggy and didn’t see the missing item, also apparently didn’t see the elf, eventually going back to sleep as Blair stood and waited for the dragon’s breathing to settle into sleep rhythms again.
Capturing the scroll gave them a more favorable cut of the loot, but they hadn’t gotten any actual loot yet, so Blair went back for more, targeting Flava Flav’s massive diamond clock necklace as easily the most valuable liquid item in sight. Breaths were held around the table because surely if she woke up again Judy would go bananas, but Blair successfully pickpocketed the clock and tucked it away.
She then decided not to push her luck with Judy and went to case the rest of the hoards, climbing and hopping from ledge to ledge and rolling successful move silently checks when necessary. She carefully avoided Punch’s notice and made her way all the way to little Dennis’s nest, with his cute little hoard. She didn’t see any truly easy pickin’s but decided to take a shot at a treasure map case that looked like the sleeping dragon may not notice missing.
She crept slowly up and tried to lift the case, but Dennis sprang awake and panicked, jumping to and fro and causing Blair to have to jump back to avoid being swiped with a tail. This caused some noise and initiative was rolled, which Blair won and crawled out of a crack in the side of the huge petrified tree and down as far as she could just as Dennis blasted the platform that she was standing on with poison gas. It was a narrow miss and now Punch and Dennis were riled and looking around, but after finding nothing missing in either of their hoards they settled back down.
Blair, in true sneaky fashion, waited a long time for everyone to settle and get off of high alert before re-entering the tree and trying to sneak up to Judy’s hoard again. Unfortunately Punch was still on edge and heard her kick a rock or spare copper piece or something and sprang into action, blasting the area with poison gas. But since he was firing blindly he narrowly missed Blair who fled the tree, again through a crack in the trunk, and climbed down, with Punch and Dennis in hot pursuit.
Bigtoe was singing as loudly as he could and beginning to sweat with all the action from the dragons, pretending that everything was A-Okay while Bralen looked nervous and wanted to be anywhere but there.
Blair ran through the little forest that surrounded the petrified redwood with Dennis in pursuit and blasting long streak of poison gas into the woods, narrowly missing her. Punch joined his son and fired another, even more potent blast, also narrowly missing her. The dragons prowled around trying to find her but she had hidden in a tree and was still invisible.
Judy had awakened at this point and was uber pissed to find her items missing from her horde, bellowing for the Troll chieftain to report. The Troll ordered the dwarf and mage seized, who had a chance to respond but with a whole gang of trolls staring right at them decided to go along and plead their innocence. They were brought before Judy who demanded that they have their pockets turned out, which the trolls were happy to do. Piles of gold and a few magic items were thrown into the middle of the room, but none of it was Judy’s missing items.
Trolls are not very smart so I made a roll to see whether or not the Chieftain would remember the missing elf. Unfortunately he did, which caused great suspicion on Judy’s part. She was going to hold the group hostage until the elf returned. During this time Blair had escaped into the woods, stashed the stolen loot, and tried to find some game to act as alibi for her hunting trip but unfortunately all the commotion had driven everything out of the small copse of trees. She returned empty-handed and acted totally innocent while she was marched into the tree den and her pockets were also turned out by trolls.
Judy was infuriated by the burglary and suspicious of the coincidence of the party’s presence and the theft, so she demanded that the party find her items and return them. She gave them their items back but kept their gold, quite a bit of it as I recall, as collateral for them returning her items. Bigtoe floated pixies as the likely suspects, citing the party’s previous encounter with them as proof of their nefarious nature. Judy still holds their gold and threatens violence if the items are not returned, but the party escaped with their lives.
They returned to the Purple Tower, where Blair flaunted her stolen clock to everyone who would look and bragged loudly about how she had stolen the clock and how awesome it was. They gave the scroll to Teutch and sold the clock to him, then set off to Vaultlord Nekane’s to negotiate for more time which they did successfully, Bigtoe making a big show of getting as much detailed information about the dimensions of the mining shafts as possible.
On the way back they saw three Ogres guarding a cave entrance who wanted to chase them down but couldn’t catch them. They drew a map to it and tried to sell it to Teutch since he mentioned wanting Ogre parts, but they didn’t like the price he offered so they hung on to it.
Musings:
Little long winded there, but the rapidly increasing chances of at the very least Blair dying made for a tense encounter at the dragons. There was some whinging about how Judy handled the suspicion, but the reaction checks that I was getting weren’t murder-level. The longer her items are missing and the more certain she becomes that she was swindled, well, we’ll see how the dragons respond.
Xp from Kills: 0
Xp from Loot: 26000
Total XP: 26000
Cuts: 6
PC: 0% 8,667 5% 9,100 10% 9,533
Hench: 0% 4,333 5% 4,550 10% 4,767
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