Time: 12/4/22 - 12/11/22 active 12/12/22
PCs: Gwen, Grim, John Redcorn, Oggie
Surviving Hench: amadayo, cemil, mahin, eylul, paulus, pablo
The session was played on Sunday 12/4/22 and for reasons that will become clear this report was held until after a reasonable time had passed for the game to catch up to the date. In the interests of a complete report, we are trusting the involved parties to play as straight as they’re able. As those involved are aspiring or established elite level gamers, I am unconcerned with this decision.
Team A was in the saddle for this session minus Max Bear, who was a last minute scratch due to RL scheduling (sad face). They picked up Oggie the Dwarven Vanguard (welcome!) in Talston, where they dithered for quite a while on what to actually do in the session. We’re getting a better handle on downtime stuff and will hopefully streamline session play to not include shopping and such in the very near future. More time for adventure!
After some rumoring and discussion and influence from having a dwarf in the party, they decided to head west in search of the Slate Clan, a once prominent dwarven clan that after an unknown event receded into secrecy and seclusion. Grim had a lead on a blacksmith that was creating a magic axe. Previous Sage advice led him to believe that Runestones that the Slate Clan were rumored to produce were needed for the axe’s creation and Oggie decided that his dwarf was a Slate Clan member! When he returned home the clan was gone and now he’s in search of their whereabouts. Who needs a 5 page backstory?
Off they went to the west, coincidentally in the direction of Team A’s most favorite weirdo wizard Teutch the Alchemist (Patron Mage ???). One might recall from previous session reports that Team A and Teutch did not end on the best of terms, each renouncing the other, but distance and time cooled the heat on that they hoped. To be safe, they planned to just skirt the tower and avoid any unpleasantness that might arise.
While in Deinwick they discussed what options they might have to actually find the Slate Clan. The Blemu Hills were the target, which is a decently sized chain of hills and mountains along the Teesar. They wanted to narrow it down a bit so they hit on the idea of asking the only dwarf they were aware of in the area, The Great Nekane, about the Slate Clan. They hoped having Oggie the dwarf along and no elven sparkledust on them this time would help with relations. The first time didn’t go so well.
Nekane is a Neutral dwarf known to be greedy and arrogant. He did not disappoint. Gwendolyn was able to bribe the party’s way into the Vault and gain audience with Nekane the Great, who is a swole dwarf with diamonds in his beard. None of the party had met him before but he was showing signs of aging since the last time someone saw him.
The party asked what they could think of regarding the Slate clan and Nekane’s reaction rolls were good so he told them what he knew, which wasn’t much in the way of specifics but did narrow their search down to a 5 hex cluster of mountains to the north. He advised they start at the source of the tributary river as a natural entry point into the mountains since searching for the Slate clan’s sekrit entrances would be an unreasonably dangerous gamble in the mountains. This is where things got spicy.
As an aside after dwarf business was situated, Team A, as they have been known to do from time to time, took it upon themselves to warn Nekane of the treacherous nature of Teutch the Alchemist. This is in response to Teutch having harvested Daniel the Storm Giant’s pituitary gland after the party made friends with him like idk 100 years ago. Many sessions back. However, Nekane actually knows Teutch unlike the other instances of this type of warning.
What’s interesting here is that now the party of Team A was actively working against the interests of the party of Team B, played by the same players as a result of random rumors leading them to Nekane and premier roleplaying. Bonkers.
Anyway, Nekane nodded knowingly and let on that he was dealing with Teutch but was already suspicious of him and his band of hooligans Team B, which included a frilly elf. But he had felt the risk was worth it due to the machinist’s promise of increased mining efficiency. Then someone in the party, I think it was Grim, asked if there were any missions that the party could do for Nekane.
This is a pivotal moment in the game where the DM, having no clue they were going to Nekane or what Nekane might want done, rolls some dice to see if the result is even worth thinking about. Naturally it was so I needed something Nekane was fired up over. His history of hating on Teutch’s hench Lockleaf and the elves and some recent developments in Teutchland told the story for me.
Nekane was uber offended by even more elves showing up basically on his doorstep, prancing around a huge petrified redwood tree that Team B had secured on behalf of Teutch a while back. He at first offered a pretty decent payout for the party to humiliate the elves before or during their holiday celebration at the winter solstice. In the back and forth on what this actually meant and after some pretty terrible reaction rolls, the party got him so fired up he offered even more cash to drive the elves off. The word devastation was floated by someone, they worked each other up over it, and off the party went to hassle some knife ears.
This was quite the departure from the dungeon delve that I was actually prepared for. I shot Teutch a message online for some quick deets on these elves as they were very new to his service and I couldn’t find specifics in his notes while the party made their plans. They traveled to the hex in question without much trouble and camped. In a nighttime aerial raid, Redcorn flew his griffon over and torched the elves’ enormous plastic ceremonial wreath that was hanging on the side of the redwood with their ladders leaned up against it as though they were recently decorating it for their holiday celebration. The Prelate cast Flame Strike which has a range of 60 ft and is a 10 ft diameter column of flame, so it gives off quite a bit of light. The elves identified the griffon and tried to shoot it, but were surprised and Redcorn won initiative so he outpaced the arrows and returned to camp.
The following morning the party, minus Redcorn and his animals, approached the tree under the guise of concerned adventurers. Good reaction rolls even with negatives for the scenario led Fernblithe the Spellsword to give them a brief audience while his warriors prepared to march off to Teutch to get assistance. There was some back and forth, “hey we saw the smoke” kind of thing, then the same offer of missions for hire that Grim had made to Nekane. The elves were all confused and devastated by their melted plastic wreath, looking horribly dejected. Fernblithe was focused only on this new threat of wizards on griffons and getting help from his Lord Teutch, so he waved them off. But the reaction was good enough he asked what they were called so he could know them again if needed. Like deer in headlights they uh’d and um’d until Grim said “Yeah we’re Team A”. Nice. smooth
They hustled back to the camp where Redcorn waited and quickly formed a plan to ambush the elves on their way to Teutch since they didn’t want to be associated with the vandalism. The chances of that were very slim unless Redcorn went alone on the griffon since the elves had light horses, knew the terrain, and the party’s camp was on the other side of the hex from the direction the elves were leaving in. Failing that, the party decided to opt into the devastation tactic for even more money. They descended on the very small fledgling settlement in and around the tree and found a few elven peasant families chilling doing peasant stuff. A hot debate was had again over what “devastation” meant, with Redcorn bowing out of the next actions. I think the phrase “I’m not going from Grinch to Goebbels” was used.
This is where we had a discussion about the nature of elves we were running with in Oberholt. I went with them being soulless faerie creatures of mystery and otherworldly nature, as alien to humans as orcs or dragons. See Poul Anderson’s Broken Sword or Lord Dunsany’s King of Elfland’s Daughter. Grim the Assassin was good with that and he and the boys merked the few elves present, put them all in the few little huts and burned everything that could be burned down. Slapping the soot off of his hands he looked around like, alright, let’s go get paid. Assassins, amirite?
The mood in the party had changed a bit since they realized that they had essentially committed an act of war in Nekane’s name against Teutch the Alchemist, one of the two most powerful Patrons the PCs were aware of in the campaign. They hauled ass as fast as they could back to Nekane’s Vault where they got an audience the next day. The pressure was on to get back across the river and into human lands where they thought it’d be harder for Teutch to find and or kill them if it turned out that he blamed them for the atrocity.
The audience with Nekane was positive, where Grim handed over an idol of Correllon Larethion as proof of the deed and the dwarf lord paid them their blood money reward in the form of diamonds identical to the ones in his beard. The party described the scene of having ruined the elves’ holiday, witnessing their depression, and then burning the whole thing down which pleased Nekane, who shared some further details about Runestones with Grim. Grim instigated a cheer of “hip hip fuck Teutch, hip hip fuck elves!” to the delight of Nekane’s court and then the party beat feet ASAP back across the river, using the ferry at Rushford instead of Teutch’s bridge and fleeing to Deinwick to hide.
Musings:
I just… can’t… stop… laughing. Things really escalated quickly and Team A looks to lay low for a while. I feel bad for Oggie who it looked like was gonna get into some dwarf history for the campaign. But hey, big score and the only danger they’re in is future-them’s problem. See y’all next session!
Xp from Kills: 0
Xp from Loot: 25100
Total XP: 25100
Cuts: 14
PC: 0% 3,586 5% 3,765 10% 3,944
Hench: 0% 1,793 5% 1,883 10% 1,972
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