Session 27: When You Wish Upon a Teutch

Time: 1/29/23  - 2/15/23 active 2/16/23

PCs: Team A: Gwen, Redcorn, Max, Luther, Caspian

Hench: Eggie, Mushu, Cemil, Amadayo, Maheen

#ACKS

Several sessions back our resident Barbarian Max Bear got level drained by one of those undead critters. Yeah, that one. You know.

It was demoralizing to say the least, but take the good with the bad and carry on. Back then Teutch (Patron mage) was a meanie head but not the villain that Team A believes him to be today and Max had had little to no interaction with him anyway. As the only established high level mage that the party had knowledge of, Max reached out to see what could be done about level draining.

In ACKS, level drain sucks. The xp is lost for good without the use of some powerful magic like Wish or Miracle to recover it. Teutch explained this, but had a lead on a wish scroll in the mountains in the north of the Blemu hills that he would use to recover Max’s lost life energy. But there was a catch! Max had to agree, upon achieving reasonable domain management level, to become a vassal to Teutch’s purple domain.

This hook sat for months while Max’s player had some IRL stuff keeping him out of the game. But today Max was back and hungry for his stolen xp so they decided to give it a shot. Gwen hired some mercs and off they went, with Redcorn and Gwen peeling off at the closest town to Teutchland. After the Trial, they weren’t sure if they were welcome and didn’t want to push it.

Max, Luther, and Caspian went up to the Tower where they met with Lockleaf (Teutch elf ranger hench) and got the map in question. Max agreed to the terms and skedaddled. Lockleaf had shared some tactical information about the place, mostly that since Felini could fly it had no normal stairs or ladders and just weird platforms allegedly. It also had some scary summoned faerie gremlins that were bound to the location. Lockleaf warned them not to fight the creatures as they were very formidable.

They knew the guardians at the place were bad news, so they went back to Deinwick to prepare. They purchased as many climbing, flight, invisibility, etc style potions and scrolls as they could find. They had two bards who could try to use the scrolls, but it was pretty costly if they failed and the scrolls were wasted. Max’s whole plan was to try to recon the place then run in and out with the loot. He was willing to take on the majority of the risk to try to get the scroll.

While the rest of the party shopped, Redcorn was growing increasingly worried about the bad dreams that everyone was having. He cast Commune and asked 3 questions of his deity, Ehlonna: Should I address the cause of the mad dreams? “All Lawful entities should.” Do I know people sufficiently powerful enough to aid me? “Yes” Is it Issac (Patron Paladin)? “Yes”. Bear in mind he also knows Teutch (Patron Mage) and Nekane (Patron Vaultguard), among other domain rulers, so the limitations of Yes or No questions were on display.

It was a pretty long walk to the spot in question but they all had horses and stayed on the Oberholt side of the river, following the road north to Hillfort where they talked about hiring a boat. Felini’s Mansion was in the mountains to the west of Hillfort. There was a tributary river coming out of the mountains near there that they thought would get them quickly where they needed to be, but they couldn’t find a boat captain willing to risk the known Gnoll raiders in the area.

They took a ferry across the Teeser and into the wilderness, following the tributary (I should really name this river) to the west. They’d been lucky so far with random encounters, the few that they had seen turned off by the large party of mercenaries and predatory animals that they had with them. The source of the river turned out to be coming from inside a dwarven hold of some kind, with a large archway that had been vandalized by beastmen but showed the words Slate and Beware pretty clearly in dwarven.

They passed some ruined fortress that had smoke coming out of it like it was inhabited and kept moving, not wanting to get bogged down with whatever trouble might come out of that. They also came upon some river dragons frollicking in the river. Again they chose to evade. Finally, the party stumbled on a wyvern nest, they noped out of that one too and the Wyverns chose to let them leave. I use a rough Battle Rating calculation from Domains at War: Campaigns sometimes to determine how monsters may perceive an enemy.

Up to this point they had been following roads and rivers, which to my mind makes it impossible to get lost. But now they were departing from the river to the interior of the mountains. I rolled a getting lost check but it passed, even with no navigator, and a few lair searches later they found the mansion.

It was a gothic style house set into the side of a mountain about 30’ off the ground. It was made of crazy orange and blue zig-zagging patterns, clearly fashioned primarily from magic. This was definitely the place as described by Teutch’s map.

Max has spent quite a bit of gold on resources, scoring some potions and scrolls to aid with the heist. The plan was to sneak in using gaseous form, recon, then get out. Use the rest of the stuff to blitzkrieg wherever the scroll might be then escape all while avoiding the very powerful guardians of the joint.

Max stripped down and Redcorn helped him up to the ledge with his flying animals. Max popped his gas potion and squeezed inside through this two story tall air intake that was sucking fresh mountain air into the building. It revealed a very large spherical room. He was able to pull loose from the very strong air current that flowed into another chamber to the north. 

There was a curtain left and right at different heights along the wall. He could see through the twitching curtains on the left some very bright light so wafted over there and slid through into another, somewhat smaller spherical room filled with mirrors and lenses, with the top part of the room made entirely of glass.

It was extremely bright and hot in there, so he wasn’t gonna be able to stay long. He saw a small desk with some nerd stuff on it, beakers and the like, but no books or scrolls so off he went, through the next curtain on the north wall. This room was about 1/3rd filled with lava, with the molten rock flowing in one spot on the north wall and out another on the west. Again, super hot so he needed to get out quick.

He chose to backtrack rather than risk getting burned up over the lava. From the entry chamber he checked the opposite curtain which led into an absolutely dark room, no light at all, so he backed out of there as well. With only one direction left and certain that time was running out on his potion, Max went into the air flow and into the northern room.

I had him make a saving throw vs. paralysis or be carried out of the enormous vents on the northern wall of the next room. He made it so he was able to separate himself from the air flow and into a hanging garden of wind chimes, bells, and other types of tinkling instruments. It was loud and a little disconcerting. A curtain left and curtain right led out of this room. He broke the one on the right which revealed a study of sorts, a large platform over another spherical room. But this one had tasteful sky lights and no wild elemental shenanigans.

Max had been in here quite a few turns and didn’t know how much time he had left on his potion, so he went back into the chime room with the intent to leave. Unfortunately, 3 of Felini’s Gremlins had moseyed into this room on their oversized dragonfly wings and were loitering about. They were medium sized golden skinned elves with large pitch black eyes and according to Teutch were summoned here from Elfland and cursed to guard this place.

Max was kind of stuck but they hadn’t seen him yet, so he floated into the airflow that shot him out of the back of the room and into the mountain air behind the building. He tried to fly as quick as he could back over to the front where the party was waiting but his potion ran out part way down the front side of the mountain and he had to sit his bare ass on a rocky icy boulder to keep from falling to his death.

Redcorn sent his griffon to go get him and he took a little damage from the claws and being naked, but Max was recovered and dressed soon after. They figured the study was likely the spot for the scroll, so they put together their remaining scrolls and potions to try to get invisibility, climbing, and silence. Gwendolyn as the highest level bard made the rolls for the scrolls, failing on invisibility but succeeding on spider climb. Redcorn cast the silence on a rock that Max picked up and put in his pocket. 

The barbarian grabbed a couple ropes and grappling hooks and went back in, this time opening the front door. He made it into the room with the chimes, but unfortunately so did 4 of the Gremlins. Max being a barbarian kept him from being surprised and he threw his hands up “Whoa whoa whoa!!!”

I rolled a reaction check and they didn’t immediately eviscerate him, but they hovered nearer and loomed ominously. “Leave,” stated the lead one. Max made his case which was basically, “Hey listen you’re trapped here right? I think my friends and I can get you out, but you gotta let us try. Let us get to the study where Felini kept his magic and we’ll use it to get you out!”

Max noticed that the gremlins were trembling from the effort of not killing him, the magical compulsion being very strong. “Yes, we will take you. If you fail, we kill you.” The PCs weren’t sure about that so said let Max out to talk it over and they can formulate a plan. The gremlins didn’t gaf about this place, but they were compelled to guard it. If the party could figure a way to free them before the fae monsters failed their saves, then they might be able to loot it freely.

The gremlins agreed to give him time as long as he left. The party put their heads together and really relied on Redcorn for the magical heavy lifting considering his advanced level. Luther the paladin was able to peek in and hit them with a detect evil. They did not register as chaotic or evil, which made helping them suddenly a moral imperative to the Lawful people in the party.

After much book reading, Redcorn decided that dispel magic was the first thing to try. He and Max re-entered the mansion and discussed it with the gremlins. There was some hedging about not killing them if it didn’t work, which the gremlins were unmoved by. Gwendolyn and Caspian, the two bards, dropped some sick beats on them to try to calm them, which seemed to actually work alright (bonus to their saves against bloodthirsty murder).

The first dispel was partially successful, removing the spell that bound the first creature to defend the place. Unfortunately it did not remove the binding to the plane so the creature was still here. It was put much at ease by the lifting of the effect and this earned the party the right to keep trying. The party had demonstrated an ability to at least affect the magic and insisted that they were arguing in good faith.

The next challenge was that Redcorn could only cast this once per DAY, so there was an awful lot of camping on the mountainside outside of this mansion just to wake up and recast Dispel Magic. The rest of the party chilled and guarded and played music and amazingly the few random encounters that hit did not want to engage with the party. Eventually the last gremlin poofed back to its plane as the magic binding it was dispelled, leaving the party to loot the study without any interference, scoring a solid bag full of various gems and jewelry and the target of their search, an arcane scroll.

Out and away they went, successfully finding the river again and following it back to Hillfort. In their travels they came across a band of gnolls that they outnumbered. The gnolls attempted to evade and the party did not pursue, feeling it wise to avoid conflict without a sure sign of treasure. Again their luck was with them and there were few encounters all the way back to Rushford where they left Redcorn and his animals.

This time, however, Gwendolyn thought to brave Teutch’s tower and traveled with the gang to hand the scroll over. When they got there, Teutch’s people gave her the cold shoulder but no one acted against her. She put up a flyer for EARS and played some goat themed music since this was Teutch’s favorite animal and the source of his peasants’ income.

Max handed over the scroll to Lockleaf who passed it onto Teutch. In an extremely rare occurrence, Max heard Teutch actually speak since he had to in order to use the scroll. For those new to Oberholt, Teutch the Alchemist does not waste breath with actual speech, preferring instead to flick out neon letters in the air before him like a magical text message. We’ll leave what Teutch’s voice sounds like to the imagination of the reader.

Anyway, Teutch made good on his promise, casting wish off of the scroll to restore Max’s lost xp to much rejoicing from the table. They met back up and ended the session in Deinwick where they could maybe do some shopping in downtime or something.

Musings:

The overland travel was fortunately close to very obvious landmarks. I wouldn’t mind having them get lost once just to play it out, but they’ve been careful and lucky, so hey good on them. Speaking of luck, another session with relatively few random encounters, particularly while they were camping in the mountains. I expected a dragon or giant or something serious, but a few goblins and critters that didn’t really want to engage them was all that rolled up.

Inside Felini’s mansion was a different story, as the random encounter table included only the gremlins and Max hit them twice during his exploits. Fortunately he wasn’t killed and they won the day. It was cool to see the players take such an interest in these memed up faerie monsters and it really set the tone for the session.

Unfortunately there wasn’t much action and some of the lower level PCs were kind of watching it go down, but hopefully the little loot that they got and restoring a mid level martial character to protect them will help ease any bad feelings from being bored during the heist scene.

Xp from Kills: 0

Xp from Loot: 4760

Total XP: 4760

Cuts: 15

PC: 0% 635 5% 666 10% 698

Hench: 0% 317 5% 333 10% 349

Session 26: Double Dippin'

Session 26: 1/22/23 - Double Dippin’

Time: 1/22/23  - 2/2/23 active 2/3/23

PCs: Team B: Bigtoe (machinist), Blair (nightblade), Braxton (explorer)

Hench: Isabel, Jahanaray

#ACKS

We’re back after a week off. IRL be like that. Let’s get into it.

This week the table chose to run Team B, which has been idle for a month or so considering all the trial drama. They started out of Talston and picked up their new Explorer Braxton who, as is customary for this table, immediately begged funds for the purchase of a horse. Even better, their 2 OTHER parties had already nearly exhausted the horse market in Talston for the month, so he got a really sweet warhorse on Bigtoe’s dime. ACKS market availability just feels right and the economy channel in our Discord server to track it works great.

They weren’t really sure what they wanted to do but decided on maybe hitting the Fallen Castle dungeon that they’ve ignored for months out near Teutch’s (patron mage) Purple Tower. They’d check in with the wizard for other hooks while they were at it, but they were gearing up for the dungeon delve. “We just want to get back to normal and not get arrested or executed or commit war crimes or do political errands.” I’m paraphrasing but that was the gist.

Travel was pretty easy, southwest to Deinwick, onto the border fort of Rushford to the west, then finally across the Friendship Bridge to Teutch’s Tower. They only had one encounter, a lone traveler who stayed well clear. You’ll recall everyone is suffering from bad dreams, so most NPCs are not gonna be friendly.

At Teutch’s, they found the elves Fernblithe and Lockleaf mourning their community’s loss by wearing red. The party couldn’t help but talk to Fernblithe and check on his mental health. Team B had not really been in play since the tragedy of Wounded Ear so in character they were all sympathy. Blair the elf particularly was angry about it and shared her experience at EARS with the elves, hoping they could visit to gain some solace. Out of character, jokes were made at the elves’ expense by terrible people while I shook my head in mock disapproval and laughed. Ahh, good times.

Barbinikus, Teutch’s de facto butler, met with the group and mentioned that Master Teutch had an interest in extending an olive branch of sorts to the perpetual thorn in his side Nekane the Great (patron dwarf vaultguard). He had a treasure map worth 15,000gp that was written by a dwarven refugee of an ambush gone wrong somewhere far to the north. He was offering 2,000gp and a magical shield for the party to deliver the map to Nekane since it might lead to some interesting dwarf centric stuff. The party happily agreed as it was a pretty short trek to Nekane’s Vault. Just had to brave the mountains.

Before they left, however, they started joking about what ifs. What if, you know, they just did the treasure map themselves and THEN offered it to Nekane? How would he know? It would be really daring to get paid twice for the same mission, right? Yeah, so they weren’t joking. Bigtoe the dwarven machinist could read the dwarven map, they just had to square away whereabouts it was located in relation to the bigger picture. Comparing it to maps they’ve gotten from other sources, they guessed it was in the northern part of the Blemu Hills.

This is the kind of thing that I enjoy about these games. Complete player agency drives the sessions. Idgaf that they aren’t going to the dungeon that I had all my notes out for. I just put them away and prepared for some more wilderness travel. The players drive the sessions with what THEY are excited about. I’m just along for the ride.

Anyway, they struck out back east with the plan to hit the big regional river, the Teesar Torrent, but on the wild side instead of following the road on the barony’s side. Player agency, dear reader. They surprised a couple of gargoyles getting out of the hills and fled as fast as they could, the players themselves still having flashbacks from their previous bad gargoyle run-in. They got back to the Teesar and followed the river north with no further encounters. 

They reached the confluence of the Teesar and a tributary river coming out of the mountains and needed a way across. They could see the human stronghold Hillfort across the way to the east but had no real way to contact them or any expectation that the baron’s troops would help.

So they turned west upstream, with Braxton trying to dope out a ford or something to get across. While searching they saw a platoon of dervishes on the opposite bank charging downstream towards Hillfort, but that wasn’t their circus, nor were they their monkeys, so the party ducked low and let them pass.

I ran searching for a ford like I would searching for a lair. It took them a while but eventually the explorer found a shallow enough spot to cross to the northern bank and so they did. They rested, then started out the next day north along the Teesar to where they anticipated breaking away and back into the hills. They encountered nothing else until just before the hills hex where the map indicated the treasure might be. The party overtook a 30 wagon caravan with a whole mess of guards, the rear platoon of which peeled off to posture threateningly. The PCs took the hint and held back, letting the caravan continue on. They followed far in its wake until it turned north and off of their trajectory.

Blair was able to track around and discover that the caravan was likely beastmen of some kind, probably goblinoid, and the party was glad they didn’t try to chit chat. They continued on and searched for the lair around their best guess of where the map led them. The nightblade was able to sneak up and take a peak, catching sight of two trolls eating semi-rotted human legs like drumsticks. I didn’t say troll outright, I was like “they’re big and gross and covered in gross stuff so gross”. Totally got em.

The party put together an attack plan and tried to get into position, but the trolls heard their non-sneaky folk and it was on. Summon Berserkers is a really good spell, btw. Rounds and rounds of combat, quite a few minimum damage rolls from the enemy, and they knocked the trolls down. They were pretty sure more were in the cave behind them so they formed up lookin’ for the reinforcements to arrive. But HAH! My masterful ruse rused them! One of the trolls got back to its feet after regenerating and took a swing, hitting Braxton iirc for a big chunk of his health.

The party eventually beat the dead horses trolls to far enough negative that it gave them some time to consider setting them on fire. Which eventually they did. Meanwhile the idiots inside the cave kept failing their hear noise checks with a cumulative bonus for how long the fight was going on, so the party never had to fight the full lair.

The reinforcements showed, they tussled some more, and the fight was won with essentially all of their resources expended. Afterwards, “Oh those were trolls? No wonder!” Gotta switch it up on veteran players. Put shark heads on your minotaurs or something.

The lair had quite a bit of loot in it. I usually use the app that someone made for ACKS for random treasure, but this time I decided to let the players roll it up live and it seemed to be a hit so we may try that some more in the future. I don’t have the patience for the trade goods portion of it though, which reduced the weight significantly. They were able to share the load between their horses and dip. Blair was sure to take time while they dealt with loot to try and cover their tracks. We’ll see what happens on the lair restock or if anyone else shows up to that hex.

They bee-lined back to the general area of Teutch and Nekane’s strongholds, which are side by side. Such cozy neighbors. They determined they didn’t want to go through Teutch’s to give away their recent activity before they had talked to Nekane, so they went cross country that way. The explorer was on fire with lair checks and they were able to find Nekane’s Vault with little trouble.

The Vault Lord made them wait a few days before he would see them. This led to Blair looking for fights in the local bars and nearly finding them with the dwarves there mocking the knife ears and generally being insensitive. Bigtoe was able to smooth over the friction with some rounds purchased for everyone and eventually the party was able to meet with Nekane. His habit was to meet them outside of his palace where he could show off his bear riders and today was no different.

They offered the map as an olive branch from Teutch and the dwarf lord took it under advisement. The Patron Nekane has a different take than the original NPC so I was sure to remember how jovial he behaves, asking about their stay in town and what have you. It may be an act, but for now Nekane is a kinder, gentler tunnel-dweller. Bigtoe wanted to discuss new terms on the previous agreement for mining equipment blueprints but since I’ve got a Patron for that I directed it to downtime. They can hash it out.

The party scooted back to Teutch’s to get paid and then split, Bigtoe staying to work in his workshop that Teutch built for him and the others headed to Deinwick because downtime in Teutchland is pretty lame otherwise. The wizard doesn’t yet have a market to play in. They made it safely and we ended the session there.

Musings:

I’ve settled on just writing these and posting them. I trust my players to play it straight if they can decipher some sekrit (or extremely blatant) knowledge out of here. We’ll see how long it takes Nekane to figure out he got scooped on the map. How it affects his response to Teutch. How Teutch responds to Nekane’s response to the party’s response to… you get it.

I was looking forward to seeing the Fallen Castle dungeon again. Teutch’s player runs the restocks and ecology of it and there’s nothing a DM likes more than work that’s already done for him. The party’s only ever done a few rooms of it so I’m sure they’ll go back, sometime.

I was surprised to see them risk the ire of Patrons again. But it was a lot of fun joking about it at the table. As long as actual player morale stays high, I don’t really care what they do. But I don’t wanna hear any noise if they get found out and suffer for it. Take the L’s with the W’s, team.

Oberholt
Xp from Kills:	2720
Xp from Loot:	11340
Total XP:	14060
Cuts:	8
PC:	0%	3,515	5%	3,691	10%	3,867
Hench:	0%	1,758	5%	1,845	10%	1,933

Session 25: Playin’ With a Travelin’ Band

Time: 1/7/23 - 1/27/23, active 1/28/23

PCs: Redcorn (Cleric), Gwendolyn (Bard), Luther (Paladin)

Hench: Cemil (Fighter), Amadayo (Fighter), Mahin (Assassin)

#ACKS

During downtime over the holidays, the event described below transpired which shades some of the interactions of the following session and likely several more to come:

The Dark Hymn 1/2/23: The dreams of peasants, Lords, and adventurers alike are plagued with visions of the birth of a massive, malicious being that rumbles and hums with what is being called “The Dark Hymn”, brought forth by a black-magic ritual performed by cabals of hooded cultists in several clearly separate locations. Reports of scenes differ based on the telling, but all agree on the sinister glowing red eyes and shadowy tendrils that the foul thing uses to manipulate the dreamspace around it as it crawls forth into this world. 

In some cases, it is seen menacing huge crowds of beastmen, whose eyes begin flickering with an inner red light until the entire host howls in guttural harmony. In others, the god is more subtle, witnessed in shadows of modest homes, barely touching the families inside. Flashes of tragedy, murder, suicide, and worse, follow, punctuated by the maddening, droning tone. Most alarming are the accounts of the creature crushing castles with a swipe of a tendril, devastating armies of men with dark magics and the ever-present insidious Hymn.

Lawful priests are hard at work assuring the populace that their continued faith and tithing will protect them from harm while mages flock to any library with a collection of more than three books on a shelf to research what this could mean. The Lords of the land snarl in defiance or cower in fear, each to their nature, suddenly worried over much more than brooding civil war.

Reaction, morale, and loyalty checks during the month of January are made at -1 due to fear, distrust, panic, and despair. Account for these in your dealings both in session and in downtime.

-----------------------------------------------------------

After Team A’s sentencing was carried out, they were down a few members and given a quest of restitution by Lord Issac (Patron Paladin). They were tasked with retrieving the idol of Correllon Larethian that they had brought to Nekane as proof of the deeds done at Wounded Ear. This was to be returned to Gwendolyn’s new foundation EARS (Elven Abuse Rehabilitation Society) in Talston where it could be retrieved by the aggrieved victims of their heinous war crimes or something. Patron play at work, everyone.

The mood among the players was “Can we please get out from under this trial and get back to normal (whatever normal means)?!?!” so they really wanted to focus on getting this mission done. The two surviving members of Team A picked up the new paladin Luther, did a little shopping, then headed for the hills. Literally. Nekane (Patron Vaultguard) lives in the hills/mountains region just north of the Purple Fever Dream.

They had some pretty uneventful travel until they got into the mountains, where they tripped over a lair of gray worms in a dead end box canyon. Redcorn travels with a veritable squadron of trained/tamed/charmed/whatever creatures that he sics on anything they find in the wild and this was no exception. A very short combat later and they cut some loot out of one of the critters’ bellies and moved on, eventually arriving at Nekane’s mountain vault.

Outside was a large statue of the stout dwarven lord overlooking the vault door itself, with the usual couple of Vaultguards on sentry duty. The party was known to them now, so they were admitted without any additional bribery and led to Nekane’s palace where they waited. And waited.

We play live at the table and my Patrons run through Discord. During the session I had pinged Nekane with a heads up that they were coming his way just in case he had anything specific he wanted done. Usually with Patron play you’ll have a set of contingencies set by the Patron player in the event that the PCs encounter them in session. This was an unusual circumstance in that Nekane’s player was available as the game unfolded live. Exciting, dynamic, oooooh.

So I played middle man while Nekane set the tone of his character as much as he was able with the format involved and the party tried to negotiate the release of the elves’ Idol. Remember, Nekane started as an NPC who was just recently taken over as a Patron so any opportunity for him to put his own spin on the situation is key to the world building.

Nekane deliberately made them sweat for a while, and they negotiated and shared little RP points privy to only those present, eventually settling on a very strange request: he wanted the party to bring him singers. And not just any singers, they had to be good (pass Performance proficiency throws) or barring good they had to be beautiful (16+ Charisma). Why? I dunno. Neither did the party. I know one thing, the Nekane I ran as an NPC wouldn’t have requested such a weird thing. Put Patrons in your game.

The party dipped out, immediately diving into the books to find… singers? Turns out a reciter hireling is kinda like a singer maybe? 1st level Bard? Eh DM yeah? Ok yeah it’s as good as anything I could come with so off they went, back to the larger markets to drum up a Travelin’ Band.

As is my table’s habit, they ran pretty far into the future with all this travel and hiring and whatnot, but eventually they recruited their troupe of reciters, paid 2 months up front and several times requiring sweetening of the deal due to the bizarre dreams of a frightening and disturbing nature that plague virtually every person that they’ve talked to. Fortunately Gwendolyn has solid chit chatty stats to overcome such obstacles and she was able to buy fancy hats or new instruments or whatever to persuade the reluctant to join up.

Back to the hills! The party was able to travel pretty uneventfully back to Nekane’s vault, only seeing one encounter of giant ants along the river. The ants were stopping to drink from the river and had huge globules of water held over their heads that they sipped from like their tiny cousins are known to do. Yes I know this is against the laws of physics and no I don’t care. It made me laugh and tweaked the nose of Redcorn’s player. But the surface tension! The mass! Win/win and you can’t tell me different.

They arrived at the vault with no further troubles and presented their troupe in matching uniforms that Gwendolyn had purchased for them in Nekane’s colors. Nekane proceeded to interview the singers and was pleased with the overall results, taking on the band as a whole despite one of them failing to pass the performance check.

The performers: Anna is tall and pretty and sings sea shanties, Bartolio is a singer, juggler, and teller of tales. He has a limp. Charity is thicc and sings opera, but she's got 18 charisma so she's like that big boned healthy pretty. Francis is a 50s style crooner and Gertrude is a yodeler with an accordion that Gwendolyn made a point to drop in our Discord Economy channel just to make those not involved go “what?”

They got their idol and left, taking the opportunity to search for lairs within the mountains. I rolled the lairs in the hex, reducing them randomly by the known lairs already like the gray worms and Nekane. Turns out they found Clousto the Cloud Giant's flying castle. They can't help themselves but to warn every giant they see about Teutch the Treacherous (Patron Mage) who killed Stormy Daniel the Storm Giant last year sometime. Redcorn spoke with the flying hawks guarding the castle and passed on this warning. The hawks weren't keen on the party and would not let them speak directly to Clousto without paying a tribute of "gold, gems, art, pretty things he likes". This was deemed too expensive so the party dipped.

Team A returned to Talston to deliver the idol to EARS. They also returned with a message from Nekane to share with the other Patrons which the party immediately sent to Riverstride and Teutchland. Now what?

We still had some session time and the party had gained very little in the way of actual treasure. This itch to advance will sometimes drive some meta decisions that in hindsight might not have been wise but the pressure at the time to DO SOMETHING is great. 

Redcorn insisted that they should search for and knock over lairs! Ok cool, let’s get it. They rolled towards the borderland area north of Talston to try to dig up something. They’ve got tracking and aerial recon and all the goodies to lair hunt, but unfortunately couldn’t find one in the first few grassland hexes they searched. In frustration and desperation to score something, they braved the first hex of the Swamp of AHHHHHH just west of Lord Issac’s domain where the table has lost many a PC and hench in the past.

They dodged some randoms through evasion and intimidation (recall the menagerie of lions, dire wolves, hippogriffs, etc of Redcorn’s) and eventually dug up a lair! Unfortunately during the search they also hit a random encounter, a cluster of carnivorous flies that they engaged with and destroyed. During the battle they lost Luther, who used a Fate Point to stabilize but would be worthless until he could get a full day’s rest.

The lair was a wooded copse of spider webbing littered with cocoons. Being in the swamp I ruled that ground movement for this area was at half speed due to being in muck and swampy nonsense. This didn’t really phase anyone as they were pretty confident in their next course of action: flamestrike the trees and watch it burn.

Well, yeah. Spider webs are notoriously flammable. I’m not sure you’re actually adventuring if you don’t immediately set fire to spider webs. So poof, the whole thing went up in flames and whatever was inside ran away or burned up who knows. Unlike the last time the table did this, though, they used a divine pillar of holy flame that struck from the sky instead of tossing a single torch. This ended up causing a massive bonfire that they were content to just wait out before they could get in and find whatever goodies there might be.

Unfortunately everything else nearby would see or smell this same event. Critters were likely to flee because fire bad, fire scary. But the swamps are filled with more dangerous things than crocs and Floridamen. I rolled for a random to see if anything cared about the fire and sure enough, Enter the Murlocs (troglodytes but I’m a WoW guy from way back and enjoy making that stupid Murloc sound they make. If you know, you know.)

There were a LOT of them, like more than 50, and they aren’t goblins. They’ve got a few HDs, several attacks when unarmed, and other nasty surprises once they’re close. That spell slot used for Flamestrike was looking pretty sexy right now. There was some confusion about the plan within the party. Redcorn apparently was going to hold them off with animals while the party escaped but others thought they were engaging to fight. Once they realized the total plan though, the party was able to escape due to being mounted. Even at half speed they could outrun the murlocs who were fast in the water but not so much the mud.

They lost a few animals in the retreat and scratched the swamp and the session, returning to Talston to lick their wounds and express their disappointment that the vast wealth that was in that spider lair is now overflowing the coffers of the fishy tribe.

Musings:

The party’s just trying to get back to some status quo with the Patrons after the trial. They long for the days when gold fell from low hanging branches and everyone competed to pay them for chores. The dynamic has shifted pretty heavily and will likely continue to shift because… Patrons. If you aren’t using them, why?

I might have an unusual set up in the 1:1, Patron play scene in that my table is live while my Patrons are remote, instead of everyone being on a Discord call or whatever. This can allow for some interesting interactions but like anything new, it’s a lot of trial and error. While it was very cool for Nekane to get his stamp on the encounters that the party had with him LIVE IN SESSION (first time for my table), it was very slow and affected the tempo of the overall game in the way that we ran it by text and forwarding and such.

So far I’ve run my Patrons off of contingencies that they set, but other things could be tried, like even putting them on a Discord call with the players and letting them run with it. Not sure how that would work out, but I think it’s worth a shot and I may explore it if it comes up again. In general my Patrons aren’t usually available like that so it’s not something I’ve ever considered. These things grow and we must adapt or die! Or something.

I wrestle with when to post these session reports, particularly since my table frequently goes weeks into the future due to travel and shopping and whatever they want to do in session. It’s mid/late Jan by the time the party turns in the Idol at EARS, for instance, and one must always consider operational security when using 1:1 time. I don’t foresee anything cataclysmic happening in a few weeks and the only truly time sensitive piece here would be the messages that Nekane sent to the other Patrons. The party is holding those until the appropriate date. So I’m gonna go ahead and post this up. If I go radio silent for a long time then look for the next session report to have something strategically important to op sec for one or more of the involved parties that had to be held until there was time for it to become common knowledge.

Xp from Kills:	389
Xp from Loot:	1000
Total XP:	1389
Cuts:	9
PC:	0%	309	5%	324	10%	340
Hench:	0%	154	5%	162	10%	170