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)
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.
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.
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