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
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.
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