5/7/23-5/15/23, rest 5/16/23, active 5/17/23
PC: Blair (Nightblade), Bigtoe (Machinist), Braxton (Explorer)
Hench: Isabel, Jahanaray, Goda, Platt, Ronin, Rocky, Andi
A few months ago Braxton the Explorer tripped over a rumor about a magical ship that sails the midnight coast of the Bay piloted solely by cats. You may ask yourself, “Wtf?”, but listen, shut up.
For real though, rumors are a great way to seed things into the game. You may be tempted to use them to gently push the adventurers towards your desired in-game hooks. Or you could write 50 of them in a drunken stupor, drop them in a file, and forget about them until one of the PCs starts searching for a lucrative job opportunity.
I believe that players don’t really care about NPCs or DM generated hooks and while they may seem stupid when solving puzzles or not grasping your brilliant plot, they aren’t. They can smell railroad tracks and abhor nothing more than doing what the DM wants them to do. Players are more likely to latch onto something that they have some personal input into. This is why I have ridiculous rumors and the broadest strokes of prepared environments and locations. When the PCs latch onto something, or come up with something themselves, I’m not scrambling to rewrite all muh preps and force a square peg into a round hole. I’m prepared to improv a session that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy.
So, “cat boat, cat boat” was the chant in the downtime Discord. I stole was inspired by a rule from the Dubzaron campaign that allows using multiple “stacked” rumors to apply to a single topic. As more rumors are hit for the topic, I prompt the rumormongering player as to what they believe the next information regarding the hook should be. Naturally as DM I have veto powers directly and the nature of rumors being inconsistent or unverified gives veto powers indirectly so it doesn’t really matter if they say, “There’s an unguarded treasure hoard tended by kittens in cute hats that has a unicorn horn that grants wishes!” or some other cheesy freebie like that. Sure that’s the rumor that they hear, even down to where this treasure hoard is supposed to be. But what’s actually there is up to me and no one rides for free.
Braxton continued to investigate this rumor and the player had determined to use a mutual friend of the table’s online moniker to represent the leader of the Merlantians, an aquatic tribe of fishy naga-like people with a sneaker fetish and “girded loins”. Apparently he believed the cat thing to be misdirection or something. The real target was The Mighty Hammercock, Lord of Merlantis. Again you may ask yourself, “Wtf?” Please, refer to the opening paragraph for any further such questions.
With a target set, the party launched from Deinwick towards the capital of Bellport where they intended to find more information about the Merlantians and buy or hire a boat to take them out on the water. I’ve added a Maps section to the site that might clarify where some things are happening. Anyway, off they went with Bigtoe’s fledgling army as escort. They quickly realized that marching a small army all that way was going to take quite a while, so they traded off some of the mercs with their venturer hench in Talston before continuing on with cavalry for speed.
Once the party arrived in Bellport, several of the group tried to dig up more information about the cat boat, learning that just a week past a lone survivor had washed ashore, telling terrible tales of his ship being attacked in a foggy night-time ambush. Bigtoe wanted to interview this fellow but unfortunately the poor chap had succumbed to his wounds. He had to settle for learning a rough area of the coastline that the fiendish Hammercock might operate along.
Next, the group visited the docks looking for a ship to hire. There were many ships but not many for hire so Braxton approached the harbormaster and greased his palms to keep an eye out for them. We joked around a little about his cheap frugal bribery amounts of like 5 and 9 gold pieces. The harbormaster was unimpressed by the modest offerings but liked the explorer well enough to play ball.
Now they were in a big city which they really had visited rarely and spent very little time in. They wanted to check with the local authorities and get paid for doing something that they were going to do anyway. Adventurers be greedy like that. They learned that Sir Lionel Deinwick, brother to the Lord Deinwick of the West, was acting captain of the guard so they made an appointment and were able to be seen.
He had vague reports of some piracy attributed to this fairy tale and was willing to pay a little for information, but quite a bit more for proof. The party took the mission and slept on it, waiting for the harbormaster to find them a boat.
The next day, after no hits, Braxton decided to poke around in dockside inns for captains that they could approach directly. A solid plan that was supported by the dice because miraculously the first place they went to had a captain’s council of some sort going on. They waited for them to finish before approaching, asking if anyone was willing to carry them out to sea looking for the cat boat. The man at the head of the table, Captain Commodore Victor, seemed to take responsibility for the gathering and asked a few questions, deciding that sure he’d charge them to rent one of his ships and on the absolutely miniscule chance that they actually ran into the cat boat, he wanted half of the treasure that might be recovered. He voluntold one of the attendees to escort the party where they thought they needed to be and the rest kind of snickered to each other about chasing ghost ships.
Captain Newman of The Key was happy to cart the party around for a few days and make a little gold, so off they went, sailing the coast southeast towards a large cove just short of Seafort. They found the cove and looked around a little, but did not find any evidence of past battles. It was night and they were in a cozy spot so decided to chill there and continue the search the next day.
Allowing random results to dictate the game is interesting. The wounded sailor died, bad random roll. Sir Deinwick would see them in a timely fashion and the first bar they looked in was filled with captains, good random rolls. The first encounter rolled out of port was mermen, which was what I had determined would indicate an encounter with the dastardly Merlantians! Let go of the wheel, it’s more dynamic.
Night fell as a dense fog began to roll in. The players got excited, sensing something was afoot. During the midnight watch an eerily silent ship pulled alongside, exchanging arrows with some of the party on duty. The group was finally able to set eyes on the mythical Merlantians, large, broad-shouldered naga-like people armed with bows and tridents and looking disdainfully at the party’s shoddy footwear. Or maybe the Merlantians were the giant sized tabby cats staring disinterestedly from the back ranks of the snake people. Either way, the fight was on.
The enemy stormed the rails of the Key and engaged the party and their mercenary archers that they were able to bring aboard. The naga-like men were obviously trained well and strong, but not terribly threatening on the whole. It was the cats that really scared the group. When the huge animals lept to the Key, they morphed into large beastial humanoids with feline faces and claws.
The bad news for the cats was everyone in the fucking friendly party that had spells had some kind of crowd control options like Light for blinding or Choking Grip. Some really bad saving throws from my end and the powerful element of the enemy’s force was neutered, blinded and/or choking and greatly reduced in combat effectiveness. The cats were able to wear through the dismounted horse archers defending the group, but could only do a little damage to some of the actual party members and henchmen due to high ACs and negatives to attacks from being blinded.
Blair the Nightblade was able to land some solid backstabs with one of the party’s only magical weapons against the catmen and the rest were able to tackle and execute the weakened beasts after several rounds of grappling, including Braxton jumping from the center mast about 20 feet up to try and WWE drop kick one to the ground. There was a lot of build up for this move but he rolled poorly on the attempt and just flopped to the ground, hissing in pain.
The group was ecstatic to have defeated these creatures and captured their ship, but on inspection they realized the Merlantian vessel was in awful shape and probably shouldn’t even have been floating. They quickly searched through it, finding tons of treasure, some magic items, and charts to a mysterious island well off of the coast. They also found an altar depicting a truly fearsome naga-man wearing a wide WWE style championship belt. Offerings around this altar included small lizards, birds, and mice along with candles and incense. Each of the naga-men wore a strange medallion with a man’s face carved into it which the PCs naturally collected.
Bigtoe was all bothered by the Key’s crew not helping in the fight, to which Captain Newman shrugged and said they were transport, they weren’t hired to fight. This was apparently a miscommunication during the deal that Braxton made of such an offensive nature that plans were briefly hatched to murder the entire crew and steal all the loot, turn into a vulture and fly away with most of the loot, etc. These plans were eventually tossed and they opted to tow the captured ship back and offer that as the Commodore’s cut of the treasure.
Captain Newman did not want to tow the ghost ship back to port, but they paid him handsomely and threatened him and other adventurer things until he did so, having his crew lash it to the Key and setting off for home. As dawn broke and sunlight began to bathe the ghost ship, it started to disintegrate, eventually leaving nothing but the towing lines flowing behind the Key. This offended the dwarf Bigtoe even more, renewing his tirade of insulting the ship’s crew as cowards and the Commodore as a con artist.
They stormed into port and marched to the Commodore’s bar, where Bigtoe gave him an ear-full. The Commodore was pissed and not having it and there was a tense back and forth before they eventually agreed to have the magic items identified and they’d split the treasure in half. Victor sent a mage associate of his with the group to get the Tower of the Glowing Hand to identify the items and verify everything was on the up and up.
Back at the bar, they split the loot and Victor told them to get the fuck out, which the party did. They copped some solid magic items and big ticket jewelry and gems, got paid by Sir Deinwick for returning with the heads of the fish guys, and called it a win.
Musings:
I editorialized during the write up most of my thoughts I think. It was a good session and I’ll reiterate that allowing the players to be involved in rumors and hooks is just tops. They got more treasure than I expected since I just used the recommended ship’s haul for a ship of that type but hey, they could have all died if they hadn't been so ready with the spells. The cats were pretty tough, but this appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. They’ve got charts to an island and a reference to the swolest Merlantian. Let’s see if they care to pursue it.
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