Session 42: Please, Not the Mountains
7/9/23 - 7/20, rest 7/21, active 7/22
PC: Blair, Braxton, Cracaryn, Zektel, Mordesh, Brumdor
Hench: Goda, Platt, Takei, Rocky, Ronin, Ragnar, Andy
The players were eager to get away from the Butzkrag this session and time compression plus a solid victory at that dungeon gave them the opportunity. They jumped back over to their neglected Team B PCs and headed over to Teutch tower for some work. Some players had the chance to create alternate PCs and we added yet another new player! I’ll have to expand my physical table space if we keep growing. Good problem to have and welcome Brumdor the Machinist.
Braxton the Explorer in downtime had hired a few platoons of mercenaries so we talked a bit about moving troops and resting and whatnot. He quickly picked up on the trade off between security and speed. In ACKS, troops must rest 3 out of every 7 days.
Teutch the Alchemist (Patron Mage) had some hooks out for the last few months while the party had been focused on the Butzkrag. The group scanned the Discord channel and learned that a chaotic dwarf was running amok trying to chase down a treasure map. He had offended Teutch personally which apparently was cause for his elimination. There was also a cluster of hill giants menacing the peasants nearby that the Alchemist wanted gone.
Bigtoe the Wombat’s player had been busy in downtime as well, scoring big on a near-death experience and retiring from adventuring. He had a bunch of magic items he was offering to sell to the party for standard rates. They pooled resources and haggled and I kinda spaced out but they came away with a treasure map and some magic items with some contingency about the map. If it led to what Bigtoe called “purple cake”, the material used in his fledgling firearm industry for ammunition, then he’d expect less of a return. Or something. Idk, they’ll figure it out, because the player is invested in getting what he’s owed. This becomes a “them” problem and not a “my” problem.
The group spent a few minutes discussing the wealth of options, eventually settling on chasing down the dwarf Domeko. They had four trackers in the party so that certainly wasn’t an issue, but this is where a big decision needed to be made. Do they bring the troops or not? They chose to bring them, which means they’d be tougher in a fight but slower, especially in the mountains through which their quarry traveled.
Armed with a general direction, the crew set out to track down Domeko, picking up his trail a little further on. They followed it for a day deeper into the mountains, surprising a manticore which they avoided, and camped. The overnight ogre attack was resolved using abstracted BR combat, with the party taking part in a Heroic Foray to reduce the enemy’s BR and emerging victorious. They patted themselves on the back for bringing the army because otherwise they were certain that they’d be dead.
Mordesh the Enchanter interrogated one of the captured ogres, realizing that the creature was too stupid to give directions but was otherwise very willing to lead the party to the ogre village. He respected the party’s strength having lost the fight and warned them that should they go to the village they had to act right. He couldn’t bring friends home and have them kill everyone.
The group as a whole didn’t have much patience for Murk or his ogre friends and decided to just execute them, pleasantly surprised by the amount of gold that they found in the oft-described and ever-hated shoulder slung fanny packs that the beastmen in Oberholt now carry as canon.
Braxton gambled on moving instead of resting the troops, kicking the can down the road in the hopes of catching the dwarves quickly. Unfortunately, that hook had been out there for nearly a month and Domeko was on the move. The headhunters moved another hex, through mountain terrain, following the trail but still not catching the dwarves. They camped again, this time uneventfully, and moved on the next day.
In this hex they found the dwarves, or what was left of them, at a gruesome battle scene. The trackers were able to determine that none of the dwarves escaped but they had trouble identifying them. They took the only intact head/face they could find which was not Domeko’s and put it in a bag. Hippogriff feathers were found and identified at the scene and a trail of blood splatter led away from the area. It appeared that whatever valuables the dwarves had were carried away by their killers and the party didn’t want to chase hippogriffs in their condition.
They camped there for a few days to rest the army without any harassment and then returned towards Teutch’s purple tower. Floating above them and heading leisurely west was a floating castle with griffons circling lazily in the air around it. The party kept their heads down and let it pass, the griffons apparently unconcerned with leaving their patrol to interact with the humans far below. Comforted by the dodging of that unknown bullet, they camped up again, eager to get back to Teutch’s and get onto one of the other available hooks and a potential score.
During the watch, two chimera burst onto the scene hot for violence. Braxton threw the troops at them while the party got organized to make a foray, or run, or something. One of the chimeras was destroyed by Braxton and the troops but not before blasting them, leaving Braxton down and one chimera for the party to battle. They engaged, with Mordesh using one of their bargained for scrolls to launch a lightning bolt at it and dealing massive damage to it, sparks flying among the other arrows and insults slung at it from the rest of the party.
Unfortunately, the chimera was able to withstand the onslaught and lined up a vicious breath weapon, strafing Mordesh, Cracaryn, and one of the henchmen with fire. First level mages aren’t known for their HPs so down the offending lightning bolt thrower went but the rest of the party was able to defeat the monster.
Zektel the Shaman sprung into action applying triage with his large stockpile of herbs donated by the party. Braxton was able to recover with another notable scar from his experience, but Mordesh had to use his fate point to avoid being crippled. The army was in shambles, a PC was walking wounded, and they still had to get back through the mountains.
Limping on, the point man came across a rock fall where a young woman was pinned by her leg. The party rushed to her aid, with Brumdor the dwarf able to expertly split the rock while Zektel gave first aid. She was delirious but they carried her on to Teutch tower where they debated whether or not to chase a score with a little session time left. They opted to cut their losses and call it, but were surprised by Meri the Fighter’s reward that she offered for saving her life. They tried to hire her as a hench but she was unimpressed with their levels. We called it there.
Musings:
This was a departure for sure from our dungeon-heavy sessions of late. It displayed some of the cool ACKS wilderness mechanics for our newer players which was fun.
I had to consider a few times what information to offer the party from a mechanics perspective. With several newer players, I chose to be a little more open than I would be with the veterans, but even so there were some things that I couldn’t just tell them the answer on, like taking the army or not. Part of learning the game is weighing those decisions.
This is our first real experience with a leveled PC acting in the role of NPC in the form of Bigtoe negotiating for a potential quest/hook. We’ll keep an eye on that developing relationship, see if they go for his hooks or leave him hanging. Maybe double cross him?
I ran this session with the understanding that the hooks on offer were not “fresh” so to speak, the most recent being nearly a month old. I made some rolls to determine how ole Domeko was gonna play it, see if he actually found what his map led to, etc. I also rolled for some encounters. Was it something the dwarves could handle or not? Turns out not so much, as the party found out. The world is not idle while the adventurers adventure. It was a fun one, if a bit light in treasure. See you next time!
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