Session 43: Where is Sir Beam?

 Session 43: Where is Sir Beam?

7/16/23 - 7/20, rest 7/21-7/22, active 7/23

PC: Auto (Machinist), Galt (Venturer), Helm (Fighter), Heinrik (Ranger)

#ACKS

Due to time compression the players were on their third group of PCs. This can be a challenge for some to keep up with so several of them took a break this week, but I’ll run a session with as few as three players and we had four at the table, so let’s go!

The first part of the session was a throwback “errbody meets in a tavern” situation, suggested by Galt’s player and it sounded fine to me. The group had chosen to start in the capital of Bellport, a large port city, instead of their usual haunts of Riverstride or Teutch Tower for missions. We had another new player, welcome Heinrik, so we spent a little time talking about some of the broad strokes of the setting. Once that was out of the way it was time to do… something.

Bellport isn’t on the frontier, there aren’t woeful peasants looking for protection from the local tribe of goblins or bandits, there isn’t a conveniently placed dungeon less than a day’s travel away. Galt the Venturer took the lead on digging up some hooks down at the dock district, heading to taverns to check job postings and making a point to wink wink nudge nudge for any under the table shady work.

After sifting through mundane postings, visiting the local post 345 of the Mercenary’s Guild, and bribing a few barkeeps for introduction to the local syndicate capo, they came up with a few threads to tug on:

The absentminded merchant Mortimer Hule was paying to recover his lost ledger, which he needed to combat the tax collectors seeking to ruin his business.

Hule’s competitor Sir Beam was suggested as a contact for a different take on the story and potentially a larger score to turn the same ledger over to him.

The capo Caulson met the group at The Black Flag and sized them up, eventually offering them a racketeering job to “educate” a resistant Frutzii (notViking) trader on who runs the docks and where dues should be paid.

The Merc Guild had a straight up escort mission for a delivery to Vennor in the north, a mining town where many wounded veterans go to retire after their military service. The town is subsidized by the Baron in a rare display of altruism from “the Bloodletter”.

The group decided to see what they could learn about Hule first, heading down to the tax assessor to get some info on the fellow. Galt was convinced this guy was shady and using the lost ledger as an excuse to delay paying. They spoke with the local tax man who confirmed that Hule was in serious trouble could he not produce an adequate accounting of his dealings. He also revealed that he knew Sir Beam, sure, and gave them some general information on where to find him.

The first of many attempts to locate Sir Beam failed, with folks who clearly knew him or knew of him claiming he works just over there, next street over, can’t miss him, but the party could in fact miss him and did so every time they went looking for him, even landing a meeting with his real estate broker who gave them a description and confirmed that the business was handling property for him. I couldn’t help but laugh every time they failed to find him. I don’t play poker for a reason.

Some schemes began to rattle around the table regarding Hule, but the group wanted to maximize their hook per hour rate, so they chased down Captain Ulfgor and spoke to him at the warehouse where most of his crew was holed up while they did business. Turns out the Captain had no respect for the syndicate leader Victor sending him veiled threats and silver-tongued emissaries. He wanted an opportunity to speak man to man with the boss without all the lackeys around and would pay nearly double what the PCs were offered by the syndicate to provide him with a location/time that Victor might be vulnerable enough to approach on equal footing.

The group salivated at double crossing the syndicate and earning more money while doing it. They talked about how they might accomplish it while planning to heist Hule’s office looking for the ledger. Some keystone cop style shenanigans ensued, but eventually they were able to bust in and rob the place, with Heinrik the Elf coming in clutch finding a hidden lockbox that the party promptly stole. However, they did not find a ledger or any useful paperwork.

They staked out the Black Flag which turned into a raucous party after hours. The party saw Victor leave with a few bodyguards but were too scared to trail him. They returned the next day to share that with Captain Ulfgor, but he needed more detailed information before he could act. After failing to find Sir Beam again, the party surveilled Victor again, this time tracing him to a manor house. They shared that info with the Frutzii captain, got paid, and got out of the way.

The next morning, they reported for duty with the merc caravan to escort it out of town. It seemed like the players thought it would be a good idea to lay low pending an update on how Victor and Ulfgor’s talk went. They made their way out of town, traveled for two uneventful days, and arrived at Vennor where they were paid out by the merc office there. Standard rates for mercs are pretty unimpressive to adventurers but it was easy money. The party didn’t spend much time there, turning immediately around and walking back where they ended the session having returned to Bellport and unknown results of their actions prior to leaving.

Musings:

I didn’t know who was playing this session, what PCs I might have, where they were going to be at on the map, or what hooks they might be interested in. I leaned pretty heavily on the fantastic ACKS supplement Capital of the Borderlands, which has some cool city specific random charts, to flesh a little bit of Bellport out with the party. I think we had a good time with a departure thematically from our usual sessions. We haven’t done a whole lot of city adventuring.

Some prior play in Bellport fed this session a little too, with the syndicate boss Victor having been introduced to Team B during the session that they defeated the ghost ship of the vile Merlanteans. It was a fun session and it was a treat to introduce yet another new player to the game.