Session 44: The Journey is the Worthier Part
7/30/23 - 8/1, rest 8/2, active 8/3
PC: Blair (Nightblade), Cracaryn (Ranger), Ferdinand (Barbarian), Maradangertheranger (Ranger), Arahana (Nightblade), Charles (Nightblade)
Hench: Goda, Platt, Takei, Kissare
The last time that Team B was in action they had negotiated for a treasure map that allegedly led to some material for Bigtoe the Wombat to use in his workshop. For this session they decided to chase down where that map would lead.
The party launched out of Teutch Tower in the Friendship Hills, named for the #objectivelyfriendly Teutch the Alchemist (Patron Mage). Unfortunately for them, the Alchemist hasn’t established an urban settlement of significance yet so the market availability is very low, but they were able to piece together some resources for the new PCs through what they already had on hand.
The group was almost exclusively elves on the PC side, so we talked a little bit about Fernblithe and Wounded Ear and then ran through some minor character introduction stuff. I personally find reading off a page of character description tedious, so I appreciate that my table kept it simple and we could get through it expediently. Once folks were settled, they set off.
Using our new finely printed physical map provided by one of our players (Cleet/Auto/Charles), the group set out to the northwest where they traveled pretty easily for a few hexes until they encountered a lone man on horseback. He gave them a wide berth and they let him. He was followed shortly by the rest of his adventuring party, a handful of folk that the players surmised had likely been to the Fallen Castle dungeon nearby. There was no confrontation and everyone moved on.
The group descended out of the hills above the rift that led to the Center of the Earth and within sight of the petrified tree at Wounded Ear. They did not investigate either location and kept their eyes on the prize, traveling many miles across peaceful grasslands before arriving at more hills to the north. Their keen elven eyes discovered a pass through the hills that was guarded by a fort manned by humanoid figures of some kind, but the party wanted no part of that and opted to divert their path around it. The figures on the wall seemed content to allow them, but the distance was great enough that more detail could not be discovered.
Ending their first day of travel back in the hills, the crew discovered an idyllic campsite. Where normally there’d be rough ground and no cover, this was a well shaded flat shelf that even had a small spring of cool clear water bubbling through the center. The party settled down to camp and I rolled for encounters.
During the first watch, three giants very quietly approached the party. Cracaryn the ranger was awake along with his henchman Takei. The giants gestured that the two should follow them out of the camp for a quiet word. Cracaryn almost obliged but thought better of it at the last second and began to holler for his companions to wake. The giants took this poorly and the fight was on.
Cracaryn was quick on his feet and shot one of the giants, who instead of bleeding simply disappeared. The other two giants closed, flattening Takei with one swing and seriously wounding Cracaryn with another. The rest of the party rose and engaged to quickly dispatch the other giants but not before Ferdinand the Barbarian succumbed to a Charm spell from an unseen caster. The barbarian was seriously distraught by seeing his friends murdered by his other friends and burst into tears with indecision.
Quickly scanning their surroundings, the party discovered a hidden shelf up the nearby hill. Cracaryn charged and most of the party followed, the elven ranger being first over the lip and into a small bunker to confront four identical half goat, half witch Lamia creatures. Meanwhile, Charles went wide and tried to gain altitude on the little defensive structure.
Cracaryn, Arahana, Charles, Goda, and a rotation of summoned berserkers all took turns in the smallish bunker, with several of the PCs taking shots and losing points of Wisdom due to the nasty witchy nature of the Lamia’s attacks. Goda the Fighter Hench, already extremely unwise, succumbed to the witch altogether, turning on his allies and attacking Blair directly and Ferdinand the barbarian burst into tears and ran back to the camp in shame. After a long fight where they finally overcame the creature’s mirror images and dispatched her, they were pretty beat up. The campsite degraded around them too, her illusion having dissipated with her death.
While the party was applying triage, the elves’ passive ability to detect secret doors revealed a compartment within the bunker leading into the hill. Blair was pretty sour with Goda for turning on her so demanded that he open the compartment. Already extremely unwise and reduced even further by the Lamia, Goda still required a loyalty check to carelessly open a potentially trapped door which he passed. Unfortunately for him, no attempts were made to detect the poisoned needle that started turning his hand black.
I went to refill my bourbon with the note that they had until I got back to decide what to do about Goda’s hand. When I returned, I was informed that they were going to amputate it in the field. Splendid. It took Charles two chops with his sword to remove Goda’s arm below the elbow then Takei the Cleric, who had recovered from the illusory giant’s damage, healed the wound. Poor guy was goin’ through it.
They discovered quite a trove of loot which they were able to disperse among their horses to carry and had to decide whether or not to continue on towards their objective or turn back. They were beat up pretty bad across the board and opted to head back to town considering the solid loot that the Lamia had stashed away. In ACKS you can’t level more than once off of a single haul of loot and with a heavy percentage of first level PCs they figured this would probably do the trick. They didn’t want to waste the overage.
On the way back to Teutch’s Tower, they passed by the Fallen Castle dungeon and noticed dozens of mercenaries camped outside. Covered up in loot and outnumbered, the group avoided the troops and made it safely to the Friendship Hills. Blair tried to leverage her relationship with Teutch to get him to buy some of the loot that they had, but he wasn’t interested, so they rested a day and went towards Deinwick.
The party arrived uneventfully in Deinwick where they discovered many hundreds of troops gathered. Hostilities between the local lord and his rival in Talston had been growing for a while and it looked as though shit was about to go down. But the elves, despite Cracaryn’s player doing his best to metagame info for his other PCs, didn’t really care and just sold their loot. Blair made a point to get Goda’s arm restored at the temple of Heironeous. Goda was converted to the Lawful faith on the spot, but will need to be read the holy word by a priest because he’s illiterate. Luckily he had two weeks’ recovery time to do that.
It was a shorter session than usual but a productive one, with a big score off of a challenging encounter. I hope the visiting players had fun and look forward to seeing everyone next session, if I have enough chairs.
Musings: (Long-winded today, bear with me)
One advantage to playing the style that we do is that it makes it easy for people to join or miss sessions as required by their schedules but the game keeps going. One of our players just expanded his family (Congrats!) and we welcomed two new players to the table. Having this “open table” concept keeps from being shackled to a fixed set of PCs that must be present for their “hooks”. Alexander Macris speaks a bit about the importance of keeping the game going hell or high water here.
I’ve started having the players roll random treasure live at the table, a privilege given to the newest players at the session. It takes a little time but there’s some suspense and fun to be had with it. I’ve mentioned it before as an experiment but it seems to be taking off so I’ll probably keep doing it. I may have picked the idea up from a co-DM in Dubzaron, but I can’t recall now. If I did, thanks Ambrose!
I’m not RPing shopping. I apologize to any past, present, or future players if they want their time to haggle over the price of a horse. If we had longer sessions, I’d be more inclined to allow it, but with 4-5 hours and a usually large number of players, my priority is to get to the adventure. We have a downtime economy setup on Discord to handle that kind of thing. Impromptu purchases are done very easily using ACKS Market Availability rules. A simple “I’m buying a horse” will do, thank you.
The Lamia encounter was fun. ACKS calls for an encounter roll for each hex traveled through during the day. I hit the Lamia lair at the end of the day in their last hex, so decided it would be a prepared campsite. They chose to camp and I rolled another encounter for overnight, deciding that if it hit, then she was at the site and prepared to ambush them. Otherwise they’d likely walk right by her little hideout the next day. The rest is, as they say, history.
I need to be more firm on henchman stuff, which I started this session with Goda’s miserable experience. Fortunately he hit insanely high loyalty rolls and overcame demoralization. The other henches witnessed the party care for him which was great for their morale. It always bugs me when folks assume that henchmen or hirelings are throw away characters or expendable and I’m glad that ACKS has a way to adjudicate how that behavior affects the henches. But like most things I fail at with ACKS, I’ve got to remember to apply it properly. Fortunately, my player base in Oberholt is good about taking care of their people.
We have been fortunate to have folks add to this campaign throughout its history, even those who aren’t playing in it. I can’t thank them enough for printing maps, creating videos, bringing supplies for lunch, sharing figures or booze, and gifting me an engraved bourbon glass. To all my friends who have contributed to this game, thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy it along with the rest of us.
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