Session 45: I’m Gonna Act Like I Know What I’m Doing
8/6/23-8/13, rest 8/14, active 8/15
PC: Blair (Nightblade), Cracaryn (Ranger), Sharles (Nightblade), Brumdor (Machinist), Zektel (Shaman)
Hench: Platt, Takei
Civil war is brewing between two rival Lords, with hostilities coming to a head in the form of a skirmish and a seized plantation. Lord Grueller Deinwick insists that ancestral lands of his house are held by the Talston family, led by the young Nathan Talston after his father’s recent death under suspicious circumstances. Talston asserts that the dispute had been settled ages ago. Much of this session’s motivation involves the tension between the two and most of that updating gets done in downtime story drops which don’t really make it into session reports. I apologize if the reader may be a little lost on the finer points.
This session began with the party discussing the pursuit of a treasure map that they had gotten from Bigtoe the Wombat (Semi-retired PC). The deal was to go get “purple cake” from the location in exchange for some magic items and gold or something, but so far they had not delivered. I guess we’ll see what Bigtoe has to say about that if his mission keeps getting ignored.
Meanwhile, Garak the Mask (hench to Teutch the Alchemist) had been dispatched with a mission offer for Blair the Nightblade and any who might aid her. It seemed that Teutch was concerned about rumors that Lord Nathan Talston was involved with some kind of cult. “We are concerned of reports about Nathan joining a strange cult. Said cult leader may need to be… addressed. Or Nathan… addressed.” Garak supplied a dose of wyvern poison and a scroll of greater clairvoyance for use during the mission, which Blair accepted. Suddenly the session went from hex crawling to subterfuge.
I guess the plan was to buy more potent poison and try to kill any and every one that might qualify for Teutch’s level of “addressing” the problem. I made it a point to step away several times to refill drinks, piss, look at my phone, whatever to avoid hearing too much of their plan. I pondered the Talston camp layout and potential security measures and once they were ready we got to it.
First, they wanted to buy poison. The city of Deinwick was a Lawful town so they had to find a black market dealer which took them the better part of two days. While the shadier members of the party worked on that, Zektel the Shaman contacted his ancestors to try and learn more information about the party’s target in the form of 3 Yes/No questions per the spell Commune:
1. Is Nathan camped with the army between Deinwick and Talston? Yes
2. Is Nathan injured or weary from combat? No
3. Will we be searched approaching the Talston army? Uncertain
Armed with deadly illicit weapons and a little knowledge, the group left the next morning. Deinwick’s army was camped just outside the city to the east and had tight security, which turned them away when trying to pass through, so the adventurers went around until they could rejoin the road and continue east. They approached the Talston army in the late afternoon under a white flag, with Zektel intending to offer his services as a chirurgeon to the wounded.
Turned out the Talston army was in dire need of medical personnel for the enlisted and the group was escorted to the triage camp. Zektel was put to work genuinely aiding the wounded with Blair as an “assistant” while the other party members mingled with the guards on duty. Zektel dismissed Blair after a while to “wash her hands or something”, giving the elf a chance to sneak away and see what she can find out. Cracaryn was brushed off disapprovingly by Chief Chirurgeon George Clooney after offering to “end the suffering” of mortally wounded patients while Brumdor made careful note of watch schedules to look for weaknesses or opportunities.
It was difficult for Blair to make any progress towards the center and presumed power base of the camp because she kept getting stopped by patrols or soldiers. The first time they sent her back to the triage camp.
Blair waited a short time before trying again, this time getting flagged down furtively to a squad’s tent. Trying not to draw attention to herself, she approached where she learned that Bill was in a bad way and needed medical help immediately. She tried to convince them that she was just an assistant with no actual medical skill but they weren’t having it, convinced that she was better than nothing.
The light cavalry squad showed her into a tent to see Bill, who had a massive hemorrhoid preventing him from riding his horse. He was laying on his side with the thumb sized protrusion bared to the air. A few more protests fell on deaf ears and finally Blair said fuck it, let’s go. She had a rusty screwdriver that she had pulled from the Center of the Earth that she stuck the tip of in the campfire. After overhearing some mutters from the squad, she added her dagger to it which seemed to make sense to the watchers. With absolutely no medical training or experience, Blair poured some whiskey on the affected area and then proceeded to amputate the hemorrhoid with a searing hot dagger blade. Bill did not survive the operation and Blair was forced to spend the next few hours commiserating with the squad around the campfire over Bill’s fate, which the soldiers seemed to take in stride. It’s hard out there without a cleric, apparently, especially for those terminal cases of hemorrhoids.
The nightblade returned to the triage camp, determined to try again once night had fallen. The group asked about the mess tent and were happily shown there by the sergeant of the triage security detail after shift change. He also got them squared away with a tent near the triage camp to rest in for the night.
Blair tried again after dark to sneak out but was caught and escorted back to the triage camp with an admonishment that soldiers were not gentlemanly, by and large, and it was for her own safety that she remained there. When she asked if he had a lot of trouble with crass men, the patrol leader responded, “Nah, not me. I’m a man.” Pretty sure I could hear the player’s eyes roll in their sockets.
Just about fed up with the nonsense, the Nightblade cast invisibility on herself and had a much easier time making it to the command post, an enormous pavilion that was apparently a mix of officers’ quarters, war room, and noble’s hall judging by the activity inside. It wasn’t difficult for her to move around and she spent most of the night just watching. She identified the foppish Nathan Talston speaking with a very tall robed and hooded man with a glinting spark of light within his cowl and a muscular young lord over a stout table covered in maps. The third fellow was tall and blonde, wearing black plate armor emblazoned with the clenched fist and arrows of Hextor. Blair surmised that these were Glasseye and Eros Tyring respectively.
As the night wore down, Tyring and his young wife left the tent along with most of the lower level Talston officers that were present. Nathan and Glasseye apparently shared a partitioned off portion of the pavilion towards the rear, which Blair followed them into. She slipped in as the flaps on the partition were closing and slid off to a corner to wait. Nathan had a few servants prepare him for his massive canopied bed while Glasseye just sat on his austere cot and threw his hood back, revealing [REDACTED] a shining artificial left eye.
It took the two a while to settle down into sleeping rhythms, but once Blair was confident, she started scoping out means to apply one of the group’s doses of poison. There was a water pitcher and cup on a vanity near Nathan’s bed but nothing similar near Glasseye. On his side, he had a long staff topped with a carved fist and a shield that bore an eight pointed star. There was a lot of crosstalk over the table about what to do and eventually she settled on using this as just a scouting mission.
Still invisible, Blair decided that cutting a way through the back of the tent under Nathan’s huge bed was her best way out without getting detected since the entry flaps were guarded. She hit her belly and began to crawl, coming nearly nose to nose with an abnormally large king cobra snake coiled under the bed. It responded to her presence and hissed, raising its hood flaps but obviously unable to see her. She sneaked back to her corner as the snake slid from under the bed and snooped around. The elf lightly brushed the tent flap to see if the guards would respond, but the cobra saw it and readied itself to strike any further motion in that area.
This standoff persisted for several minutes before the cobra slithered over to Glasseye and bonked him on the forehead a few times with his nose to wake him up. The groggy shaman rose and stretched and looked around, talking to the snake about an intruder. He threatened the reptile if he woke him for nothing then cast dispel magic on the area. The spell effect was not large enough for the whole space so there was a chance that the invisible elf would avoid it, but unfortunately it landed on her, turning her visible. The only thing keeping her hidden was her magical elven cloak blending into the tent fabric.
Glasseye called in the two guards outside who arrived and looked confused. Nathan awoke and cradled his bastard sword from his bed. Blair took the initiative, certain that they would find her soon, by summoning berserkers to cause a distraction for her to escape during. After a brief struggle, Blair was bitten by the cobra and succumbed to its venom, which after tying her up Glasseye neutralized magically. The nightblade was captured.
Meanwhile, the party woke to find Blair missing, with her henchman Platt the Mime gesturing frantically at her empty bedroll. Before they could formulate much of a response, alarm horns started to sound in the camp and the crew decided that was their cue to bounce. A busy and confused military camp is difficult to maneuver in, but they wove their way towards the nearest exit as quickly as they could. I ran this in rounds like a combat, with Blair resisting “enhanced interrogation” to give up information while various peals of the horns told the army how to respond. She held out for long enough that the party only had to shake one roadblock before escaping and evading pursuit thanks to Cracaryn’s ranger abilities.
Here the party split, with Cracaryn and Sharles cutting back to try to figure out how the army was going to respond and Zektel and Brumdor rushing to Deinwick to notify the army there and Teutch of what they knew, which wasn’t much except that Blair didn’t return from scouting. Zektel sold some recon intel to the army at Deinwick while Brumdor sent a messenger bird to the Purple Tower.
The two elves waited for several days, observing the Talston army and dodging patrols. They planned to use their remaining dose of deadly poison to take a shot at Nathan during the next battle which they were certain would be soon considering the provocation of a discovered spy. It took a few days, but eventually Talston marched west towards Deinwick and the would-be assassins shadowed them. Taking a heroic foray action during the battle pitted the two elves against Nathan Talston and his bodyguard of a platoon of heavy cavalry.
Sharles missed his shot but Cracaryn hit, dropping the nobleman from his horse almost certainly from poison instead of damage. Unfortunately they had been seen and had no real way to escape a platoon of heavy cav, which ran them down in the same round. The elves were not killed but soccer flopped and hoped for the best after taking nearly lethal damage. Amazingly, the patrol opted to recover their lord and rush him to a healer rather than stomp the wounded elves into the ground.
The two assassins slinked away, circling back to the army’s previous camp site to see if they could find out what happened to Blair. By the screams of tortured agony that they heard from the central tent, she was apparently being held within and guarded by several dozen heavy infantry. Sharles sneaked in and executed the torturer, freeing Blair who due to an unfortunate mortal wounds roll was paralyzed from the neck down. He fireman’s carried her out but was discovered by the waiting guards and cut down, likely captured himself. Cracaryn chose to retreat back to Deinwick and regroup with the party.
Musings:
I’ve said this a lot and I’ll say it again: Don’t overprep your game. If your players choose not to engage with what you spend X hours prepping, you’re back to improvising the session anyway and wasted those X hours.
I leaned heavily on the 2d6 gradient this session and made the players roll most of it themselves. It added a lot of tense moments with ups and downs that were pretty emotional at the time. Most importantly they couldn’t blame me if the roll didn’t go their way. In general, I set conditions from unfavorable to favorable and assign them along the gradient, just like reaction rolls, morale rolls, etc. This helps keep everything fresh and exciting. The presence of Glasseye’s cobra, the reaction to their infiltration tactics with sentries, to capture or kill Blair, kill the elves who shot Nathan, whether Nathan could receive care in time to stop the poison, all of these things were run this way.
The camp encounters I ran like a city encounter table using the 2d6 gradient for severity. Unfortunately they hit a lot, but none of them were too negative and resulted in one of the highlights of the session for the table with poor Bill’s affliction.
The interrogation/escape I ran with saving throws versus Paralyzation for Blair and 1d6 rounds for the party to escape. If Blair failed 3 times the army would be assumed to know who to look for. It was pretty tense but efficient at the time and I’m pretty happy with how it played out.
These session reports are time consuming and sometimes I feel like I’m too long winded or too detailed or too… boring. I’ve considered just bullet pointing them, but it was pointed out to me that players look forward to the reports for a few reasons:
To relive the session’s highs and lows
To catch up if they missed the session
To have a log of game developments that may get missed with time
To catch details that may have been missed in the moment
To maintain player morale
To catch xp/treasure totals
My reports and the many others like them are receipts for the games that we play, showing that you can have a living world with player choices that matter, that the game doesn’t have to be on DM rails with untold hours spent trying to force backstories to fit a plot. If you’re interested in reading about other games like this, check out a list here.
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