12/4/23-12/13/23, rest 12/14, active 12/15
PC: Gwendolyn, Galt, Legany
Hench: Amadayo, Mahin, Madroff, Chase, Terry, Mike, Freddy
This week’s session started off with a bit of time skipping to await the arrival of the first crop of recruits of various stripes for various endeavors. Once the shopping was done, the party set to trying to figure out where to adventure. I generally try to encourage all shopping type things to be done in downtime. Win some, lose some.
I was certain that the group would return to the Black Shaft dungeon, despite their recent struggles, but the owner of their boat was not at the session. They tried to find another crew to take them to the cursed waters but rolled abysmally low. No local sailor was going near there especially after all the bodies that were retrieved from just that spot mere weeks ago.
They had a treasure map leading to Merlantis, Redcorn the Cleric had treasure maps on offer, and he also had a standing bounty on the lairs of fantastic creatures that he might add to his domain. They figured that was their best bet for a score since Redcorn’s player was at the table and assured them that it was going to be a score. I'm still on the fence about handouts from name level characters. I set a limit of how much he was allowed to pay, but I suspect it was much too high and am likely to revisit.
ACKS II is on the horizon and there’ll be an adjustment period when it drops. I intend to hold most procedural rulings until that time to align better with the fresh rules. The time’s, they are a changin. A big thing to always have top of mind with ACKS is that the limits set by the system are very frequently economic. It doesn’t always require a heavy handed ruling.
They learned from a drunken dwarf about a failed attempt by his kin in Stonehelm to capture and train an aerie of griffons. Redcorn just loves griffons and this had to be the move. They bought up the cheapest horseflesh they could find because griffons can’t resist horse meat and set off in search. A few irrelevant random encounters past Vennor and they got to their first lair of the hex in question.
ACKS lair searching is pretty cool. You get a target roll to find a POI in a hex per hour, with the value set by your movement speed. A random encounter roll accompanies the search so you can find the lair AND an encounter all in the same hour. If you’re really unlucky, then you’ll find them all at the same time. This was a mountain hex with some absurd number of lairs, 7 or 8? So even if they found a lair, it didn’t necessarily mean it was the griffons that they were after.
While taking their lunch in the shade of a small copse, the unusually large trees started opening their eyes and just observing. It was a lair of treants, which in ACKS are Lawful and I play pretty benevolent most of the time. They were not concerned with seemingly peaceful folks resting under their branches.
The table has seen quite a few treant lairs in their day and always enjoy the experience. This was no exception. Gwendolyn the Bard immediately started playing music for them which they just loved. I mentioned that their leaves and branches were swaying, even against the wind in the mountains, so it had to be Bob Seger the tree. While I was taking this note down, Gwendolyn’s player could barely contain herself before she informs me that it’s Bob Cedar, which evolved into Bob Cedar and the Silver Bullet Stand of treants to much laughter around the table.
We had a great time making puns based off of Bob’s timeless hits, including that treants hate Turn the Page. The group laid the groundwork for Redcorn to potentially visit and become friends with Bob’s stand. Spirits were high as they set off again in search of the griffon lair. Daylight was burning, afterall.
A short time later, they found themselves staring down the barrel of a trio of frost giants on a very nearby hill. The big swole 18 foot tall Frutzii (notViking) and were bemused by the little people below them. Gwendolyn went to her quiver of songs and fired off Chad the Giant, which these guys nodded along to. They talked over the music and chatted about how they know guys like Chad just like the crowds in the dive bars I’ve played open mics in.
It was clear to everyone that the time purchased with song was running low and these guys weren’t just gonna be best friends. The party did not want to fight the creatures and took it upon themselves to snatch Gwendolyn’s reins midsong and run for their lives. I rolled the 50% chance of the creatures to pursue fleeing PCs and failed. Added to their already indifferent demeanor, the giants laughed and mocked them for cowards but let them heroically reposition their party.
The next search led them to a very large cave mouth which they presumed to be the lair of their frost giant friends. They quickly sent their assassin hench Mahin in to investigate, who reported a very large cavern with a bunch of Hill Giants in it. The decision to nope out of that encounter was pretty easy and off they slink, slank, slunk. It wasn’t long after this that the group came across the griffons nested atop an old tower.
The two groups saw each other a long way off, fortunately outside of the 120 foot range where the griffons would just automatically attack horses. The adventurers retreated and stowed everything but one of their poor sacrificial draft horses. They sent a small party ahead to try to make introductions, which went as one might expect. The current alpha on duty dove on the horse and mauled it gruesomely, while one of their casters used a scroll of Tongues to communicate with the creature.
They learned that the true leader of the pride was named Aquilor, but he was injured and sick in the tower. The stand-in griffon would allow them to approach if the party agreed to feed the entire aerie of 13 of the creatures, which is a lot of meat. More than they had brought, in fact, which started the discussion of how to get more meat. The idea to hunt like the other party had for the hippogriffs some sessions back was quickly discarded since none of their party had hunting skills. They assured the griffons that they would return with adequate food and bounced.
Much discussion was had here. They settled on going back to town to buy a few cows to supplement their horse stock that they were going to offer. The day was long, however, so they camped and jammed with the Silver Bullet Stand and left in the morning.
I was eager to see what kind of trouble leading livestock into the mountains was going to cause. Unfortunately, random encounters are random. Very soon after leaving, the party tripped over a hippogriff encounter with maximum reaction check. I struggled for a second to figure out how the creatures would be especially friendly and realized that it didn’t necessarily have to be the creatures themselves, it could be the scenario. It turned out that the hippogriffs had attacked and mauled a herd of goats, much more than they could eat. While the creatures flew around and played with their food, the party was able to scoop up a bunch of free meat and stow it on their sacrificial draft horses to carry.
This was one of those times where I really appreciated what can happen with random encounters and how it forces you to be creative in how to run them. Maybe it was a soft interpretation but it was a cool scenario for the party and the next one will be a dragon or something that kills everyone. It all evens out in the end. Either way, they went back to the griffons with the meat.
The creatures honored their agreement and let them in, but only after diving on the meat and ripping it to shreds in a truly devastating scene that caused the henchmen to roll morale checks or flee. Everyone was a little green but able to pass by and into the tower, which simply led up a few floors on rickety old ladders that collapsed. The adventuring party with tons of rope had no trouble ascending, where they encounter Aquilor laid up, panting, shivering, and scowling over the manticore stingers stuck in him.
The wounds were corrupted and the griffon’s behavior was strange, but the newly recruited cleric tried to heal the creature and got bit in the process. The damage seemed healed now, but the corruption and spikes remained. Something was wrong here, punctuated by the mage hench nearly losing his mind when trying to communicate with Aquilor telepathically. The party regrouped to wait for Redcorn to arrive.
It occurred to me that we were on different pages in how communication was sent to Redcorn to notify him of the lairs in question. Apparently the party had purchased a homing pigeon which the campaign uses for simple messages at distance. I missed this and assumed they were going to return to the nearest town for that. Once we ironed that out, it was just a waiting game for Redcorn to arrive.
The treants agreed to be friends with Redcorn in exchange for improvements to be made in their location worth their average lair treasure value. Redcorn wanted them to relocate to his domain, which they agreed to for a much better location (double). This mechanic comes out of Dubzaron where Bdubs generated ways for solo players to interact with nonHostile creatures during downtime actions. I stole it.
When the party returned to the griffon tower with Redcorn, they were allowed entry. Once confronted with the creature, Redcorn went to work. Now, since Redcorn was acting as a Patron, I was playing him during the session rather than his usual player. I allowed a roll under his wisdom score to have some idea of how to approach it which succeeded, so he went through a series of detection spells before determining that the manticore spikes were the cause of the corruption and were exceedingly evil.
I made a scene out of him casting dispel evil which I am prone to do with big caster types, most notably the Bishop of Bellport Dante Relos who brained a guy during an exorcism. Several of the stingers shattered but one remained which Redcorn snatched out while the griffon was dazed. Aquilor thanked them for their efforts and agreed to move his aerie to Redcorn’s domain once a suitable lair was built. Redcorn put the stinger in his pocket.
The party bounced back to Millon with no interesting encounters, where the town’s lord met them and paid them his bounty for two lairs secured. Turned out it was a pretty solid haul including some magic items. The session ended there, crumbs still on the PC’s lips from Martha’s bakery.
Musings:
It was a fun session with a big payoff. I worry if I’m too gentle sometimes, but I try to play the reaction rolls as straight as I can. The frost giants could have been hostile, as could the hippogriffs and griffons. Sometimes it shakes out that way and I’m glad they got a win. There’s an asterisk by the reward, though.
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