Session 77: Drain that Swamp

 Session 77: Drain that Swamp

7/15/24-7/24/24, rest 7/25, active 7/26

PC: Valda, Zektel, Cracaryn, Brumdor, Rock

Hench: Nicky, Bazam, Taco, Zero, Crom 

#ACKS

This week Team B coordinated the arrival of all the donations from various parties interested in relocating the perpetual pest Meowster Mittens the Magnificent and his pride of sphinxes from the swamps near Lord Issac’s domain. After some bookkeeping, they pocketed their healthy profit and moved on a hook from Issac to finish clearing those hexes of lairs.

Rock the Bard was a new addition to the team, a grifter and con artist who was granted membership to the team by Zektel after an encounter at the foot fetish tent of the Shaman’s religious ceremony for the Friendship Hills. Some deal was made to cure his god-awfully ugly feet or something. I missed the details but everyone was laughing so I’m sure it was hilarious.

The group met with Meowster when the sphinx arrived as scheduled to pick up his treasure. They paid him and Lockleaf the elf hench of Teutch made further plans to negotiate the battle against Simba, a rival sphinx known to plague the lands near the Friendship Hills.

With business handled, the adventurers turned their attention to Issac’s swamp. Overland travel was wildly uneventful, the only notable encounter with a patrol out of Talston with a positive reaction that let them pass without incident. It helped that Zektel had a bunch of cavalry riding escort.

In Newbridge, Zektel picked up the rest of his hired guns, ending up with a not unimpressive army. The swamp itself was as dangerous as one might expect, but all in all the group performed well. The swamp to ACKS II has them a little off-kilter with which monsters do what, so there’s some mystery and suspense in each encounter that’s pretty fun. Most of the lairs were straightforward so I’ll summarize here:

• Lair of Stymphs, monstrous giant cranes that shoot their feathers from overhead.

• Lair of Strix, classic stirges of old, easily dispatched with Brumdor’s flamethrower automaton.

• Giant Tarantula ambush, killed a hench but Zektel makes death by poison basically irrelevant with 3 ranks of healing and high level divine magic.

• Another Giant Tarantula lair, pretty easily dispatched

• Couple of King Cobras which Cracaryn and Zektel teamed up to subdue

The only lair that gave them any pause at all was a stand of mangrove trees with strange runes on them in some characters reminiscent of kanji. A lot of effort was put in to determine where the portal was going to take them should they trip it. I think I might use too many portals? There was no portal, just some dryads hiding in their trees. Eventually the party coaxed them out to talk. It’s a unique scenario in that dryads are tethered to their host trees, they literally cannot relocate. Cracaryn, the Lawful ranger following the goddess of nature Ehlonna, was not willing to let them just be slaughtered. The party put a pin in that and kept on keeping on.

The only fight that was a challenge at all was a random encounter with some bronze bulls. Because they had enough units to actually constitute an army, they were deployed in vanguard, main, and rearguard dispositions marching through the swamp. If a random encounter hit, I randomly determined which deployment and allowed them to choose whether to engage with those troops or heroic foray as the party or both.

The group took on one bull in a foray, thinking it was a gorgon of old and very scared of being turned to stone. These were another new creature, firebreathing magical constructs that were quite tough. It killed a few of them, including the new guy Rock (welcome to the table) before the party destroyed it, then the army killed the other one.

Back to town with some loot from the lairs and more work to do. Party is primed to pick up where they left off when they get out of downtime jail.

Musings:

We had some complications getting rolling due to some growing pains. New players are moving into that Conqueror tier of the game and are still a little clumsy with setting up orders of battle and such. I handled it for them today but will not be doing so in the future. Sessions where they intend to use their mercs need to be prepared for on their end.

A lot of live random generation for this session, which was the primary bottleneck. I’m getting more efficient with the new tables and such but found that I’d really really like physical books in these scenarios. I find the energy spent trying to parse the random generation takes away from my creativity in what is actually happening. Makes for less interesting encounters.

Session 76: Kill them with Kindness

 Session 76: Kill them with Kindness

6/30/24-7/13/24, rest 7/14, active 7/15

PC: Valda, Zektel, Cracaryn, Brumdor, Baku

Hench: Nicky, Bazam, Taco, Zero, Crom, Boa, Beydan

#ACKS

Our heroic party of adventurers known as Team B needed a score. Baku the Assassin had made attempts to befriend the sphinx Meowster Mittens the Magnificent, local plague of the swamp hex near Riverstride, with the ultimate plan of betrayal or ambush or bribery or… hell I don’t really know, but he was marginally successful.

The rest of the group had no other hooks beyond step and fetch quests for Patrons which they were apparently tired of, so some scheme was hatched to either kill or drive off the sphinxes.

The plan as I recall was to hire, lure, or kidnap a sage and offer him to the sphinx as entertainment. With increased reaction from the new toy, they’d be able to float the idea of relocation. Messages were sent to Teutch, searching was conducted for a sage, and the wait was on.

Alex Jones the Sage showed up in a tinfoil hat. They were able to pay him quite a lot to agree to meet with a sphinx. I think there were different expectations of that interaction, with some planning to just leave him there as a toy but the new stick in the mud Lawful convert not being able to swing that.

Word arrived from Teutch in the form of his henchmen Darvik and Garak, who made their offer to get the sphinx to relocate. Unfortunately the offer was much too low because there were multiple sphinxes, but Teutch didn’t know that. They stayed in town to act as Teutch’s hand in the deal and the party set off to find Meowster’s pride.

A caravan passed grumbling about being shaken down by the sphinxes and the party knew that they were close. Sure enough, Meowster and 2 of his buddies found the group soon after, demanding that they leave their troops at a safe distance and approach Meowster to chat.

The sphinx was characteristically arrogant and menacing and after much negotiation put forth his pride’s price for moving out west. Apparently their interest was in another sphinx named Simba who they were keen on ousting from his territory. When the party tried to leave, Meowster checked them and informed them that they could not leave without answering a riddle or paying a toll. They chose a riddle and here it was:

Nine-and-forty teeth fly overhead,
yet none under these teeth end up dead.

This one stumped them for a while, but eventually Brumdor declared, “It’s a comb!” and they were able to leave. Back in town they used their venturer contacts to call a meeting of the local guilds and merchants to see if they could finance the relocation. Zektel put up a large portion of his own gold to cover until the pledges could be sent. Baku staked out the leader’s home and threatened his family if the deal didn’t get done in their favor. It did. Also Alex Jones had disappeared but no one knew where he was or seemed to care much.

With a solid chunk of financing secured, the rest of the session was traveling to various towns and meeting with guilds and lords to scrape together enough to get rid of the regional menace. It was a lot of mostly uneventful travel and NPC chit chat which we won’t take up space on here.

All of the wealth was scheduled to arrive at Teutch Tower, where Meowster would pick up payment and then negotiate with Teutch regarding the war with Simba. The party arrived to help organize things and definitely not try to scrape any extra that there may be off of the top.

Valda and Baku had a late night run in with some burglars who insulted Valda and got straight murdered for it. Zektel announced a festival to convert the land officially to his Olman snake/bird god thing which I can’t pronounce and that was that. They’re well into the future on this team so will have a few weeks for the game to catch up to them.

Musings:

Downtime can set up hooks to be tackled during session. This was a high risk endeavor that maybe paid off for them, we’ll have to see, but could have just as easily ended in angry sphinxes eating their faces. This was a low key session outside of the tension with the sphinxes and I skimmed a lot in the report. It was cool but a “you had to be there” kinda session.

Session 75: I’m Helping

 Session 75: I’m Helping

6/23/24-6/27/24, rest 6/28, active 6/29

PC: Gwendolyn, Argon, Legany, Aldric, Ophio

Hench: Mahin, Madrof, Amadayo, Arthur, Godfrey, Amazing Jonathan

#ACKS

Gwendolyn’s face had been reconstructed and the swelling had abated, so Team A was back in action. They still had a pending mission for Lord Eros Tyring but were skeered of the forest. They tooled around town to enjoy the end of the Solstice festivities and make s’mores and throw tomatoes at elves, you know, the usual, while they discussed what hooks to pursue.

Aldric was able to recruit The Amazing Jonathan, a street performer mage who had a dark streak in his humor. They also added a new PC and player (Welcome!) in Ophio the Warlock, our first of the campaign. With the new recruit they decided that a run at a dark and gloomy tower to the west was the right move and prepared for that.

There was an old road that was still mostly intact leading towards their objective, so the group followed that as far as they could. It was hot, sunny, and kind of dusty so when they spotted a misty natural spring in the distance the group was eager to rest nearby. Ever cautious, it took some time for them to approach it, detecting for evil and tracking and whatnot, but the spring was just a beautiful natural spring that fed a little brook running off to the north.

Well rested and refreshed, the group continued on, eventually camping at the end of the day off to the north of the road. Unfortunately the Lawfuls in the group were plagued with terrible dreams and failed to achieve a restful night’s sleep. Ophio was geeked like he had too many cups of coffee and was eager to figure out why.

The paladins eventually discerned evil in a particular direction, leading them a short distance to a strange cairn, a head-height pyramid of stacked stone spheres. Out of the top of the cairn thrust a gnarled post with a desiccated old woman’s corpse hanging from it by the neck. The warlock felt this was the source of his jitters and suspected there was something powerful about it. The paladins hated it immediately and tore it down.

There was a grave sized cavity underneath with a leather bound and locked tome resting in it, which Ophio immediately jumped in and grabbed. The lawfuls were content to destroy the sinkhole with holy water and the party spent the remainder of the day resting so they weren’t fatigued. A golden eagle encounter was seen as a good omen to the Ehlonna followers and they were able to get some rest. During the night, some wights rose from the ground to attack, but chose their targets poorly in the paladins and were rebuffed.

Daylight brought a new day and eagerness to get to the objective. Unfortunately, they got lost, so they wandered a few hexes in the wrong direction before three huge demonic looking canines appeared on a nearby hill. The party attempted to evade, which failed. The fight was on and it was tough, ending in Legany Twocrowns downed and several others heavily wounded. Fortunately barbarians have savage resilience and he shook it off.

Eventually the group realized they should have seen the tower by now and decided to track themselves back to where they started. This brought them back to the barghest battlefield, where they smacked foreheads for not attempting to find the enemy’s lair. This search was successful, finding a den dug into the side of a hill.

Inside were three rated R Paw Patrol pups, snarling and yipping profanity in Common under the light of a glowing 8 pointed star on the back of the cave. Aldric’s player eagerly led the puppy murder, gleeful to finally be able to exact revenge on those annoying cartoon characters. Someone’s got young children.

The Patrol was guarding the lair’s treasure, which was pretty significant. We tend to roll random treasure live because it’s fun. This isn’t always a best practice, but dogs can’t use magic items so knowing what was in the hoard wasn’t going to impact the results of any interactions.

A lot of time was spent trying to figure out what to do about the chaotic emblem, which was slowly rotating counter clockwise. Eventually Argon the Earthforger decided he would mar it with his magic by deforming the wall. He set up his implements to cast a ceremonial spell and needed some absurdly low roll to fail. The rest of the party cleared out in case of disaster and were amazed to see the dwarf’s implements explode in his hands. He rolled a 1 which caused a mishap!

They rushed to his aid, the results of the mortal wounds roll requiring Aldric to amputate the dwarf’s mutilated hand and leaving him walking wounded for the rest of the session. Ophio raked his hand through the available blood and slapped it on the star, which changed colors but otherwise didn’t react. Argon the dwarf mumbled, “I’m helping” which got a big laugh. The warlock then cut his own hand and did the same thing. This time the sigil picked up speed in its spin, eventually throwing off sparks and opening into some kind of opaque, blacklit portal or window. Ever seeking dark power, Ophio went through, the portal closed, and… welcome to the campaign.

The party waited a while but when he never came back they packed up their loot and bounced. En route back to Arete, they were accosted by two ettins which were confused by the party’s presence. Aldric tried to intimidate them but that just made them angry. Another tough fight but this party is resilient and they scraped by without any deaths. They made it back to Arete with a good score but a missing PC.

Musings:

We love adding players to the table, especially when they show up talking about Vancian magic, consequences for player actions, and how paladins should only be Lawful Good. He’s gonna make it.

2d6 is my friend. I use a gradient worst to best, like a reaction check with fate, for stuff that I haven’t prepped. I used it a lot this session to determine wtf any of this meant. Hag sinkhole of evil? Demon dogs? The random comes in when PCs interact with the environment. I like explaining why it’s good or bad for them without dictating that it’s good or bad for them.  

This current hook is shaping up into something interesting. Looking forward to how it plays out.