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.