Session 79: Portal Allergies

 Session 79: Portal Allergies

8/4/24-8/8/24, rest 8/9, active 8/10

PC: Valda, Zektel, Brumdor, Cracaryn, Vidimir, JP

Hench: Nicky, Crom, Zero, Taco, Bazam, Rich, Ricky

#ACKS

Our, ahem, heroes continued their quest to clear the swamps near Issac’s stronghold at Newbridge. They added two new members to the group in Vidimir the Paladin and JP the Venturer. They also spent valuable session time recruiting henches and soldiers. I prefer to handle tedium in downtime so they can roll stats and such for henchmen and then be ready to go at session, but if they want to spend precious adventuring time doing it during the game that’s ok, too.

The group and their small army of mercs departed for the swamps and got to work, finding a nice little safe haven spot to camp in, a short encounter with some dire wolves, and a strange shining metal spire in a large shallow bowl. This would end up taking most of their attention during the session.

The bowl was dry but scummy from exposure. The spire itself was tall and thin, with a slight widdershins twist to it. JP, with the boldness of a first level PC with nothing to lose, approached and searched it over. He could find no doors or symbols, but discovered that the bowl and spire appeared to have no seams as if they were one piece. 

The rest of the party got the courage to search around, clean off sections of the bowl, and experiment with some spells. They found a strange script that appeared to be instructions but they couldn’t parse them. Zektel also discovered that the bowl hummed in response to the rhythmic chanting of his Shaman spells.

JP got the idea to sing, which revealed a faint outline of a doorway on the spire. As more of the party joined in his inspiring rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the door became more pronounced, eventually fading away to a rectangular opening filled with bright white light. Valda moved to inspect it carefully but was a little put off by JP just brushing by and walking into the light.

Maybe I lean on the trope of portals too much. We see a lot of them in this campaign for whatever reason. I like them as a tool to introduce different elements to the setting by traveling to other parts of the same world or even other worlds, but the players are wary of them and rarely (never?) engage as a group. This was no different.

Zektel and his henchman Bazam followed JP into the light, but no one else did. The two bold adventurers found themselves in a hilly forest of unfamiliar trees. They realized the wildlife was different here in subtle ways and knew they weren’t in Kansas anymore.

Much discussion followed about what to do with the portal, ending with the main group retreating to Newbridge. They needed a mage high enough level with the right repertoire to cast scry and teleportation to find and retrieve their missing comrades. Yeah right no way that happens. I left it to my trusty 2d6, which maxed out in their favor. Vidimir’s perfect Trump impersonation (and solid charisma) recruited the mage, True Patriot, into aiding the party.

Vidimir the Paladin, probably

The group escorted True Patriot back to the spire. Meanwhile, the spire side group explored a little and cast some spells, with JP eventually just marching off in a direction. The venturer was not accosted by any random encounters but he did discover an old battlefield gravesite. He searched around but didn’t find anything so kept it moving. When the mage arrived through the portal, Zektel turned into a giant hawk and retrieved JP, despite his protest, and delivered him to the spire.

There was some confusion from the mage when JP refused to accept his help, but he had already been paid so whatever. He teleported Zektel and Bazam back to his sanctum and returned himself. The party linked up and after a brief discussion about JP decided to write him off and keep on their quest. I chose to determine just how the 1st level Venturer would fare in a strange land in downtime so as not to slow the primary group with split party shenanigans.

Random encounter tables are so interesting. The next encounter I rolled a lair, with a unique terrain feature, with a portal. Again. I don’t know the statistics of how likely that is but it seems low. Anyway, I knew from 2 years ago that there was a specter lair in this hex. I also knew that I wasn’t going to have two portals right next to each other, but I could add something portal affiliated. So the head specter wore a crown of silvery metal similar to that of the spire.

The undead rose from the swamp at the rear guard of the marching army and moaned threateningly. The mercs, knowing they could not fight spirits without magic weapons, fled. The party engaged and defeated the undead, including the PC Bralen who had been killed and turned years ago, after a long fight. Most of the group was enervated, the replacement mechanic for level draining in ACKS II. It’s now a slow death of lost HPs over time unless they can stack Death saving throws together. A race to the grave.

They found a mausoleum with treasure but it was too late to let them roll it all at the table so I’ll do that in downtime. It was a great session with weird twists and I’m eager to see what happens next.

On The Shuckstein

The Shuckstein was played on 8/7/24 in the Dubzaron campaign and run by the incomparable Bdubs. The event was set in the Sepia Uplands region, a barbarian stronghold with a large capital city that could justify the presence of The Shucked Oyster, some house of ill-repute from a PDF merchant. I was not looking forward to the degeneracy from a module based around a brothel. Imagine my delight when the session opened with it burning down!

That delight faded when some pimp and hooker showed up, fingered the PCs as the arsonists, and fled the scene as the authorities moved in to arrest us. My PC was Warchief Einar Fann, a barbarian warlord sworn to the service of the region's ruler. I hit 'em with the, "Do you know who I am?" When that didn't work I knew something was amiss, confirmed by the LT of the arresting squad's bloodlust. A short battle ensued wherein a handful of mercs tried to apprehend an adventuring party. Some of the party chased their fleeing accusers while the remainder resisted arrest.

I'm not great at these Diplomacy style games. I'm a direct player and don't utilize subterfuge well. Bdubs knows this and when my dumbass Barbarian dropped a cursed helmet of alignment change on his dumbass head months ago, the DM turned it into a hook to serve Surtur, the Norse Fire Giant deity, in order to force me into conflict. I've been playing into that betrayal for ages trying to keep it secret while working against the party to free Surtur from his prison beyond the curtains. I was even able to convert the most suspicious PC in the party with another helm before he could find any proof and out me to the Lawful and/or vengeful members of the party. The dungeon exploded before I could realize any other plans.

The players in Dubzaron, including myself, are cooperative. I'd started being less so during sessions and was standoffish to friendly PCs during the opening sequence of The Shuckstein, especially Xanthos the Lawful cleric and Standing Mountain the elf. Once we defeated the charmed LT, me and my henches grabbed him up and split towards my moderate sized army camped outside the city. I was second-guessing the decision to separate here as I know convergence brings resolution but with no ground to go to, unknown factions at work, and no faith in local forces to recognize my rank, I didn't have much choice.

Interrogating the LT confirmed my suspicion that he was charmed. When Xanthos showed up to inquire about him I turned him away to "come back tomorrow" to cast spells and such. I let him believe I had tortured the captive to death. My plan was to keep him as insurance in case the authorities came after me for real.

In the meantime, I sent a message to the Great Hall of Warchief O'Conner but he hadn't been seen for days. Uh oh. If Kyle was compromised, this whole thing could go tits up. I immediately asked whether security looked to have suffered in his absence with the intent to just take control of the city. Alas, it seemed the day to day operations of the place were still running smoothly.

I met with Jalaan who had the charmed Tuck and Doc in tow. I guessed his identity as Slenderman and he dropped the charade. He told me he was going back to Barsoom if he could get this evil altar and free Surtur. I wanted to free Surtur. I wanted Slenderman gone. Sounded great! If he betrayed me I'd just kill him or die trying. We got beef.

I needed to get back into the action so I let Bdubs know I was gonna find Lambert. After some delay I just asked Lambert's player if he could be found. Since he wasn't hiding and was looking for me too we met in the middle. Einar and Lambert had a professional relationship from session play but translating that into an event like this is difficult.

We met and neither offered violence. I implicated the cleric or the elf as the arsonist and turned over the captive as a gesture of good faith. Lambert agreed to arrest them and interrogate them to get to the bottom of it. Great, elves suck and Xanthos was the only PC able to discover my cursed helm. Win/win for me there. It was also agreed that I would "hang back" so Lambert's authority wouldn't be suspect when we arrived at the ruins of The Shucked Oyster.

Lambert and his crew went in hot to an ongoing battle. I crept up with my troops as perimeter security in case anyone tried to slip out the back. My goal here was to get the altar which was Svetlana's. I was also going to kill anyone that got in my way, especially if I could do it without witnesses. I no longer needed the party to delve the Queen's Rest dungeon since it exploded.

Some glittery silhouette showed up, I chopped it in the face, and it hit me with fear magic. My henches cured me and put it down, revealing it to be Svetlana herself. Xanthos ran around the corner into the alley, but the other part of the fight was over before I could kill him, too. I sent my thief to sneak into the ruins while Lambert was arresting everyone. He found the altar but it was too big to steal.

I wanted to kill Slenderman on the way to the mountain once we got clear of the city but it was too late in the night to run another combat. When he didn't immediately go back to Barsoom on Surtur's release I knew I shoulda forced it. I claimed violence then and there to be resolved at some later date in downtime.

The session was a fun way to resolve my particular loose thread from months of session play and rattle the status quo of the campaign world. We'll see if this Always Braunstein Daily takes off.

Session 78: The Ballad of Princess Grogdalene

 Session 78: The Ballad of Princess Grogdalene

7/21/24-7/26/24, rest 7/27, active 7/28

PC: Gwendolyn, Alex, Legany, Okiedoke

Hench: Amadayo, Mahin, Em

#ACKS

Lord Eros Tyring had been trying to recruit and interact with PCs for a long time. That finally culminated in a plan to rob the paychest of the presumed BBEG Warval the Orc Warchief, King of Spinecastle. It had been in the works for weeks if not months, but the revelation that we were to have another wargame event soon accelerated the timeline I think.

The goal of the heist was to use magical disguises as hobgoblins, plant specially minted coins in the Spinecastle treasury, get aid from magical Scrying on those coins, then finesse their way into the vault and escape with as much loot as they could carry via magical potions of teleportation. What actually happened is… well…

They had a guide to the suspected location in Tyring’s henchman Lucky Bill the Explorer. He kept them from getting lost and increased their chances to evade encounters, which they did on a few occasions. Disguised as Hobgoblins, they assumed they’d be safe from Chaotic enemies, but that’s not really how Chaos works. It eats its own. I ran reactions in a much more swingy way than I would for human vs human, with results being more extreme, but fortunately for the PCs they generally went their way.

There were some terrain encounters that they ignored due to not wanting to be distracted. An orc warband showed up during one night’s camp only to bully into the campfire light and strike up their own camp. The party was able to learn a little bit about the area from them. Then they got to the swamp.

Hello, fellow beastmen!

They forced a march to try to get through it all in one day. A checkpoint of wererats shook them down for a toll which after much griping the PCs paid. Alex wanted to kill them all but the others weren’t keen on risking lycanthropy. They also ran across a pair of Cyclops who were looking for their lost sheep. The adventurers assured the giants that they hadn’t seen the livestock and carried on.

They bypassed a suspected lizardman stronghold and good reaction kept them from being challenged. Nearly out of the swamp, Lucky Bill missed the roll to discover a Viet Cong style pit trap along the road. The third rank of adventurers fell in and it was a doozy, 30ft down onto disgusting slimy spikes. Okiedoke the assassin was killed outright while Mahin had only a few hps left. They found some treasure from other poor saps and dragged out the victims. Some talk was had of using the dead adventurer as a war trophy to boost their “tribute” to Warval, but the other henchmen balked at the idea. They burned Okiedoke’s body once they exited the swamp.

Along the road to Spinecastle were about half a mile of crucified PC-playable races… humans, elves, dwarves, etc. There was a saving throw forced after walking some distance but no one knows why. Spinecastle itself was huge with tall, formidable walls and the primary tower itself rising from the middle like Saruman’s tower Orthanc, complete with the wide pit of industrial shenanigans. Around the tower was a thriving city of Chaos, a bizzaro world of slavery, pit fighting, and crime dressed up as civilization. The players were shocked at the scale of both the city and the massive army camped to the south and west.

The kobold gatekeepers interrogated them briefly but Gwendolyn easily bluffed her way by. Bearing a pass sealed with human slave blood, they were admitted into the city. They found a room and avoided the sketchier foodstuffs on offer, eventually settling for what they could convince themselves was “mutton”.

So far so good. They were in the city with their “tribute”. They just needed to deliver it and hope it made it to the vault. Off to the tower, where their pass allowed them entry to wait in a queue of petitioners also come to pay tribute to the Boss. They met a necromancer named Also who condescended to them as the stupid hobgoblins that they were. They did not like Also and tried to make a bunch of puns and wordplay goofy responses to him but he didn’t get it and continued with his melodramatic putting on airs. 

Most of the other supplicants had war trophies which made the group’s lack a point of anxiety, but a hefty bag of gold is universal. Also disdained their gold and showed his tribute, plates and cups and chalices and candlesticks of gold and silver. Certainly more impressive looking but as to value who can say?

When their time came they were ushered in and announced by a human female of some rank by her dress referred to only as the Herald. When asked for names to be announced the players froze and stuttered out gems like Princess Grogdalene of the Grok Tribe, Alex Kicked-by-Mule, Daddy Kicked-by-Mule, and Firesucker.

Warchief Warval was impressive for an orc. He was larger but not some giant and possessed a clear level of intelligence unseen before in any orc the party had ever encountered. He also had a strange brand on his forehead. During the short interaction, Princess Grogdalene implied that the “Grok tribe of the northeast” had many warriors and they wanted to join the war effort. This tribute was a small fraction of what they could bring. Charades happened over the table as players gave Grogdalene (Gwendolyn) hand gestures for suggestions of how many troops the tribe had. “5… 500… 5000! Yeah 5000 troops!” 

This staggeringly high number from a tribe no one had ever heard of made Warval suspicious, but he’d love to have them if they were real. So he “offered” for the party to stay in special rooms in the castle and for Princess Grogdalene to fly out by wyvern the next morning and bring the chief of their tribe for a meeting. Uh oh.

A weird black shadow/spirit thing took the gold tribute and the party was led to their definitely-not-a-prison-cell suite of rooms. The accommodations were nice, but in the way an outdated family restaurant is nice. Fallen far from the original. Two orcs stood guard outside, also clearly superior from your run of the mill beastman. When queried for dinner orders and such they responded professionally and mumbled the orders without leaving their post. Goblins arrived to deliver. They had remote comms of some kind.

A lot of planning and indecision started here. The advanced timeline took away the team’s ability to finesse the situation. They had to pull the heist before Grogdalene was forced onto the back of a wyvern. Eventually they settled on seducing the orcs to lead them on a tour of the castle. The first team of orcs resisted the foolishness but their relief bought full into it, flattered by the flirtation.

Eventually the group was able to con their way to the ground floor of the pit where the vault was for a “quick look”. The orcs were clearly uncomfortable and assured the party that they’d have to leave after they saw the “doggies”. Their scrying overwatch had told the crew that there were giant demonic dogs guarding the vault door so one of the players brought some ham hocks from dinner. 

When they approached the vault door flanked by the giant canines, the orcs said, “Ok you’ve seen them, that's it we’re leaving.” But Okiedoke’s player had taken on one of the henchman, a female mage played like a dumb white girl who tries to pet the bear. She ran forward with the ham hocks, “I’m gonna pet the doggy!” The supernatural “dogs” immediately saw her as a threat and the fight ensued.

The orcs were caught off-guard by the suicidal mage. They set spears against a charge and called for their bff Grogdalene to get her party to the lift. The hench scrambled back and threw the hams into the hands of the orcs. The one dog that was engaging chased, the other remained on guard.

Legany rushed to enter through the vault door which was ajar enough for a single man-sized creature. The party knew through their overwatch that there were at least two humanoids inside and the barbarian was going to kill them quick. Unfortunately he ran across the ward on the ground and failed his save, succumbing to magical paralyzation and sliding into the vault.

When others arrived they found the weird humanoids looking down at him. One of them executed the helpless barbarian while the other unhinged its jaw and blasted them with a cone of sonic damage that was enough to terrify them. This fight had gotten out of hand quickly.

Illusion kept one of the dogs engaged while the orcs and the other dog confusedly fought each other. The orcs miraculously passed all morale checks, even after one of them was killed in a single blow. Alex snuck into the vault while invisible, Mahin went down to the humanoids, and the heist turned into an emergency evacuation.

One of the teleport potions was used on Legany’s corpse, which I ruled would not work since he couldn’t metabolize it. He went from an entity to equipment, so the hench added him to her inventory and used her own potion. Mahin’s potion was poured in his unconscious mouth, with Amadayo and Gwendolyn following shortly after. Alex was left alone, invisible in a vault whose door had just been closed.

Having looted for a few rounds and not wanting to risk another blast from the weirdos, Alex grabbed a last handful of treasure and cursed them with what had become the convention of the dialogue for the session, “Grok you, mother grokers!” He drank his potion before they could respond due to really high initiative.

The party ended up in a bloody pile in an undisclosed location with heavy casualties and an unknown amount of treasure.

Musings:

The travel out there had some really interesting potential but the group stayed on task and were not distracted. I was impressed.

The heist, on the other hand, was a disaster, but Warval was clearly onto them and they chose to carry out a frontal assault rather than try to escape. It was a fun session, with a lot of shared laughs that these AARs can’t really share properly. Now I've got to roll what treasure Alex was able to escape with beyond the things that he targeted specifically.

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.