Session 61: Catching Up

1/31/2-2/18/24, rest 2/19, active 2/20

PC: Gwendolyn, Cleet, Legany, Galt

Hench: Amadayo, Mahin, Madrof, Chase, Terry, Mike, Freddy, Cleric_02, Thief_03, Thief_04

#ACKS

The last time we played, the session ended on a cliffhanging revelation that “Oh shit, that pool in the dungeon turns gold into platinum, we have to go back!” Despite knowing better, I chose to stop time until the next session. I didn’t want to abstract the return to the dungeon which ACKS has rules for and there was tension over the pool being active for a limited time.

The entire session was overcoming the challenges of stopping time in a living world. It was exacerbated by the fact that my domain level patrons/players started a war with each other that had been going for about a month in the background. As the players began to interact with more of the world that had been moving into the future, the inability to really alter events that already transpired was telling.

Avoid stopping time in a fixed time game if at all possible. The preservation of the tension over the pool was not worth the clunky session catching up to the living world that had already moved on.

Anyway, the group got their supplies together and went right back to the dungeon. They brought every gold piece they could muster on the off chance of being to convert it to platinum in the pool. The sailors of the “Keef Richards”, Cleet the Mage’s boat and veterans of this trip, rubbed silver coins gotten from the dungeon for good luck as Galt dove into to secure the group’s safety line to the underwater dungeon.

Once the group got in it was pretty easy to descend to the deeper levels. The stairs were all located in the same room. The challenge was that going deeper meant tougher obstacles. The overall mission of the dungeon was to retrieve a spell formula somewhere in the dungeon but they had yet to locate it.

It was easy to locate the pool room but they arrived to find a pack? Clutch? Gaggle? Definitely a gaggle of giant draco lizards vibing around the boiling water of the pool. Previously, the water had been a whirlpool, so there was a red flag there, but of immediate interest was the very large potentially deadly lizards.

The party was surprised, all except Cleet, who fired off his signature move the hypnotic pattern spell. The crew didn’t really know the disposition of the lizards but given the surprise round chose to act rather than react. Several of the lizards were mesmerized but the remaining two closed on and started chomping on the front line. After a pretty tough battle in which Legany the Barbarian was downed, the remaining lizard broke morale and fled.

Experimentation with the pool went poorly, the party learning that the bubbling liquid was actually acid of some kind. The transformation magic was dead and I chose this moment to relate to the party that in the AD&D DMG, the magic pools that convert gold are one use only. I had generated this dungeon using Appendix A of that book and it was the second such pool they had found historically.

With the pool checked off, the group descended to the unexplored 4th level of the dungeon. Their first explored room away from the stairs revealed these massive bug creatures with prominent foreclaws that scared them very much, so they heroically closed and spiked the door shut and courageously went the other direction.

The door to the next room was dried and brittle in an environment that was humid, sticky, and gross. Legany asked questions about fire or heat, which was smart, but there was no obvious heat radiating from the room or anything. When the party broke in, they found an empty, dry, and brittle room with an exit. 

I’m a soft DM and asked several times what they were doing before entering the room. They didn’t send their thief in to search for traps, so when the group walked through as a whole the fireball trap that dropped from the ceiling was pretty scary. When the smoke cleared, Terry and Freddy the henches and Cleet the mage were toast and the rest of the party was quite wounded.

After the lizards, bugs, and fireball trap the group was very hesitant to continue so they bounced. Back in town they buried their dead, bought some healing, and hired some henchmen. They pivoted here trying to find a quick score through rumors and this is where the pain of catching up to the stop time issues ramped up.

The party long ago had tried to save Maisie of Millon from bandits or something around the city of Valestrian but learned that she had apparently run off to marry Lord Eros Tyring of Blackhold. Fast forward over a year to the very pregnant Maisie being present in Bellport for the birth of her child. There were some public comments and announcements in the Discord server from the Patron running Tyring about the situation so the players latched on to it as a potential hook They were convinced that Maisie needed rescuing and contrived for Gwendolyn to get a meeting with her and play music for her and braid hair and have pillow fights or whatever girls do.

It was nice to have knowledge of the principals in question and what they had done, but it was disappointing that the players could not really change the course of events leading up to the current date because we stopped time.

Convinced that Maisie was not a prisoner and earning an invitation to the reception after the naming of the child, Gwendolyn went back to the bar and chilled. Meanwhile, the others were tailing Chimichonga Applesauce (player generated name) the taxman and learning where he lived. That night, they broke into his house, rounded up all the staff into the cellar, and planned to educate Chimichonga about the thieves’ guild terms.

Somewhere in the chaos, Cleet the mage escorted the taxman to his boat and planned a very different intimidation tactic. While the party stripped the guy’s house bare of easily stolen valuables, Cleet’s new boat the “Going Nowhere” sailed out to sea with a magically sleeping government official stowed away. When he awoke, he found himself on the docks in a foreign town with a strongly worded suggestion to get on board with the thieves’ guild or next time won’t have a happy ending.

The party regrouped and counted their ill-gotten gains, got their reward from the thieves’ guild, and FINALLY CAUGHT UP WITH THE CALENDAR.

Musings:

Stopping time in a 1:1 game is not worth the squeeze most of the time. The exception that I can think of is if session play goes very far into the future. That works better because there are less moving parts stuck in a weird time paradox. It’s just the party and not the ENTIRE WORLD. If you can’t tell I was pretty frustrated with myself for stopping time.

The session went in an interesting direction, with the players craving some kind of score. The dungeon is tough in the deeper levels so having a fallback is an option, but if they want the big score, they’ll have to get in there at some point. I probably over-rewarded for the thieves’ guild thing but some interesting events happened there that will potentially develop into threads later.

Session 59: Trench Foot Epidemic

 

1/21/2-1/29/24, rest 1/30, active 1/31

PC: Valda, Zektel, Brumdor, Cracaryn

Hench: Elizabete

#ACKS

Today the players were back on Team B, looking to capitalize on the previous session’s score that was in transit to the patron who was going to pay them for it. Using 1:1 time means abiding by the calendar so even though they were sure to have a big payout, they still had to worry about logistics. We love logistics.

The group traveled across the map to the Friendship Hills, home of Teutch the Alchemist and Bigtoe the Wombat. Along the way they did a little shopping and Zektel sent a request to Gwendolyn the Goat for a song to be commissioned about his beautiful snake haired girlfriend. When they arrived in Deinwick they found the purple, pink, and gold magical walls that were a product of the Brigstein had been vandalized along the interior with crass anti-Teutch graffiti.

Between Deinwick and Rushford they ran across a small procession carrying a palanquin of a foreign noble. The group’s default signal for parley is for Zektel to hoist his underwear on a stick as a flag. The guards of the procession thought this was pretty funny and chuckled amongst themselves. After a brief chat both sides carried on.

Once across the Friendship Bridge and into the Hills, the party waited on their convoy to arrive. They were dismayed to discover that Mel the Thief henchman had run off with the golden Aquila of the Emperor that they were certain was worth quite a bit. The other goods arrived without issue. Bigtoe offered them some rewards that varied based on whether or not these items were powered by his white whale “purple cake” material. They agreed and decided to get to work on something else while waiting for the dwarf to tinker with the unfamiliar technology of an Astartes chainsword and frag grenade.

That something else turned out to be recon into the Order of Battle for Nekane the Great’s vaults directly to the north. Bigtoe was paying big to find a weakness that he could exploit in Nekane’s domain so the group began to plan their infiltration.

Nekane’s people are known to be a little ornery so they asked the dwarf craftpriest hench Elizabete to help Brumdor get into the vault. A poor 2d6 roll for obedience meant the dwarf hench was not happy with the dwarf on dwarf aggression and opted out. The party left her at the tower.

The guards on Nekane’s vault are characteristically grumpy and the first attempt to gain access does not go well, punctuated by an off-color joke attempted by Zektel who botched the punchline in a true Michael Scott embarrassing moment. The party was run off and decided to wait for a shift change and try again. Waiting in the mountains is dangerous but they were not punished for it.

The second attempt went better and the party was allowed entry and guided to the town far below through twisty confusing tunnels. No one but Brumdor had any chance of getting out the way that they came in. Some terrible attempts at trying to get in good with the locals at the bar led to a different approach. Zektel fabricated a parasitic trench foot type disease that was affecting only dwarves. He absolutely HAD to inspect the dwarven troops to prevent a massive epidemic.

The reaction rolls for this went significantly better, getting the group in front of the Master Armorer. Nekane couldn’t be bothered with it but his right hand felt it couldn’t hurt to have them inspect a platoon just to see. One of the players started offering ideas that Zektel could use the tenets of his order as an excuse to gain access. Zektel was Neutral however and had no order, which led to claims of being part of “Doctors without Orders” to many chuckles. 

The party was led through “The Tunnel” to a series of corridors where a platoon of dwarven soldiers were posted to guard. The NCO on duty was skeptical but allowed a quarantined area to be established and a thorough inspection performed of each dwarven soldier. Zektel found a few dwarves showing discolored toenails which he claimed was a serious indication of infection. This was of course bullshit but he used his high ranks in healing to inflict further discomfort on these poor dwarves and ratchet up the symptoms, all pointing at the Trench Foot that culminated in creeping nematodes, allegedly parasites that would burst forth from the foot and required amputation.

Great pains were taken to express how serious this disease was, including advising against any foot on foot contact which we all fell out over. Zektel’s player was on fire. The humor dried up quick when the NCO sent for the dwarven head medical official. When he arrived, he had a miserable roll to determine the cause of the afflicted dwarves’ red, rashy feet. He was suspicious and took the patients away to his own quarantine.

The party sensed that the jig was up but were denied a guide to exit at this late hour. They camped with the dwarven platoon and were sweating being arrested or worse. Overnight they were awoken by the sounds of combat to find a large amorphous blob of shifting flesh, carapace, and teeth attacking the dwarven soldiers on guard. The party joined the battle against the creature, discovering that it was very tough but sporadic, sometimes standing completely still or wailing in pain. It was still able to kill most of the dwarves and nearly Brumdor before the party was able to just run away. They fled down the primary corridor to the entry and their desperate cries for help against “the Trenchfoot Monster” convinced the guards to let them through. The doors were sealed and the session ended back at the Bearded Axe, the tavern that the party visited when they first arrived.

Musings:

I RP’d another of the same player’s high level PCs during this session. He doesn’t always agree with my takes on them but them’s the breaks. I suspect he would have offered much higher payouts for the Astartes equipment but what was offered was fair. I allowed a baseline then a reaction check to dictate whether he went higher or lower. I’m satisfied with the results.

The trench foot epidemic had us all rolling, it was a good time. Clever use of proficiencies to create a problem and offer the solution has developed into an interesting thread. I’m not sure what the players do next here, whether they double down on the trench foot or try to beat feet outta there before they get caught out. We’ll find out soon!

Session 60: Heavy is the Pocket

1/28/2-1/29/24, rest 1/30, active 1/31

PC: Gwendolyn, Flynn, Cleet, Galt

Hench: Amadayo, Mahin, Madrof, Chase, Terry, Mike, Freddy, Poe

#ACKS

Our players chose Team A for the session due to Team B being locked in downtime. They still had the dungeon known as Ornaron’s Spear to explore off of the coast of Bellport and this time their ship captain and definitely not a smuggler Cleet was available. It didn’t take them long to sync up in Bellport and then head to the dungeon.

Diving for the entrance of the Spear is an extra layer of security but their seafaring venturer Galt is well-practiced at it especially now that they had magical light to light their way. He overcame the penalties for attempting it in cold water and in short order the group was inside the dungeon, gaining entry through a zipper latch in the ceiling of the first room.

The strategy appeared to be re-clearing each level of the dungeon that they’d already explored in order to cover their asses before heading deeper. They also wanted to recover some copper and heavier goods that were left behind from the last session. After they dried off from the winter ocean water, they systematically explored both the first and second levels of the dungeon, their only real issues being stuck doors of pock-marked coral that needed busted open.

They broke an evil altar near the site of their previous demise and subsequent corpse recovery a la Everquest circa 2001. The Lawful clerics will gain a little bonus xp for it while the rest of the Neutral party eagerly counted their meager treasure. The following efforts to retrieve a couple hundred gold worth of loot was heroic. I was proud of them for properly calculating their encumbrance and how to carry it all out. Just a shame it was a small amount.

Some wandering Troglodytes tried to stop them and take their loot, but a tanky frontline and oversized party handled business pretty easily despite Cleet the Mage’s best effort to hit everyone with Hypnotic Pattern. The PCs stashed their loot right at the entrance then returned, seeking to make their first delve into level 3.

Now this is a reminder that in ACKS dungeon levels cap at 6, where in AD&D they go much higher and increase in difficulty at smaller intervals. So while level 3 doesn’t sound that high, it’s about mid range in power, so they were starting to get into level appropriate content. A horde of zombies met them at the first room, surprising and attacking them right on the stairs, but their beefy front line soaked the hits while the clerics turned em and made short work of the foes.

The following room contained a steel rod connecting floor to ceiling that hummed gently. Cleet naturally had to touch it which resulted in a shock that did a little damage. The party noped immediately out of that room and continued on where they found a circle of like 20 crabs dancing rhythmically in a circle. Gwendolyn the Bard played a tune and disrupted their tempo, which caused them to scatter into little cracks and crevices in the floor.

There was a whirlpool in the middle of the next room, which Cleet immediately dove into. They watched him flounder around for a bit until he was probably gonna drown before fishing him out. He didn’t feel any different and they moved onto the next room, which had the floor covered in skeletons of various aquatic animals. On closer inspection, the skeletons were formed from random bones broken, carved, and glued to make the correct shapes. There was a bull’s head roaring in pain at the head of a whale or shark or something I forget. One of the clerics turned undead and the evil was banished from it.

The crew was very suspicious of a pile of treasure sitting in a pillar of shining white light. One of their thief henchmen couldn’t find any traps and they didn’t expend any resources so when they scooped all the coins into bags there definitely weren’t any obvious or not so obvious repercussions. It was getting late so they made their way out of the dungeon and back to town with nary a random encounter. One of those light sessions.

After a while of shopping and chilling to wrap up the session, Cleet realized that the gold in his pouch had changed into platinum. A firestorm of OH WE HAVE TO GO BACK RIGHT NOW and other ways to immediately capitalize on the likely magical pool were floated, eventually settling on stopping time. While I avoid this practice in most situations, as long as the party committed to playing this group the next session I felt it was ok.

The other options were abstracted dungeon delving, which is an mechanic in ACKS but I don’t care for it for an active party of PCs, or just waiting 2 weeks to go back since we aren’t gonna have a session next week. We’ll see if it was a mistake for our next session.

Session 58: They Shall Know… Some… Fear

Session 58: They Shall Know… Some… Fear

1/14/2-1/18/24, rest 1/19, active 1/20

PC: Alari, Zektel, Brumdor, Cracaryn

Hench: Elizabete, Domeko, Mel

#ACKS

It’s been a hot minute since the last session, a little over a month. The crew jumped in on Team B to chase a treasure map on behalf of Bigtoe the Wombat (PCPatron Machinist) that led to some technology of some kind in the hills west of Bellport.

They had parked in Millon, the domain of John Redcorn III (PCPatron Cleric), and got into the game pretty quick, traveling to Riverstride. Some insignificant random encounters with a few elves and a squire out of Riverstride didn’t slow their progress at all.

Bigtoe had loaned them a truck to help carry the loads and loads of loot sure to be found at the location indicated by the map. Their last interaction had set the truck and it's escort to waiting for them in Northbridge. After 5 weeks, the soldiers were a little grumpy. The weather was cold and somewhat wet, with a bit of snow on the regular, and they were ready to do whatever they were out there to do and then go home.

I didn’t have a plan for this map. With these kinds of things I generally let whoever finds the map kinda meme into existence the general theme. I then try to find a way to apply it that isn’t them just creating customized treasure for themselves. The hook was technology involved so while they traveled I was considering what that could be. 

En route to the location, the party came across a lone Medusa in a secluded cabin. Her reaction check was pretty friendly so I played her reclusive. But she’s still a Medusa so when they knocked on the door she “forgot” to put her hood on when she answered. Fortunately they were lucky on the surprise roll and were able to avert their eyes. Zektel the Shaman attempted to woo his new girlfriend to little success and the party bounced. The shaman did leave a small “selfie” of a small picture of a snake for his new gf, but unsolicited snake pics are never popular.

The adventurers found the location indicated by the map on the first search roll. The soldiers and truck camped outside while the party investigated a wide hole in the ground descending at a pretty sharp angle. Brumdor the dwarf was able to determine there weren't any tool marks like it was dug, but it clearly wasn’t natural. Meanwhile, the others located some very large sheets of strange metal that were discarded nearby, kind of leaf shaped and convex and super heavy. 

They tied off some safety lines just in case and descended into the earth. The tunnel let out into a large cavern with stalactites, mites, and speleothem (we had to Google that during session). A wide path of destruction led eastward and they could just barely see some sort of artifice at the edge of their torchlight which revealed itself to be a teardrop shaped pod of some sort designed to carry a handful of something the size of hill giants. Exit ramps led down from the pod and into a scene of absolute carnage. 

Skeletons of hundreds of goblins and hobgoblins lay in piles all around the pod and led in a path further to the east, their injuries indicating extremely destructive impact and rending damage. They found large shell casings which due to Brumdor’s experience with some other found firearms from the campaign they were able to identify. The group also found a human skull with weird metal bits protruding from it and were lucky enough to determine it was trapped before setting off the grenade placed underneath. Brumdor was able to disarm it and they were picking up quite a little collection of alien artifacts.

At the far end of the cavern, there was a corridor leading out. This appeared to be where the battle broke for the beastmen as the corpses thinned and there were many more kills from behind as the creatures fled. Tracking indicated that it was a single giant sized biped responsible for all the death.

I’ve had 40k on the brain lately. If it isn’t already obvious, an Astartes drop pod delivered a Space Marine to Oberholt. He suffered not the Xenos to live and cut a path through on his own mysterious mission. The party figured this out here. They aren’t 40k junkies or anything, but they were suspicious and I dropped a picture of a servo skull and drop pod and they recognized the aesthetic.

This revelation had them very nervous the rest of the session that they would have to fight a Space Marine. Not being versed in 40k helped because they really had no idea what to expect; they just knew they were tough and could obviously wreck beastmen.

Cracaryn was able to continue to track the Astartes beyond the next intersection, bringing them to a spot where the supersoldier had punched a hole through the deadend and into a gothic chapel of some kind. There was a double-headed golden eagle prominent over an altar before which was kneeling a giant suit of power armor with a chainsword and a bolter tempting the adventurers.

The game halted here for a bit while the players tried to figure out how to approach the situation. They settled on Zektel’s snake companion as a scout. It slithered forward and disturbed some weird purple smoke or mist that wafted around like a heat haze wherever the snake moved beyond the threshold of the opening, but it didn’t seem to bother the creature. It returned to report that it didn’t smell, taste, or otherwise sense anything living in the room.

Again, a big halt while they hemmed and hawed over how to approach it. Was the warrior undead? A trap? What was the purple smoke? They tried to send henchmen in after long discussions over how likely dangerous it was. They mostly refused, but the thief hench Mel agreed to try to steal the golden eagle for 100gp gem and a PC’s share of the sale. The party agreed and off he went.

He sneaked his way along one wall to the edge of his light, but needed more to properly inspect the decoration on the wall. He signaled to the group who tried to throw like 4 or 5 torches that all went out. I had them roll 1-2 on a d6 to see if they were extinguished by the obviously horrible nature of this place. Eventually, Alari decided to creep in with a torch and light his way.

It was very tense as the thief pried and wrenched at the eagle, eventually pulling it loose. Everyone froze but nothing happened. The thief’s demeanor immediately changed, though, as he tucked the eagle under his arm and strolled past the kneeling figure. He patted the massive pauldron nonchalantly on his way by and exited the room. When prompted to stay and aid in getting the rest of the loot, he snickered and said nah, he’d be at the truck with the eagle. The party let him go.

With the eagle stolen and the armor interacted with no negative effect, the PCs were feeling pretty confident. The next target was the chainsword that was laying on the ground as though dropped. Alari moved in to get it.

Now, I had no idea what this map was going to lead to. Once I determined the Astartes busted into this chapel for… reasons… I wondered ok, what’s here? A random encounter gave me an energy draining wight lair. I turned them ethereal to explain how they could even contest a space marine and there we were. Our mysterious visitor died to spectral enemies his weapons could not harm, a last prayer on his lips, and the warp-magic pocket dimension this chapel was in kept the creatures trapped.

ACKS sneaking is weird at first, but basically check surprise, then if that fails check sneak skills. The thief and Alari were extremely lucky at first with their surprise rolls. I ruled the torchlight made no difference to surprise since the creatures weren’t really “seeing” into the room. Normally, if one side of an encounter has light then they cannot surprise the other. So it was just flat rolls which went their way. Until Alari grabbed the chainsword, which prompted another roll, which she failed.

The enemies materialized out of the warp and surrounded her. She was not surprised but lost initiative and was drained to death immediately. The rest of the party were shocked and most fled, but one heroic craftpriest henchman Domeko passed a massive morale check and attempted to turn the creatures. He got 2 of them but then lost the next initiative and was also drained to death.

The PCs were unwilling to leave Alari’s magical equipment and the space man’s gear, oh and totally wanted to recover their friends’ body for proper rites, so they crept back to the entrance and peeped in. The room was as they left it, two desiccated corpses and the motionless Astartes power armor. They could not see the enemy creatures.

They noticed the skull that they had picked up from the trap was sparking and reacting to proximity to this room. Domeko was Zektel’s henchman and dead right at the door, so he devised a plan to reach in with the servo skull in one hand and grab Domeko with the other to drag him out. The skull sparked to malfunctioning life, whining in wild vox tones that prompted a save vs paralysis due to the shock of it. Zektel failed and dropped the skull in the room but was able to retrieve his henchman’s body.

The skull rolled into the room and wailed and whined and screeched, drawing the wights back to the plane to swirl around and inspect it. Meanwhile, Alari’s body and the loot were 50ish feet further in. While the creatures were distracted, Zektel rushed in to grab what he could, getting a hold on Alari and the chainsword and dragging them both out. I ran this on surprise rolls too, since the wights were distracted. He made it going in but failed going out.

The shaman lost initiative and was certain he was going to be drained to death, but Brumdor the Machinist had like months ago developed a batman style grappling hook shooter thing. He was able to hook Zektel and yank him to safety before the creatures got him, their spectral hands pushing and forcing the threshold at the door to bulge out into the corridor.

Some attempts were made to retrieve the servo skull with the hook but each one revealed that the veil between worlds was breaking and the creatures were piercing further into the hallway. They abandoned the attempt and fled with their loot and allies’ bodies. They loaded up everything they had found onto the truck, all the while hearing loud ripping and tearing dimensional sounds coming from the hole behind them. Pedal to the metal and they were out, the truck heading back to Bigtoe far to the west while the PCs were returning to New Bridge. The thief Mel would not part with the eagle so he went with the truck.

A lot of discussion was had about trying to restore the drained characters but that just wasn’t going to work. They confirmed with a priest in New Bridge and opted to burn the dead on pyres so that they would not return as wights later. They ended the session there.

Session 57: Bob Cedar’s Greatest Hits

12/4/23-12/13/23, rest 12/14, active 12/15

PC: Gwendolyn, Galt, Legany

Hench: Amadayo, Mahin, Madroff, Chase, Terry, Mike, Freddy

#ACKS

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.

 

Session 56: Of Course the Truck Can Swim

Session 56: Of Course the Truck Can Swim

11/26/23-12/4/23, rest 12/5, active 12/6

PC: Alari, Zektel, Brumdor, Cracaryn

Hench: Elizabete, Mel, Demeko, Kushima

#ACKS

The party showed up without much planning so for the first bit of the session I ate snacks and listened to them go back and forth on what they wanted to do. They settled on a series of treasure maps advertised by one player’s two separate name-level PCs for various rates of return.

Part of this deal was the loan of a deuce and a half military grade truck that the machinist Bigtoe had developed for another Patron. When discussing what route the truck would take to the action, someone mentioned carrying it on a ship up river. I informed them that that wasn’t gonna be an option just before Bigtoe’s player told us the truck has a swim speed. Of course it has a swim speed. I missed that when approving the schematic however long ago which is one of the reasons my instinct is to tell players no. Every time, all the time. I’ve done well fighting that off because I think it makes for poor DMing but sometimes I find myself faced with something I probably should have said no to.

Anyway, the truck and an escort were going to meet the party in Northbridge to carry on while the party advanced at a faster rate to find Redcorn and pick up additional quests. This felt very MMO to me where they attempted to stack hooks from various sources based on location and efficiency. It’s smart use of the resources and time but I think something is lost a little in the execution of it.

Alari bought another bunch of donuts in Millon and made a joke about being the first fat elf which is now canon. Redcorn offered them some portion of a treasure map and a kicker if they’d take his first level cleric follower with them to get him some experience. With Cleric_01 in tow, the group left along the newly constructed Holy Road towards Newbridge.

Travel was pretty uneventful for most of the session. They got through Newbridge and across the river towards the first of their maps. Some kobolds were by a river and the critters were able to evade the party when confronted. Then they found a hippogriff lair in a storm-devastated copse of trees. Their map indicated that this X was the spot but hippogriffs are pretty mean and tough. The party bounced to go have daddy Redcorn solve the problem for them.

When it comes to searching for treasure maps, I usually roll to see what lairs are in the hex then randomly determine which lair has the map. Sometimes I do something weird but in general, the map leads to a lair. I think some DMs treat the map as unguarded or hidden, with the travel to get there counting as the adventure. That could be cool, but I haven’t done that yet.

While in Newbridge and waiting on reinforcements, the group was approached by a “Mr. Taylor”, a well-dressed fellow who offered them a bit of cash if they could orchestrate something bad happening to a heavy trebuchet that was purchased recently in Bellport. The group was curious but not overly moved to act until Redcorn arrived and offered them even more. This moved the needle and got added to their MMO quest log.

The high level cleric escorted the party back to the hippogriff lair, where he attempted to convince the creatures to join his weird menagerie situation in his domain at Millon. They were standoffish and agreed to speak with him only if they were provided with food for their entire nest of 10 hippogriffs. That’s a lot of food. Various PC level plans were tossed about, all framed around apparently delivering this food IMMEDIATELY. Buying some cows in the nearby town was OFF THE TABLE. 

They spent the day hunting and eventually got a sufficient amount of deer, goats, and elk to bribe their way into the hippogriffs’ good graces. Redcorn was able to strike a deal and one day they’ll move over to his spot. In the meantime, the party was stymied because the treasure map led to the lair’s loot and the creatures weren’t giving it up. Fortunately, Redcorn paid them for the location of the lair and they returned to Newbridge.

Next on the list was to do a little vandalism. They left Cleric_01at the house because they were uncertain how devious they would need to be. The group’s thief henchman was able to track down the location of the warehouse but not much else on it, so they did a little live scouting. The guards on the place were alerted but the thief was able to escape. The group planned while rolls were made to see how the guards would respond.

This was an active Patron player’s location. I used his logs to determine what forces were available for security and who the leader might be. I knew how the response would go and when the PCs showed up after purchasing spell casts and such, we were ready. 

The group had had invisibility 10’ radius cast on them, which took a little while to find a mage who wouldn’t ask questions about why they needed it. They approached the place and found it much more heavily guarded and alert than before, with many soldiers and some armored war dogs and hunting dogs sniffing about. They noped out and looked around the building, finding a smaller door in the rear that I rolled randomly for which was less heavily guarded. They waited until dark and ambushed the rearguard, achieving surprise and completely overcoming them before an alarm could be raised. 

Rolls for discovery went their way and they made entry, absolutely coating the trebuchet that was stored within in military oil. By the time the dogs outside smelled the smoke, the group was out and running. I rolled for the leader to attempt pursuit or recovery of property and it came up property so they tried to put the fire out.

The PCs collected their payout at a counting house in the city then fled to Millon, where they got paid again by Redcorn and ended the session.

Musings:

This was a great example of how important logs are for Patron players that do not get input during session play. The owner of the trebuchet is fastidious with his logs, but there are a lot since he has quite a few irons in the fire. It took me a while to find what I needed but using his details and randomizing the blank spots got us an interesting encounter with implications immediately and for the near future.

The rest of the session was pretty standard. We started a bit late but the group pulled in a solid payday and no one died. It was mentioned that one of the players has yet to experience significant combat at the table. Every session that he’s present for is a city session or sneaky session or something. Interesting, maybe he’ll be here for the next dungeon delve.