Session 83: And I Feel Fine

 Session 83: And I Feel Fine

9/15/24-9/24/24, rest 9/25, active 9/26

PC: Miquella, Cracaryn, Basus

Hench: Mulligan, Kushima

#ACKS

We had a lighter table this week with some of our more regular players out for various reasons. Khorne’s advance into the world had developed into occupation of the Butzkrag and creation of a destructive, spreading cloud of corruption. It had already destroyed the natural order in the hex that it occupied and looked to spread beyond.

Redcorn the Crusader and Lord Tyring had both sought out Jolus the Laughing Skull, the strange wizard that lived near Bellport, for advice or aid in combating Khorne. As previously revealed, Jolus was actually an avatar or incarnation or… something… of the God Emperor of Mankind from Warhammer 40k. This implied an extreme level of power but in true 40k fashion at great cost.

Jolus advised that he could perform a procedure, or ritual, or something to combat Khorne if he had a volunteer of maximum level (14th in ACKS) that would be willing to be consumed by the process. It would also cost half the light of the world to save the world, and it weren’t gon be an eyeball like Matrim Cauthon. Thanos snap, more like.

Word was sent out to the big dogs of the campaign, Issac, Tyring, and Redcorn who were afaik the only ones eligible for the sacrifice. Tyring had specific questions about the what and how. Redcorn set up an in session hook to retrieve sacred water from the Vesve Forest which he memed would give him an advantage during the battle with Khorne. Maybe so? We’ll find out, because that’s what this session was all about.

Some days were spent preparing, with Redcorn footing the bill for magic items and scrolls and such. The plan was to use the portal in the subterranean sanctum of Ehlonna at Tamaris to get to the Vesve. Step two was a little more loose. Step three was to use scrolls of teleportation to get back. Easy peasy.

Generally I’d bop a patron on the nose for handing out as much juice as was given during this session, but honestly they were gonna need it. Only Cracaryn was leveled and they couldn’t pack in a bunch of troops or henches because teleportation scrolls don’t grow on trees. No matter how many magic items you give a first level PC, they still only have 5 hps.

Through the portal, into the Vesve, which holds a special place in the heart of this DM. My first long-time PC in AD&D was a druid that rose to command the circle in the northern Vesve, perpetually embroiled in battle with Iuz out of the east and the other crazy stuff that goes on there. It was nostalgic to return there and flavor the session with details from basically a past life (20+ years ago).

He coulda had a rifle, you don't know.

The first random encounter roll was a unique terrain result that was a magical place. So I figured hell, they popped out right near the Circle. I made a big deal about how unwelcoming the forest was to outsiders and how hard it was to travel but the dice saved the group from a long search to find any local aid.

The party was welcomed by a council of elder druids in a smoke tent. After their story was corroborated by the sigil of Khorne marring the sun on this side of the world too, the druids took them more seriously. While their tangible resources were tied up in the stalemate against the demigod Iuz, the druids could offer some magical assistance by way of the Safe Travels spell, which aided in evasion and getting lost checks, and a ritual I made up on the spot to aid in travel time.

With a rough map to a once-sacred location lost to the enemy, a mystical waterfall that the group was supposed to collect actively falling water from in a special vessel supplied by Redcorn, they set off. Cracaryn’s ranger abilities and the extra magic allowed the group to evade several very dangerous encounters, but they were caught by a lair of strixes, the ACKS version of stirges. Cleaving is such a great mechanic for fights like this, with a bunch of little things that die easy. The group made short work of it and didn’t even bother to look for treasure. They were laser focused on the mission.

Eventually the tracker located the waterfall, but it was fouled and corrupted into a disgusting oozing ichor instead of the idyllic scene of old. They scaled it to try and locate the source of the corruption, finding a dark cavern where the spring was supposed to be. A rotting unicorn’s head was suspended above the spring by three iron chains covered in runes, dripping what appeared to be fresh blood into the spring steadily.

Mingo Falls

Clearly this wasn’t right. Planning how to interact with it took a while, with a pretty heavy handed strategy of shooting fireballs at it and trying to pull it down with ropes. Eventually they attacked where the chains were anchored into the ceiling, releasing the imprisoned entity that was powering the ritual. A body of synthetic flesh grew from beneath the unicorn’s head and arms sprung out to lash about with the freed chains.

The fight was pretty tough, with the mage hench and the only member able to use the teleportation scrolls nearly killed. Basus the Paladin was bewitched and turned against the party, but it was near the end of the fight. As any experienced DM can tell you, rarely does a single powerful enemy fare too well against a determined adventuring group. Need minions and extra targets to distract/dilute the party’s power.

Once the creature was destroyed, the spring slowly began to correct itself. They camped, collected the pure water in the AM, and teleported back to Millon. A quick ride got them to Jolus’ tower where they met Redcorn. In an augmented reality scene laid telepathically over the vegetable corpse on his throne, Jolus imbued Redcorn with crazy powerful psychic spiritual reality altering magic and everyone present had to roll a 50% chance to fuel the endeavor. Unfortunately, both Miquella the Bard and Basus failed and were consumed by the spell. The rest of the region, if not the world itself, also has to make that roll. Juiced up and ready to throw down, Redcorn will be off to combat Khorne as soon as I figure a way to run that.

Musings:

I still have the war going on in the background with some loose threads that could be interesting. Ultimately, this is a reset for the campaign. I want to give someone else a chance to DM and I want a break after 2 ½ years or whatever it’s been. But I want a chance for folks to engage with their legacies in interesting ways. I appreciate all the work and time we’ve had in the game, but it’s time for something new.

I will DM again. I may come back to Oberholt after a time skip and extrapolation of the fallout after the Snap. I may do something completely new. I may tie into the new DM’s world. Who knows? I’ll have an after-action of the whole campaign and my findings as a DM when it’s all over. It was an experimental endeavor for me and my table of players that taught us all a lot about running a truly open game focused on player agency.

Session 82: Round 2

 Session 82: Round 2

8/31/24-9/2/24, rest 9/3, active 9/4

PC: Valda, Zektel, Brumdor, Cracaryn

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

#ACKS

Bigtoe the Betrayer, the Kinslayer, the Wombat attacked Teutch tower and took it over just a day prior to this session’s scheduled date. The treasonous dwarf was focused on killing Teutch but also included in his orders provisions to capture or kill Zektel the Shaman. I could have run that in abstraction but with the date so close to the session I thought it would be more interesting to play it out.

We opened on the aerial combat between Bigtoe’s steampunk flying anime mech thing and Teutch’s aerial defense force of griffins and hippogriffs. The adventurers were out of the loop about why it was happening. Zektel’s troops were able to bring tidbits of recon during the first minutes of the session which drove their discussion about what to do.

Apparently there were kill squads out hunting henches and vassals of Teutch, including Zektel. The word was they would accept surrender from Zektel but he didn’t trust that at all and immediately planned to RUNNOFT. Zektel’s logic was that even if he could negotiate in good faith with a known backstabber, he certainly couldn’t do so if he was already in custody. Brumdor the Machinist, a known associate of Bigtoe’s, was trying to talk him into surrendering. Eventually the party agreed to let Brumdor talk to Bigtoe while they tried to get away.

Brumdor spoke with Bigtoe after the invader narrowly defeated Teutch’s hench Lockleaf in the dogfight over the Purple Tower. Bigtoe allowed Brumdor the opportunity to talk the shaman down before ratcheting up the pressure. He was in no condition or mindset to think about Zektel with Teutch still at large and his robot banged up from the battle.

In the meantime, the party used some magic to try to sneak away down towards Rushford, but the switchback leading to the river was guarded. They tried to talk their way past which failed and thought better of forcing their way through, even though they were pretty sure to win against some normal mercs. The group returned to the tavern to wait.

Brumdor delivered Bigtoe’s demands. Surrender or else. Zektel hated it but chose to abide. When more troops showed up under the command of Bigtoe’s henchman Augusta, Zektel went quietly with the party in tow. Augusta the Lawful Crusader was irritable with the whole thing, but did his duty and delivered them to Bigtoe in the lobby of Teutch tower where he lounged smoking a cigar and receiving reports of the aftermath of the battle. Once receiving an official renunciation of Teutch and allegiance to the purple tower, Bigtoe forgot about them and focused on finding Teutch. The party filed out and considered their next move.

The goal was a bag of any kind. They thought the Sphinxes might have been battling since last session’s ambush attempt and they figured to take advantage of whichever side was weakest. They traveled out to the Fallen Castle dungeon and found signs of battle with tufts of sphinx fur and scorch marks and blood everywhere. Cracaryn was able to track Meowster’s crew leaving the scene, but lost the trail due to the rugged terrain and penalties to tracking flying creatures.

After camping, the party decided to take a run at the hellhounds inside the dungeon. Zektel scouted with his spiritwalking and got a little turned around by trying to walk through 20ft walls. Eventually he determined that the hellhounds had suffered casualties during the sphinx battle and only had four. He was confident that using his protective magic that the party would be able to kill the remaining ones and take their loot.

They entered the dungeon and buffed up, doing their best to creep up on the hellhounds. Valda and Brumdor would hold the front line with immunity to fire while the rest shot from outside of the creatures’ breathing distance. The plan worked ok until one of them leapt over the frontline and breathed into Nicky the Nightblade’s face. She crumpled but that was it for the enemy who was defeated soon after.

The group got an impressive haul of treasure in the form of items, a little bit of cash, and bounced out of the dungeon and back to the Tower to end the session.

Musings:

The whole point of downtime activity, particularly with Patrons and other entities that do not play in sessions, is to generate gameable content. The latest war happening in downtime while the adventurers play in session has produced something, finally, for them to interact with live. That was cool, they got through it ok, and were even able to gain a bag. 

Zektel’s former liege is at large, with the Shaman having access to his congregation and his head still. It remains to be seen how the rest of the war will play out and whether the Shaman and Machinist can coexist.

Session 81: The Venture in Adventurer

 Session 81: The Venture in Adventurer

8/19/24-8/25/24, rest 8/26, active 8/27

PC: Valda, Zektel, Brumdor, Cracaryn

Hench: Bazam, Crom, Zero, Nicky, Randy

#ACKS

The session started on 8/19 due to time jail from last week, but the party was fine burning a day so hey whatever. Team B started in Teutch Tower where they paid Teutch’s people to start researching the weird magic crown they found a while back. Zektel also started to see the effects of the conversion of Teutch’s mostly apathetic population to The Cult of the Foot under his weird Neutral Aztec god.

Zektel was adamant that the party finish their mission for Teutch to locate and map Simba the Sphinx’s lair. The reward wasn’t what they were accustomed to in terms of gold or treasure so there was some balking but with no real better options off they went.

Teutch had wanted to attune to the dungeon near his tower since the beginning of Oberholt. He even built a road for adventurers to get out there easily. Its upper levels have been delved a few times by PCs and NPCs, but no real attempts had been made thus far to “clear it out” or delve to the bottom or anything.

The idea was floated during downtime that there would likely be a backdoor to a lower level that Simba and his pride of Sphinxes would use to come and go, rather than traverse the winding, weird hallways of the upper levels. That sounded plausible to me and my trusty 2d6 supported it, so when the party started searching for it they eventually found a massive door with runes over the frame at the bottom of a hidden crevice in the rocky hills around the Fallen Castle itself.

Some estimation of “how deep in the dungeon would this door lead” from outside was met with “lol” and “lmao”. Mythic underworld dungeon environments don’t make sense in the light of the rational sun-kissed world of the surface. Just simply no way to guess that. What they were sure of is that it was significantly deeper than the first level of the castle just by nature of how deep the crevice was.

Zektel the shaman used his cooldowns of Spiritwalk and Commune to investigate and divine the nature of the door and dungeon beyond, learning of some hellhounds nearby and confirming that Simba was indeed laired within. Valda’s new sword that can Locate Object was unable to pick up on Simba’s trademark rings however, so the group suspected his lair was far from the door.

The group returned to the Tower and schemed. They would talk to Meowster and have his sphinxes set an ambush for Simba. They would upgrade their armament by buying from Bigtoe’s nearby workshop. They would commission a magic scroll to help read the runes on the door.

Fast forward a few days to the party camped above the door. Brumdor had a new mech robot thing, Meowster, Snowball, and the rest of his pride showed up, and the party was discussing what to do with the door.

It's only a matter of time before we see the Exosquad in action

Cracaryn wanted a war of attrition. Ambush anything that came out of the entrance. He felt that breaching the door would give them away and force Simba’s pride into action, which the party did not want to be a part of because sphinxes are scary tough. If they were gonna breach the door they had to find their target fast before it could respond.

Zektel wanted to breach and delve the level for treasure. He felt the group would eventually find the enemy lair and be able to complete their mission. The rest of the party had no real opinions. They argued back and forth for a while, despite not having learned how to even open the door.

Dispel magic didn’t work, but Meowster agreed to translate the runes for them just to watch them work at the riddle. I mean, all these sphinxes there had to be a riddle, right? They spent some time trying to dope it out, even trying to get Meowster to solve it for them. He of course would do no such thing, not for free at least, and they argued about whether to pay him and his motives for being here and why oh why did we agree to adventure? Some jokes were made about profit margins and only seeking Venturer style adventure (bean counting) and they slept on it.

I'm adVenturing!

Overnight, a sphinx and some hellhounds exited the door, but the hounds' incredible senses picked up something was amiss. Initiatives for the watch and monsters were tied! ACKS II says those who are outnumbered act first, so the enemy side hauled ass back into the dungeon. Snowball leapt down to try and hold the door open while Valda grabbed a big stone to try and block it should it close.

The sphinxes said they could try to hold it open for a while but it was obviously very difficult. The group did not trust the cat dudes and argued for a while until the rock holding the door open shattered and it slammed shut. They finished their rest and then Zektel paid for Meowster’s best guess at the answer to the riddle, which was fortunately correct. The party buffed up expecting hellhounds and went inside, the nigh invincible mantis robot thing in the lead.

A very large hallway led them to an intersection. Early tracking showed sphinxes and hellhounds parting and Zektel called to follow the hounds. They lost the trail at the next intersection and wandered a bit, finding a large room with a pulsing spiral of runes across most of the floor. I warned them that their buff spells had worn out, but that got missed I guess as there was confusion about that later on. 

They backtracked and located the hellhound lair which turned to combat fast as the hounds heard the stompy robot approach. The first round of combat had the mech near destroyed and some solid hits on the enemy. Valda was blasted down and the group called a retreat. They were able to throw summoned animals at the hounds long enough to escape. In the distance, they heard cackling and baying from the hounds as they tortured one of the summoned wolves.

Musings:

The history of the campaign has set unreasonable expectations of rewards for missions. That showed itself during this session in the arguments over why they were even pursuing the sphinx mission in the first place. The pursuit of adventure is clouded by the return on investment and profit margin conversation. A natural result of gold for xp systems, but exaggerated by the inflated economy in Oberholt where coffee runs are showered with more gold than anyone can carry.

There’s also a sense that NPCs are going to simply adventure for them. Arguments were made about why Meowster’s pride wouldn’t just go in the dungeon, but that wasn’t the agreement that Teutch struck with the Sphinxes. We’ll see what interactions shake out around that doorway now that each side knows the other is there.

I made a mistake in the combat with the hellhounds in that I allowed them to cleave with their fire breath. It didn’t feel right at the time but I couldn’t find anything specific in the book about it. Consultation with ACKS oracle Arb confirmed my suspicion. Even though it’s a single target effect, it’s essentially a spell-like ability which is not eligible for cleaves. I don’t know that it would have changed the fight significantly because most of the meat the party had in front were low HD wolves, but I pulled off at the end and decided the hounds would torture a captured wolf instead of pursue. I don’t mind killing everyone but not if it’s by a mistaken rule.

Session 80: Swamp Song

 Session 80: Swamp Song

8/11/24-8/17/24, rest 8/18, active 8/19

PC: Valda, Zektel, Brumdor, Cracaryn, Miquella

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

#ACKS

Once more into the swampy breach! Team B was determined to clear those hexes for the big payout from Issac. They engaged in a little shopkeeping at the beginning of the session just to annoy the DM and then they were off.

A stacked-stone hut housed a handful of ogres who were torturing and eating captives inside. The party dispatched them easily, not even utilizing the troops standing at the ready to attack, which the mercs were ok with. They were still on duty and were still gonna get paid from the secret cache of loot the group dug up. Zektel also tended to the one survivor’s feet, a young woman in some kind of shock.

During their camp, the young woman was revealed to be a monster! Her head popped off and flew around, trying to scare everyone, and she threw some spells which had no chance to land because everyone’s saving throws are too high. The party killed it easily despite the shocking ambush.

Combing the swamp revealed a few lizardmen who evaded the adventurers, some ticks, some birds, and a giant prehistoric crocodile. This lair search happened at the same time as a dangerous terrain encounter hit, which was obscuring conditions. A heavy fog rose and the 40’ long 15 HD croc chose then to defend its lair.

Many mercenary crossbowmen got munched and Brumdor nearly got his face bit off. One of the new ranger henches lost a hand before the group was finally able to destroy the creature. They confirmed that it was the final lair for that hex and that meant mission complete!

The group bounced back to Riverstride, got paid for their efforts, then rushed out to Teutchland to deal with the pending sphinx situation. On their way through the swamp they saw some flying giant wasps buzzing overhead that were perfectly happy to fly on by. Miquella the Bard launched into Tool’s Swamp Song to inspire courage in his teammates in case there was trouble. I rolled to determine whether the wasps cared about that. Apparently they weren't Tool fans and attacked.

Their paralyzing stingers were pretty brutal and they were able to scoop two henches and try to carry them off, even implanting an egg in one of them. The party’s ranged attacks were too powerful though and thanks to Zektel’s massive healing ability everyone recovered fine. The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful and we ran out of session time as they arrived in Teutchland. The next Team B session will be staged to definitely not be killed between the two warring sphinx prides of Meowster Mittens and Simba.

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.