Welcome to Westcrown, City of Twilight. Fanatical Hellknights patrol the streets by day and terrifying shadow beasts stalk the shadows by night. You are not alone in your dissatisfaction with how your city is being governed, a beautifual insurgent introducing herself as Janiven invites you to a meeting at Vizio's Tavern, where you might find like-minded souls impassioned to do something about the fate of Westcrown.
“Again, thank you for agreeing to meet with me here. I have chosen each of you for a singular reason—everyone here, myself included, has suffered, whether we realize it or not. I have lived in Westcrown my whole life, and although I love this city, I must admit, as must you, that despite our peace and prosperity, we continue to suffer. Fear should not be an expected part of life, and yet each night brings fear to our doorsteps. Yes, Westcrown has been safe from war and famine for nearly seventy years, and yes, our businesses has prospered—but this safety and prosperity has been bought in the coinage of fear and prayers to Hell. Other lands live free from tyranny. Other cities do not fear the night. Other governments do not cede the streets to monsters of the infernal shadows. Westcrown was once such a place, and she wants to be such a place again. Westcrown is not only her buildings and canals and docks and history—she is also her people. Westcrown is our friends and neighbors, our mothers and fathers, our siblings and cousins, our sons and daughters!
With but a small group of supporters and dedicated brothers and sisters, we can earn the trust and admiration of those people. A Westcrown free of these shadowy beasts that stalk our streets is one step closer to a Westcrown free of the devil that is the Thrice-Damned House of Thrune!”
Seated at one of the few tables uncovered by heavy dustcloth, Brunora finds herself nodding approvingly as Janiven speaks of reclaiming the city from the hungry shadows that plague the streets after dark. Unlike most dwarves, Brunora does not touch alcohol and instead drinks a vast amount of fruit juice. She looks from their host to the other members of this secret gathering. A gnome in garish motley, a brutal looking half-orc ruffian and a scarred human woman with the stained fingers of an alchemist. Brunora wonders what has caused these strangers to come together and hear Janiven's words in opposition to House Thrune. For Brunora herself, it is nothing more than a desire to see the city free of the fear and tyranny that Janiven speaks of, as should be the goal of any self-respecting cleric.
Hear, hear!" she roars in support, banging her tankard on the table and spilling juice across the surface as Janiven finishes her impassioned speech, "But how do we begin winning the hearts of the people?"
Elane startles as the dwarven cleric beside her starts banging her mug on the table. As strongly as she agrees with Janiven's words, her mind had begun to wander as the woman's speech rambled on. Elane found it hard to focus on anything for very long, she had the attention span of a goldfish. A goldfish with concussion. She had been thinking about how to increase the potency of the experimental laxative she had been engineering when she received Janiven's mysterious summons. Now she wondered if her time could not have been more productively spent back in her workroom. Those dried frogs weren't going to dissect themselves now, were they? When the loud dwarven lady asks how to best win the hearts of the people, Elane immediately volunteers to concoct a potion that weakens the will of those that imbibe it, making their actions easier to dictate - a bit like sheep.
"It would only take a few hours to knock up a batch. Mix it into their water and hey presto, they'll be falling over themselves to do exactly what you tell them to!"
'Job done!' Elane thinks, leaning back in her chair and allowing a self-satisfied smile to twitch across her scarred face.
"Is that not a little unethical?" Peteppo asks uncertainly, turning his watery gaze from the scarred woman who had just spoken back to Janiven, "I don't think we want to control the people, just liberate them from the oppressive yoke of our despotic government. Isn't that right?"
He addresses this question to a wooden figure he has spent the last half hour carving. The puppet nods back enthusiastically and the gnome smiles. Although crude and unpainted, its likeness to Janiven is clear. Peteppo has a good memory for faces and in time, will have created puppets in the likeness of each member of this secretive gathering. Peteppo always had trouble making friends in the conventional sense, so he makes them himself, out of wood - and talks to them as though they were real people. It's a bit creepy, but he doesn't see it like that. Neither did his mentor, the great gnome puppet master Cosmo Allegretti. But then Cosmo put on a show that someone deemed to be of a rebellious nature and the wise old fellow was dragged off by the Hellknights, never to be seen again. Peteppo sighed. He had hoped that by attending this council, he might find some way of locating his old mentor and rescuing him from the Hellknights. That was not looking too likely at the moment.
From his post by the door, Rurisk the Half-Orc thug crosses his arms and grunts. While a rogue and a cutpurse, he is not altogether a bad guy. While he goes out of his way to maintain his appearance of a hard man, Rurisk actually has a young daughter living in Westcrown, whom he solely responsible for after her mother was killed by shadow beasts one night. It is for his daughter's benefit that he agreed to meet with Janiven and her insurgents, as he hopes to help fashion a kinder world for his child. Not that he would ever admit any of this to anyone else. As far as they need to know, he's only in it for the money.
Rurisk eyes the wierd little gnome suspiciously.
'He seems to enjoy those dolls as much as my Marlene enjoys her own toys.' he thinks, scowling. The human female looked equally frail and useless, although their was an inner strength in the dwarf's bearing that made the cleric harder to dismiss out of hand.
'How can weaklings such as these hope to change the fate of a city.' Rurisk wonders.
"Our cause needs fighters! Warriors! To rise up and kill those that would grind us down beneath their boots! The mayor! The Hellknights! The shadow beasts! All must be put to the sword if Westcrown is to be free!"
"No, no, no!" Janiven is appalled by this talk of open revolt, "Our aim is not to create civil unrest, but to try and make Westcrown a safer place to live! That will hardly be the case if there is fighting in the streets! We want to avoid bloodshed, when possible! The last thing we want is to bring the Hellknights down on top of us!"
Suddenly, an excited pounding on the front door of the tavern disrupts the meeting. Janiven peers out of a window and sighs with audible relief before unbarring the entrance and admitting a young boy, struggling for breath.
"Morosino, whatever is the matter?" Janiven asks the red-faced child.
"They've got Arael!" the boy gasps, "The dottari nabbed Arael, and the Hellknights of the Rack are trying to get custody of him! There’s a bunch of Hellknights on their way here now! I only just made it in here, they’ve already surrounded us!"
Rurisk pops his head out of the front door and glances up/down the street.
The shadows are lengthening and it will soon be full dark. This does not seem to concern the squad of Hellknights marching towards the tavern. You can see more armored figures, likely armigers stationed at either end of the alley, just in case anyone is fool enough to make a run for it.
"We've got company!"
Rurisk pulls his head back and replaces the heavy wooden bar across the portal. After a moments thought, he begins piling furniture up against this side of the door. Having created a serviceable barricade, Rurisk begins loading a bolt into his crossbow and trains the weapon on the door.
Forced to stand after the boisterous half-orc stole her chair, Elane rolls her eyes as the green-skinned oaf fumbles with his crossbow. Janiven had suggested that a non-violent solution should be pursued where possible, an instruction that the half-orc seemed intent on ignoring.
Producing a piece of chalk from her pocket, Elane begins sketching a series of arcane runes onto the floor of the tavern. Although she specialized in alchemy, she was also given a basic groundwork of runecraft, a skill which she now employs to draw a Rune of Entanglement in which to ensnare the first few Hellknights that crash through Rurisk's rushed fortifications.
Minutes required:
Enchanter roll:
Time until Hellknights start breaking down the door:
Despite the urgency of the situation, Janiven maintains her composure. Even as the Hellknights begin drumming on the door with their mailed fists, she keeps her cool.
"I'm sorry to have involved you all in this. If I had not known Arael was so closely watched, I would never have summoned you like this. I am convinced that he won't talk - even if they torture him - but if any of you are caught here, you'll be tried as conspirators for a certainty. We have to get out of here. Morosino, help me with the trapdoor."
Behind the bar, Janiven and Morosino shift a few old barrels, revealing a heavy trapdoor set into the floor. When this is opened, an unpleasant smell of sewage wafts up out of the fetid darkness beyond. Janiven wrinkles her nose and glances up at you all apologetically.
"This shaft drops directly into the sewer tunnels that span Westcrown. It's the only way that we're all getting out of here in one piece."
Minutes to complete rune:
Enchanting roll:
:(
While Elane scribbles frantically on the floor and Rurisk prepares his armaments, Brunora crosses the room to peer down the dark shaft that Janiven has just uncovered. While she is less than enthused with the prospect of slogging through the sewers, it is a much more appealing prospect than being taken alive by the Order of the Rack. She begins cutting strips from the heavy dustcloths covering most of the furniture within the tavern, fashioning them into simple masks to make breathing the foul air slightly more bearable.
"The air down there isn't going to get any sweeter," she observes, wrapping the ragged cloth around the lower half of her face, "If we're going, we'd best go now. Do we have torches, or can anyone else see in the dark?"
Peteppo takes the offered cloth and knots it over his mouth and nose. The gnome has a delicate stomach at the best of times and is not looking forward to a journey through the dark/reeking tunnels below the city streets.
Spellcasting roll: Success! :D
Shooting: Success, by 4%.
Once in the sewers, Janiven points out the secret marks that she and her co-conspirators left during their previous excursions into the tunnel system. Providing the group follow these signs, they should emerge near the rebels base of operations - although they must have shaken the Hellknights off their trail before they get there.
“Arael and I made these marks a few months ago when we explored the sewers. We marked all the intersections so our people could find their way through the sewers to our hideout. They might take a few minutes to search in the tavern,but some are going to follow us down here after they grab a lantern or make torches. They might even try to infiltrate the sewers ahead of us if they can guess our route. We need to keep moving.”
Calling a brief halt, Janiven and Morosino shift a rock to reveal a shallow alcove hidden behind it.
"Good, they're still here." Janiven says, handing out a Potion of Healing (2D) to each player character, "We won't have time to stop and rest while the Hellknights are chasing us."
As the group moves through the sewers, Peteppo intermittently pauses to casts Illusion across the path they have taken, making passages appear as dead ends to the untrained eye and hopefully preventing the Hellknights from catching up to the group anytime soon.
Spellcasting: [success]
Hellknight resistance against Illusion [Logic];
The Hellknights are fooled by Peteppo's illusions and waste two hours moving in circles until the images fade and the parties route in unveiled - by which time, the group have put a great distance between themselves and their pursuers.
Janiven takes point and leads you deeper into the sewers beneath Westcrown. Thanks to Peteppo's efforts, the sounds of pursuit grow ever fainter as you move away from the tunnels directly beneath Vizio's Tavern, which will now be crawling with Hellknight Armigers, eager to capture or slay the 'rebels' and attain the right to wear platemail armour.
Up ahead, you see that the tunnels has begun to glow with a soft, gently pulsing phosphorescence. As you get closer, you see that the walls, floor and ceiling of the tunnel are covered in curious, quivering jelly-like creatures.
"Hold," Brunora says, raising a hand to halt the rest of the party, "There is something up ahead, some manner of gelatinous menace. Does anyone have any idea what that thing is - or what it usually eats?"
Logic: [failure]
"I have got no idea what those things are and I do not like the look of them. Perhaps we should backtrack and look for another way around...."
Logic: [failure]
Elane cocks her head and stares at the unfamiliar organism owlishly.
"Whatever it is, it is certainly hideous." the young alchemist muses thoughtfully, "Maybe I should take a few samples...."
Logic: [failure]
"Maybe you shouldn't be poking them like that..." Peteppo suggests, cringing as Elane prods one of the jelly-like creatures with a gloved hand, "You don't want to make them mad."
Logic: [failure]
"Oh, is the little gnome afraid of the big bad ooze?" the half-orc asks mockingly, bestowing a withering glare upon Peteppo, "Your cowardice sickens me to the pit of my stomach."
Forcing his way to the front of the group, Rurisk begins to move through the mass of quivering jellies.
@ Rurisk: As you continue along the tunnel, the ooze-like growths around you begin to quiver erratically/excitedly. The pale light that emanates from within their gelatinous bodies begins to pulse more brightly. You notice that things like eyes on the ends of stalks seem to be watching you from all angles as you move through the midst of these strange critters.
Suddenly, you feel a stinging pain on the back of your neck! Something has fallen from the roof of the tunnel and landed there. You feel six little legs groping for purchase against your skin. Contact with the creature burns like acid! More of the creatures fall around you, some landing on your shoulders, back and arms! The tunnel is suddenly alive with motion, the entire colony is congregating on your position, silent - apart from the squishy sound of their mucilaginous bodies as they crawl towards you!
Damage (bypassing DR):
Rurisk roars in surprise and disgust as the loathsome jelly beasts attack. He rolls his shoulders and shakes his arms to dislodge as many of the critters as possible without actually touching them with his bare hands.
= failure
"Er.... Hello, little jelly monsters!" Peteppo greets his audience with a forced smile, You're looking very...er, thick and viscid today. We were hoping that you might see your way clear to letting us pass. We mean you no harm!"
The gnome glances across at Rurisk, flailing at the critters still tenaciously clinging to his neck and shoulders.
"Well... I don't anyway. I don't speak for him."
Initiative: /
Elane takes a step back and readies her sling. It does not look as though this situation can be resolved diplomatically. She is not unduly upset, as she is looking forward to dissecting one of these strange animals back at her laboratory.
Initiative:
Brunora raises her shield over head and pulls Morosino close to her side.
"Stay close, child." she warns him seriously, "Do not allow any of the creatures to touch your exposed flesh."
"When I give the word, we run as fast as we can and don't stop until we reach the other side. Then you must wait there while I return to help the others, do you understand?"
"Three... Two... One... Go!"
Agility (+20% for shield?): = failure
Initiative:
Damage (bypassing DR):
Initiative for the jelly-creatures:
Initiative:
"I think we might have made them angry...." Peteppo observes, perhaps unnecessarily as the ooze horde bears down on the party.
"You have a gift for understatement." Elane remarks dryly, "It is the only thing more remarkable about you than your willingness to wear that stupid hat."
Warrior [Ranged] attack: = missed :(
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Brunora pauses long enough to ensure that Morosino is unharmed before turning around and returning to help her comrades.
"Stay there!" she instructs the frightened boy, "These tunnels are as dangerous as they are dark and smelly. Wait for myself or one of the others to get you when it is safe."
Readying her axe and shield, Brunora charges back along the tunnel, stifling her dwarven battle cry for fear of attracting the Hellknights who must surely be lurking nearby.
Warrior [Melee] attack: also a miss :(
Second attack: another miss :( :( :(
Damage (bypassing DR): (yikes!)
The jelly creatures swarm all over you, stinging any patch of unprotected flesh as they drip their acidic mucus all over you. Eww.
Rurisk roars in frustration and begins swinging his flail around dangerously. Its effectiveness is somewhat diminished in the cramped confines of the tunnel, but the jelly creatures are clustered around him and it would be very hard not to hit something.
Warrior [Melee]: = success!
Damage: (that was rubbish)
Warrior [Melee]: = another success! :D
Damage: (marginally better!)
Your flail smashes many of the jelly creatures, leaving luminous smears across the walls and floor of the tunnel. You destroy enough of them that those that survive decide to seek less dangerous prey elsewhere. They begin to retreat into the dark corners of the sewer, where they quiver fearfully until you have all gone away.
Elane steps forward now that the immediate danger has passed and crouches down next to a small cluster of the trembling critters. She pokes one with the blunt end of her club and giggles when it emits a high pitched squeaky noise.
"Thank goodness we had such a mighty warrior to protect us from these terrifying beasts!" she says, smirking up at the half-orc brute.
Extracting a glass jar from her pack, the young alchemist gingerly picks up one of the creatures in her gloved hand and pops it inside the container. Having witnessed the acidic nature of their excretions, she is keen to investigate other applications for such a substance. (That's assuming that she even remembers she picked it up when she returns to the surface.)
Rurisk scowls at the frail human alchemist but says nothing. He is painfully aware that while he is much stronger than anyone else in the party, he is also probably the least gifted with brains. Better not to get entangled in a battle of wits, it would be all too easy from this pitiful creature to make him look a fool.
Rurisk reaches for the Healing Potion that Janiven handed to him when they first entered the sewers.
Brunora reaches out and grabs the half-orc's wrist before he can unstop the healing elixir.
"We would be wise to hold onto those until we really need them, I have some skill at healing, let me tend to your wounds."
The dwarven cleric releases her hold on the brawler and appeals to her goddess for divine intervention [healing power].
Cleric: = sucess
Healing: (which restores your BP to 32)
Venturing deeper into the sewers, the sounds of pursuit become fainter and fainter as you steadily increase your lead on the Hellknights. Janiven's pace slows - though you get the impression this is not because the threat of capture is in any way diminished. The young woman appears uncertain, hesitating at junctions where the tunnels branch before selecting a direction to continue.
"We never explored all of the tunnels between Vizio's and the hideout, Arael didn't think we would have need of them this early. He may have mapped more of the sewers, but since he's been taken...." Janiven trails off, radiating concern for her absent comrade. "We should have got there by now... I think I may have taken a wrong tu-aarrggghhhhhhh!!!"
Janiven shrieks as her feet slip out from beneath her and she slides down a steeply sloping tunnel slick with sewage. Within moments, she is gone from your sight!
= success
= success
= failure, by a mere 01%. :(
= also failed.