06-05 - Slave Ships of Absalom

[Ring_of_Gyges]

I'm prepping to run Slave Ships this Friday and I'm hazy on what a "docking certificate" is supposed to be.

Lady Darchana asks appropriate PC's to destroy the "docking certificate of the At Sea" for unspecified reasons. The Harbormaster section gives a procedure for obtaining the "docking certificate for the Kat Season" (which is the same ship).

Two questions. First, which name is on the actual docking certificate? Second, what *is* a docking certificate? Some sort of permission to dock presumably. Issued by whom?

The impression I get is that Lady D's reasons are being held back for a later scenario, and that's fine, but what are the PC's to think in the meantime? If a Paladin asks "So, what are the consequences of destroying some sort of official document?" Is he potentially covering up a mistake by whatever official granted the certificate? Is he potentially erasing evidence the ship was ever there? How is he supposed to decide whether to go along with Lady D's plan without knowing what the document's legal function is?

Maybe a birth certificate is a good analog, I know what a birth certificate is and does so I can evaluate a request to destroy or forge one or whatever. If I don't know what a "TPS compliance certificate" I can't know whether to destroy it.

Any thoughts?

[Mark Garringer]

The docking certificate would have been issued for the At Season. The verbiage on page 12 is a typo. I probably mixed them up in my turnover and it wasn't picked up in development.

As to your second question, yes. It is official permission to dock. The implication being that if the ship doesn't have an official docking certificate then they must have been paying someone bribes to dock. The certificate is issued by the Harbormaster's Grange, which is a powerful city office. A Paladin would very likely have a pretty big problem with taking and destroying an official city document.

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Thanks for the response, it's great to have access to the scenario's authors, I appreciate it.

[Mark Garringer]

Not a problem at all :)

[Blackbot]

So...she basically asks to do this to start a witch-hunt?
That makes much more sense than "Plase destroy the docking certificate of the ship you are about to take over.", I guess...

[Mark Garringer]

Lady Darchana and Goodman Hugen have a bit of a long standing tiff with each other. :)

[Silbeg]

Mark Garringer wrote:

The docking certificate would have been issued for the At Season. The verbiage on page 12 is a typo. I probably mixed them up in my turnover and it wasn't picked up in development.

Mark, methinks you are still confused!

At Sea or Kat Season. ;)

Mark, are you going to be at Gen Con this year? If so, I'd love to get the chance to share a table with you... with or without beer.

[Mark Garringer]

Silbeg I'm not sure I'm following you there. The docking certificate on file would be for At Sea since it has been in Absalom before. There would not yet be a docking certificate for the Kat Season as it has yet to dock for the first time under that name. There are three references to the docking certificate in the pdf, 2 of them reference At Sea and one Kat Season, but that one should also refer to the ship as At Sea. Not a big deal either way though :)

I will be at Gen Con for sure, we'll have to see if we can get a table!

[Silbeg]

Oh... just that you said "At Season" in your reply... honesty, was teasing.

As for the GenCon, will switch to PM.

[Mark Garringer]

Oh oh oh. I see it now. Yeah, see? I can't even seem the straight any more. :)

[Hrothdane]

Mark Garringer wrote:

Lady Darchana and Goodman Hugen have a bit of a long standing tiff with each other. :)

Hah! I had that in mind as her reason for the request when I ran it. I'm glad I was on the same page as the author :)

[Deussu]

Still a dumb name for a ship.

[Brandy Camel]

Deussu wrote:

Still a dumb name for a ship.

"Kat Season"? I suspect that's rather the point. When I ran it, I made it a point to be as awkward as possible about it. It's supposed to be a shoddy disguise, and I recall the scenario saying as much.

Now, my captain's ship, "The Drunken Monkey?" There's a real ship name. ;)

[Deussu]

No, the ''At Sea''. A dumb name for a ship. It became a running joke.

[Blackbot]

And one that is incredibly hard to translate into German, because there are not many words contaning "Auf" that would logically be follwed by something beginning with "See". ("At Sea" = "Auf See"; "Zur See" would be unusual, but possible. According to leo.org at least. I never heard it, which adds to the whole "Dumb name"-thing).
I decided to turn "Zur See" into "AZurneSee" - Azure Sea. The "ne" does not really fit between "Zur" and "See" so it looks quite cramped and unprofessional.

[mbauers]

It says that if the PCs recoup the money from Mahdi: "If they are successful, Sovereign Court PCs earn the Budding Friendship Boon
on the Chronicle Sheet."

But on the Chronicle Sheet it doesn't say "Sovereign Court" next to the boon. Is this an error in the text of the scenario, or on the chronicle sheet?

[Mark Garringer]

I believe the original intent was for the to be for the Sovereign Court but during development that boon was opened up to everyone so the Chronicle is correct. Later on at the end the text seems to make it more clear that this is open to everyone:

Quote:

If the PCs successfully negotiated a refund in Lady Silviana’s name, each PC also gains the Budding Friendship (Lady Silviana) boon on his Chronicle sheet.

[kevin_video]

This was asked on Tumblr, but chances are it won't be seen until much later, and I too had a similar question, so I'm just going to paste it here in hopes that someone can answer it.

stevewes asked wrote:

In Society Scenario #6-05: Slave Ships of Absalom there is reference to collecting the bounty for a ship, but no reference to this bounty on the Chronicle Sheet. The reward for the adventure is not greater than is standard for the subtiers, and so my party is wondering if there should be an additional gold reward for the bounty of the ship. Any word on how I as the GM for this Society session should handle it?

[Ascalaphus]

I don't think you get anything extra. It's extremely rare that you get more gold than normal for an adventure. If it's not on the Chronicle you don't get it.

[kevin_video]

Ascalaphus wrote:

I don't think you get anything extra. It's extremely rare that you get more gold than normal for an adventure. If it's not on the Chronicle you don't get it.

That's a pretty throw away answer though. The thing is, if there's not going to be a reward (a boon, extra gold, etc) then why bring it up? If this was a module, then fine you'd ignore it. But it's a PFS scenario.

[KingOfAnything]

It's already calculated into the scenario rewards. If you don't get the bounty, you lose out on that gold.

[Ascalaphus]

KingOfAnything wrote:

It's already calculated into the scenario rewards. If you don't get the bounty, you lose out on that gold.

This is often how it's done. The adventure is usually written to provide X gold split among Y things, they don't all have to be monsters.

[Mark Garringer]

KingOfAnything wrote:

It's already calculated into the scenario rewards. If you don't get the bounty, you lose out on that gold.

Exactly this.

Slaves Ships of Absalom wrote:

Lady Darchana has the bounty payment on Captain Wardak and the At Sea authorized (725 gp at Subtier 1–2, 1025 gp at Subtier 4–5).

This is money that is calculated into the final total subtier amounts, just like any other encounter.