Wilderlands Campaign (Shadow Warriors)

Game Master Miranda

Raven

Recalling that any bounty posters are placed on a wall of the Watch Headquarters (and checking the sketch map hastily drawn the previous night), Raven headed across the corner of the busy marketplace.
The noise of commerce and smells of food and drink promise much on this warm early summer day. A couple of town guardsmen monitor the chaos seemingly oblivious to all the activity around them.
Before he's able to cross the edge of the marketplace, a throng of ragged children surround you. An older boy in ragged clothing, perhaps 11, addresses you.
"Hello mister, spare some money for the children, a silver piece to feed us all?"

'greaaaaaaat...' thinks Raven, miserably. just what he needs!

"fine! as long as you don't go bothering me again!" Raven flips a coin of GOLD at them as he doesn't really focus as much on which coin it is, as long as it will get them to not bother him.

While the kids still marvelling at the coin, Raven doubles back and says "say...don't suppose you get to see most things going on around all over the town? because I want something that I can't usually get being new here...information concerning to those who play in the shadows most of the time. If you could tell me such things, I would appreciate well, along with more where that came from"

While regaining his intent on going to find some bounties, he glances back and says "oh, if you bump into a strange, smelly man with a big dog. hang out with him, he just loooooves being around childeren and the poor!". He flips another gold piece to them.

So from then Raven heads towards his destination, gaining some mirth back into his day with that mischief.

hahahaha...HAHAHAHAHAHA

Taramis

Make a diplomacy check, you can get an aid from bluff (not exactly a secret message but near enough) when speaking to the boy

lets see if this works, I have a bluff of +15

Another diplomacy check to gather information and a perception check

Diplomacy

hopefully they can find me my lock picks, good quality ones as well :D

Raven
Oops, didn't check page 2. Diplomacy check for the boy. You'll get some bonuses with that money
You find the following posters:
An older poster asking for information leading to the return of certain jewellery stolen from Kanto Manor, a reward of 100gp offered.
A new poster for a blue skinned dwarf wanted for murder, with a possible female armoured accomplice.
A poster warning of possible zombie attacks at night and wanting any information about the cause.
A watch sargeant observes your interest. "looking to earn some coin, it's a dangerous business that round here."
Diplomacy check if you want to talk to him

Taramis
Your aid from bluff would be 1d20 + bluff giving a bonus of +2 for 10-19, +3 for 20-29 etc on the diplomacy roll.
The stallholder continues, "You know those children are under the protection of the Fat Man, that's why the Watch does nothing".
"Looks like we have company", observes your snake looking behind you. You turn round and see two almost identical halflings. The stallholder finds a reason to go elsewhere. One halfling speaks, "good to see someone understands the value of children. Meet us in the alley behind the Inn in one hour, we have what you want".

1d20 + 15 ⇒ (13) + 15 = 28 for the bonus

Taramis looks at the two halflings and smiles. 'I'll see you then. I have a few things to take care of first'.

Taramis turns to the snake and says (in the master-familiar language) 'Shall we find Angel?'

With this, Taramis heads into the market place, looking for Angel.

1d20 + 4 ⇒ (5) + 4 = 9 for my perception
1d20 + 9 ⇒ (10) + 9 = 19for the snake who also has scent

Sorry for inaction: busy week.

A typically slim but wiry male elf, a little over six feet tall, and possessed of a natural grace and agility exceptional even by the standards of his people. Pale of skin and with raven-black hair, Cal is usually dressed in his own personal take on the latest fashion. Currently favouring layers of delicate blue-grey materials, plain save for the occasional embroidered highlight, it is clear that he spends a great deal of time (and money) on maintaining his appearance. The apparent attention to detail put into his appearance is somewhat belied as a statement of seriousness by the look of slight amusement never far from his features. With his hair tied back from his forehead, his large almond-shaped eyes and their purple pupils inevitably draw attention,
the look of mischief in them a suitable companion to the smile that always threatens to overwhelm his lips. His voice is melodic and rich, and even brief conversations are regularly enlivened with bursts of sparkling, albeit often ill-considered, wit.

Cal will look for the party at the Inn. If they're not there, he leaves a message with the Innkeeper and will wander in town keeping an eye out for them. If anyone is there, he'll leave the same message with them and proceed similarly. The message is that, should they still be interested, he'll take them to meet one of OAK's scholars, who might be very interested in hearing about their travels and seeing any unusual items they may have discovered. If he meets anyone in person, he emphasises that OAK regularly rewards the discoverers of even apparently-worthless pieces of obscure lore, and that OAK also has access to a number of unusual items likely not found within Durbenford's market. He'll go on to say that, while any such meeting might be a bit of a bore, it'll probably be worth their time, and it would definitely be best if the whole party attended. He also offers to try and answer any questions the party have about town, and accompany them if they want to look around - although he recommends waiting on any serious shopping till after seeing OAK.

1d20 + 5 ⇒ (19) + 5 = 24

Raven

Oops, didn't check page 2. Diplomacy check for the boy. You'll get some bonuses with that money
You find the following posters:
An older poster asking for information leading to the return of certain jewellery stolen from Kanto Manor, a reward of 100gp offered.
A new poster for a blue skinned dwarf wanted for murder, with a possible female armoured accomplice.
A poster warning of possible zombie attacks at night and wanting any information about the cause.
A watch sargeant observes your interest. "looking to earn some coin, it's a dangerous business that round here."
Diplomacy check if you want to talk to him

Diplomacy +18

[dice]1d20+18

Session 21: Shopping
Picking up the loose ends of the PBP activities and some FTF adventuring
Raven checked out the current rewards and found out that the local Thieves Guild was run by someone called "The Fat Man".
Angel got a tour of the town from Shubryn, paid some incentives, and heard a number of rumours about the Thieves Guild run by "The Fat Man", the Sewers, the problems with the logging trade, a rival thieves guild, and possible attacks from Giants in the mountains. She also met up with her new Cohort, a flamboyant and rumbunctuous Cleric named Justin (and Russell Brand alike) who seemed to fit in quite easily.
Taramis met up with a couple of identical halfling rogues and they arranged a meet behind the Inn where she got her lockpicks and a warning not to freelance in town without paying the Guild dues.
Mihaly found out her parents were in town trying to arrange some trade deals, mainly because their main rival, Jaques Dul'Gae was also rumoured to be doing deals here.
Ba'Thorn met the local lake Druid Bevin and then flew around in bird shape scouting the local area looking for property the party could buy.
Cal met up with the party at the end of the day and they all went over to the Order of Ancient Knowledge and made a deal whereby the Order brought details of the Caverns they'd been in and most of the items they'd liberated, especially those of more historical significance. In exchange the Order was able to sell almost all the items the party were looking to buy.
Next day having tooled up with their new gear, the party were again invited to OAK for an urgent mission to retrieve 3 items that had gone missing. A mocking ransom demand had been received and the Order took a very dim view of this. The Order offered membership and some bonus prestige for items retrieved plus the usual adventurers clause.
The party decided to take up the offer and were teleported nearby the location where the items were believed hidden, White Plume Mountain, so called for it's geothermal activity, a plume of steam ejecting from it's summit.
The party proceeded through a large crack in one side, apparently a well known entrance, and headed down some stairs into a corridor with foot deep water. Around a corner lay a bored Gynosphix on a pile above the water who informed the party they had to answer a riddle correctly to get past the Symbol traps on the three corridors. They managed the first one correctly, and then encoutered some green slime on the ceiling (fireballed) and under the water (stand-in 10' pole detection) which they avoided by some climbing, flying, and elemental form.
Another riddle was easily solved but they were suprised by a mimic pretending to be a portcullis which proved a tricky opponent until they could get some distance. Cal's bowmanship did impressive damage and the bardsong proved useful. Moving on, they found a large cavern with some strange suspended platforms in it.
Continuing Trouble in Durbenford, modified for the campaign and character's background hooks, with a side trek to S2 using most of the 3.5e WotC free conversion notes. Another classic module from 1st Ed. We'd already played S1 with a set of non-campaign characters. I like being able to get them into modules before letting them know "hey you're in S2" at the end of the session.

Final bit of description...

Danger will find Cal wearing a fine mithral chain-link shirt under a lightweight outer layer of shadow-hued garments. A darkened sword-scabbard at his waist, Cal wears a pair of delicately-patterned bracers on his forearms. His left arm has a small buckler strapped to it, while his right fist is decorated with a number of delicate silvered spikes. He bears an instantly-recognisable longbow - near as tall as he is - that appears to be made not from wood, but some kind of crystalline substance. Semi-opaque and pale blue-grey in colour, under close examination the internal structure of this unusual weapon seems to shift before the viewer's gaze. A large dusk-coloured leather quiver embroidered with grey thread is slung over one shoulder.

Like so, sort of. But with black hair.

Session 22: (Back in the) White Plume Mountain
The cavern had boiling mud in the bottom 50ft below. Rather than risk the platforms, Angel tried flying across and got caught by an exploding mud spout that knocked her out of the air (failed Fly check), into the boling mud.
RAW are not clear about Resist Fire and boiling mud (or water). I considered boiling mud doing the same damage as water 10d6, with Resist Fire being applied, given it was heat damage. Falling is obviously onto a soft surface, and you could sink (or swim) in it, if you could take the heat damage.
Her ring of Resist Fire stopped most of the damage and she managed to fly out to the other side. After that the party checked the mud spout timings and avoided the mud spouts with the Bard hopping over the suspended platforms and the Druid using his earth elemental movement to walk through the walls. The Witch flew.
For this session we were missing the Monk and Fighter which meant a distinct lack of front-line meat shields
They went down acorridor to a room and found a dwarf in armour, he glared at Cal and told him to "Kill the Spellcasters" which Cal interpreted as casting Confusion on the party. Doing that earned him another save which he fortunately made. Even more fortunately the rest of the party saved. Even so, the dwarf with his hammer beat up the Druid's dinosaur with ease. Next up was Angel's Cleric cohort, who realised the Dwarf was undead and got off a channel energy before getting them hammer treatment too. The Witch's spells and hexes were again ineffectual against undead. Angel tried a web to slow down the Dwarf, then Cal hit it from behind with arrows, and Tara used a want of lightning to zap the Dwarf and burn the web. A final magic missile from Angel as the party retreated back to the mud cave took the Dwarf down saving the party from a choice between the Hammer and mud bath.
The dwarven vampire headed back to the room but the party quickly found the hiding place of the coffin and finished off the vampire, liberating the first of the three weapons they were looking for, the Hammer. The Cleric needed some curing, but the dinosaur was only saved with a couple of hero poiints.
I'd tried the PH2 Guardian Spirits rules, but they didn't quite work. After a little discussion, we decided as a group to use the hero points rules but excluded the spells and items options. That keeps the points low, constant, and for emergency use only.
The party rested at this point, being somewhat beaten up. Afterwards they headed back through the mud cave, this time they were ambushed by some Gargoyles as they headed across, this exercised the flying skill rolls and manoeuvring, including hovering on attack as the gargoyles attacked Cal whilst he held onto the swinging discs. Fortunately the Witch's sleep hex proved a great way to knock Gargoyles out of the sky.
The party then found a room with silvery spheres suspended from the ceiling.
The original module provides for "wandering monsters", whereas the conversion misses them out. I'd suggest including them as part of the logic of this puzzle dungeon, especially when they can use the environment.

So the plan is that I will teleport a few of us back to town (hopefully) and purchase some new gear for the group. If anyone has anything they want, please state what you want here, and we will see if we can get it.

Well, it's been a long time between posts for all of us. Lots has happened. Tara has gone walk about, Cal is AWOL as is the Ninja that was with us for a few. I do hate it when reality kicks down the door of fantasy and hauls players off for its own nefarious purpose. The only long term (ish) members remaining are Raven the conflicted fighter and Angel. We have some new members: Thal a half orc Alchemist, Bal a gnome Paladin (with a Blink Dog steed) and Dion a Monk. The latter showed up just in time I must say... the last fight was looking pretty bad. We had found the body of the Marquis in the lower level of the keep (and a poorly designed one at that, never seen so many external doors). On top of the body was a baby, a live baby with some decidely fiendish features. Seems that the Marquis's squeeze, Jessica, was not all she seemed. This was of course no surprise to Angel who didn't like her from the off. Well (*gasp*)she was a succubus (with some levels). Angel was looking foward to teaching her a bit of a lesson, however the showdown came towards the end of the days exploration,and Jessica brought some friends. There were some wraiths and wights to cause real inconvenience, an Ooze demon (with an initiate roll of 28!), oh and a Nightcrawler - all CR16 or so of it. We were pretty screwed by the end of the first round. Thal decided to go all mutegen and melee the baddies but was taken in with 2 hits by the night crawler, Bal was trapped in the cavern unable to dim door (through some dimensioal anchor effect) and therefore losing his greatest advantage of mobility and the rest of us were cut off from them by various cloud effects. It didn't get much better the next round with Raven dominated, Justin (ever faithful cohort Cleric and baby holder) nauseated. Angel's summoned celestial diretiger got nailed shortly after that. Bal managed to lay hands on Thal but got hammered trying to get go while the blink dog was held, Justin was being suffocated by the Ooze demon. We had managed to get rid of most of the wraith and wights at that point. Thal managed to get out of the cavern by changing into a earth elemental. Angel then sealed off the exit with a wall of force leaving Jessica and the nightcrawler on the other side. Meanwhile the monk and Thal beat the Ooze demon off saving Justin. Angel then dispelled the dominate on Raven. Jessica and friend disappeared through a some portal threatening vengeance in true evil nemesis style.
The general consensus seems to be; head upstairs (away from the roiling mist covering the floor) heal up, rest up and head back down - if nothing else to nail the ooze, seal the portal and do what we can to cleanse the pace of some of the evil before we head back to Durbanford to return the body of the mMarquis to his father the Duke and give him the bad news about his prospective daughter in law Jessica. We can't decide however on what to tell him about the baby.....

Guess my +1 studded leather armour just doesn't cut it in a stand up (or should that be splat down) fight with a Nightwalker. Especially one armed, literally, with the sword of Orcus.
Note from CON 12 body to INT 28 brain - please analyse melee combat for patterns - number of rounds in entire career spent within reach of monsters = 2, round 1 smashed by Nalfeshnee only avoiding death by immediate use of Breath Of Life (thanks Father Justin), round 2 shish-kebabed by Nightwalker only avoiding death by expenditure of 2 Hero Points (thanks Advanced Player's Guide). Conclusion: never, ever, and I mean NOT EVER get in melee again !
Still, I think we recovered heroically from the initial disasters. The Paladin heroically revived the Alchemist with a ride-by laying on of hands, the dominated Raven heroically took out two wraiths via a literal interpretation of a "don't let anyone pass" order, Angel heroically ignored the attacks of other wraiths to seal off the demons with a Wall Of Force, and Dione, the Monk of Good Timing, pulled our fat out of the fire by heroically ignoring our prior ineptitude to join the party.
Now we only have to avert, to quote the deceased Marquis, a "world of utter horror" caused by the escape of the Succubus and Nightwalker with the demon sword. Guess we got left holding the baby !

Still don't get where the baby features in Jessica's plans for world domination and why she should leave it there for us to find by the marquis body - is it simply an inconvenient byproduct of her seduction of the Marquis? I also didn't know the gestation of a demon baby was days - I mean she did not look pregnant a couple of weeks ago. I so want to test out how fire resistant succbus really are...
Has anyone else noticed that we seem to be collecting nemesis; the adventuring group we caught killing the mayor, the lich, necromaners and now the Jessica and friend. Perhaps we could arrange for them to kill each other off (hopefully before they decide to team up.
Anyone know of a feat that allows diplomacy as a standard action?

The Marquis' note said that Jessica had to complete her ancient task of creating a place on this world of utter horror to prepare it for Orcus. The baby is now somewhere in line of succession for the Dukedom, so may one day wield political power on a regional scale to foster this chaos and evil, according to Jessica's plans (no-one likes a demon Duke).
Being a succubus, Jessica can change shape and presumably changed the shape of her belly. Oh vanity thy name is pregnant demoness !
Can't think of a feat for faster Diplomacy, but the channel focus Just Scale from PF Companion Faiths Of Balance does this: "This set of small gold-plated scales is inscribed with words from Abadar’s holy text. When activated, its presence aids in negotiations, making attempts to change the attitude of another person by one step a swift action instead of requiring 1 minute. The user must touch the scales and speak to the intended target as part of the skill check. The item remains activated for 1 hour, or until it has been used to influence a number of creatures equal to 1/2 the effective cleric level of the person who activated it." NB. A cleric can activate the focus for someone else but not much use for you since you're not one of Abadar's faithful.