This is a cool idea. I have both APs and I'm currently running RotRL. My party is in Fort Rannick right now. When I read through the exploration rules in Kingmaker, I had thought they might be used to expand on the "keeping a keep" rules from Hook Mountain.
I might run the ruling of the territory around Fort Rannick as a "side game" to the main RotRL quest. Maybe leave it up to NPC cohorts of the main PC party.
|
No posts for going on a month now. Are you guys still playing?
Yeah, we've played two sessions and have had a number of deaths in the party's foray into hexploration of the Western Mushfens.
I've been terribly busy at work and have been playing too much Civ V at home so I've gotten behind. I'll try to update tomorrow.
|
|
Session 10 - A barrow-mound too far (Heavy KM spoilers for the next few sessions)
I had all 7 players in attendance again:
Amonon - Elven Cleric of Sarenrae
Abinscole - Halfling Bard
Arcainen - Human water bloodline sorceror
Wyndham - Human rogue with a nasty streak (former memeber of Nualia's Band)
Jal - Varisian polearm ranger
Jerrick - Shoanti cleric/bow hunter of Erastil with a colossally terrible Con score (Con=4)
Richard - Chelaxian fighter, brave, heavily armoured sword and board
The team had some detailed discussions about how to explore the Western Mushfens and decided to set up a well-stocked base camp and make shorter radial trips out from that base camp and went on to go for a methodical approach, heading west to do the exploration in the most efficient manner, rather than pursuing any leads about the Stag Lord or the bandits in general. This proved to make things more difficult for them as I had populated the farther-flung hexes with the most difficult encounters and those encounters can be considerably easier when they are foreshadowed from easier encounters that were on the plot-driven path.
Oh well. PCs do what you don't expect.
So, when the previous session ended, the party had encountered a number of invisible pranksters and that continued. This led to a bunch of fun roleplaying as my PCs reacted with the full spectrum of good humour to wanting to catch and kill the Fey. Those PCs that reacted with good humour quickly made peace with Pervalish and Tig Titter-Tut but Wyndham kept reacting with arrows shot into the darkness and talk about killing the pranksters (while they were listening) so his pranks got darker - he was put to sleep and moved into an ally's tent and put in a compromising position, he was hit by a pyrotechnics spell while on watch, he was greased. In the end, he made some kind of amends and called out to the Fey claiming to have given up, while being both cheap and poor-spirited in his gift giving so wasn't quite successful by the end of the session.
Anyway, the group had talked to the Crazy Hermit Bokken and had decided to go looking for Fangberries. They went almost straight to where they were located on the map so had that encounter pretty much as written - thorny bushes plus spider swarms plus difficult terrain meant a minor hassle but nothing too dangerous.
Next, they went into the hex with the Lonely Barrow in it. They succeeded in the difficult perception check to find it when not searching and stood outside talking about what to do with their horses and whatnot, deciding to leave them tied up under Jerrick's companion's care. They had a brief conversation with the spirits of the forest who warned the group to "Be careful in that nasty hole". Undeterred, the group pressed ahead and boldly marched into the barrow. Two of the PCs hit the floor trap and the skeletons came pouring out of the two alcoves. The skeletons were no match whatsoever for my pair of clerics who blasted them in the first round. This added to their confidence and they strode into the final alcove with the Cairn Wight.
This was a problem.
The cairn wight is a bad-assed level draining beast and well-armed, intelligent, mortal danger for a 4th level party.
He quickly dropped the lightly armoured and reckless Jal (who was healed back up and got Attack of Opportunitied back down twice). The extra attacks and level drains were enough to drain him to zero levels so he rose up as a cairn wight too after a round (I hastily interpreted a template from the stat block and added it to Jal). The party trembled.
The first wight was close to killed at this point and was finished pretty quickly but Jal-wight was still very strong and he proceeded to drain-kill Amonon, the cleric who kept not withdrawing enough to be safe from attack.
Now the Jal-wight was finished after another round and Amonon-wight went down pretty quickly because his cleric levels didn't stack as well with the template and was quite a bit weaker.
Yikes, two dead dead PCs in the same non-story-driven encounter. These are the joys of hexploration.
Anyway, in old school form, Jerrick held a service for both men - Jal was buried in a shallow grave to return to the earth and Amonon was cremated and then both players' gear was divvied up among the group. Since the two dead players were going to be busy making characters, the rest of the group decided to loop back through the heart of the western wood (to see about the reptillian tracks they had seen) and to return to civilization to divvy up the spoils (most of which came from their comrades).
There, they encountered the Forest Drake in a kind of reverse encounter - they found his empty lair first, looted it and then waited for the Drake to return. The drake did return and was driven off having only killed one of the horses. For this, they named the wood "Drakewood" and vowed to hunt the drake again later. They then returned to Bokken, delivered his Fangberries and then headed for civilization (everybody but Richard went to Magnimar, Richard went to Sandpoint to see Amieko, who he is trying to court).
With that, we finished for the evening.
I was a bit worried about the wealth transfer from dead PCs to live ones but the treasure list is pretty thin for a 7-PC party so I figured it was fine to let it go. The replacement PCs were to start at 4th level and included a Dwarven Barbarian (played by Amonon's controller) and a half-elf negative channelling cleric of Nethys.
|
|
Session 11 - New blood, old wilderness
Not in attandance: Abinscole - Halfling Bard, who remained with the gear back at camp (a conceit that we have to deal with players coming and going)
Arcainen - Human water bloodline sorceror
Wyndham - Human rogue with a nasty streak (former memeber of Nualia's Band)
Jerrick - Shoanti cleric/bow hunter of Erastil with a colossally terrible Con score (Con=4)
Richard - Chelaxian fighter, brave, heavily armoured sword and board
The new recruits were (and I am forgetting the names now):
- A halfelf blaster negative-channeling cleric of Nethys, recruited in Magnimar - he bought a piece of treasure that the party was selling - armour I think.
- A dwarven barbarian battlerager type - His cousin is the woodworking dwarf who lives in Sandpoint whose name escapes me. He met Richard when Richard made it known he was looking for reinforcements.
The group did a bit of roleplay in town/city and then eventually met at the rickety bridge. They made their way to the campsite in Bokken's hex and the new guys met the prankster fey. The group guided them through their initiation and this time, everybody managed to appease the Fey. Pervalish and Tig Titter-Tut made themselves visible and had a bit of a feast with the party and a conversation about the Mushfens. The two faeries told the party about the bandit camp (northeast of the bridge), the Swamp Witch, the larger bandit location (somewhere in the woods to the East) and mentioned the presence of Lizardfolk in the southeastern swamps.
This gave the follow-the-plot group incentive to go after the bandit camp so the group backtracked and headed to the bridge. They searched and eventually found a horse and cart trail that led more or less straight into the bandit camp. They scouted well, formulated a good plan of attack and pretty much smashed the bandits in a good fight that made the team feel powerful after the drubbing of the previous week. They took no prisoners and so go no specific clues about the Stag Lord. In this fight, the new negative channeller probably killed the most but in so doing killed Richard's horse as well because he could only exclude 3 targets. This sparked a squabble and a near fight because Richard was rightly pissed about his horse being killed, and the Nethysite was pretty callous about the whole thing. Jerrick mediated and negotiated a solution that appeased all parties.
The group then continued to argue about what to do next so I encouraged them to have general discussions about the overall goal and then pick someone to make the mundane decisions about which hex was next. They decided to not go looking for the Stag Lord again and headed back west to continue their methodical hexploration that had served them so well the week before.
(In my opinion, this is a vital step because a group of PCs will argue over which Inn to go to, much less which hex to explore next. After this decision, the exploration went much more smoothly)
Their next encounter was with the Boggard, who they bypassed after deciding that the language barrier was not worth it, they pushed on westward along the edge of the swamp and encountered the Mud Bowl and the beast that lived there (the tendriculous). They saw the valuable mushrooms and the Dwarf Barbarian decided to do some harvesting, with the rest of the group staying far back from the mud and the fungus field.
The Tendriculous attacked and was also a fight for a 4th level, 6-member party because the players were gun-shy and didn't engage the monster, preferring to stay back at range. This allowed it to swallow the Dwarf whole (which was fine - he had lots of HPs) and fight the melee folk and summoned monsters one at a time. The blaster cleric approached to blast away but miscounted the hexes, approached too close and was pretty quickly grabbed and swallowed as well. Unfortunately, he had far fewer HPs and a lot less Con.
Now at this point, I had characters ran by the same two players whose characters I had wasted the previous week in a position where they were either dying or close to it and the group hanging back being hyper-cautious.
Richard and Wyndham eventually engaged the monster and killed it but not before the Tendriculous had killed the group's new cleric. He spent several rounds dead inside the beast so I had all of his belongings be digested and destroyed by the stomach acid.
(I felt kinda bad because of the back-to-back kills for this particular player. In hindsight, I should have had the Fey come out of invisibility to save the grappled folk with Grease or something. Oh well, I warned the players about this being a tough campaign and I said I'd be rolling the dice out in the open so these kinds of things will happen. The death was partially the fault of poor tactics as the two melee fighters could have cut it to ribbons if Richard hadn't chosen that moment to be over-cautious. By hanging back, he hung those that approached out to dry.)
Anyway, the group didn't really shed a tear as they weren't that fond of their new companion anyway and felt uncomfortable about a negative-blaster cleric and after mourning the new guy's lost gear, they pressed on towards the Lady's Light (their goal in this hexploration outing). They had an encoutner with a random group of Boggards who they killed and drove off (using a large % of their spell resources to do so) and
got to the island containing the tower late in the day. They carved out a campsite despite the fear effect emanating from the tower and that's where we ended it.
My plan for tonight's session is for the group to be harassed all night by hit-and-run will-o-wisp attacks in the fog. The will-o-wisp will be pretty tough for the party, especially near to the fear tower. Complicating things will be that Wyndham's player can't make it and I think Abinscole's will be here, not to mention the new guy. I may have the friendly Fey deliver Abinscole and the new guy to the party because they know something about the wisps and the tower and will fear for their safety.
|
|
Session 12 - The Lion the Witch and the Wild Rogue
Not in attandance: Wyndham - Human rogue with a nasty streak (former memeber of Nualia's Band)
Abinscole - Halfling Bard, who remained with the gear back at camp (a conceit that we have to deal with players coming and going)
Arcainen - Human water bloodline sorceror
Jerrick - Shoanti cleric/bow hunter of Erastil with a colossally terrible Con score (Con=4)
Richard - Chelaxian fighter, brave, heavily armoured sword and board
Thorin - A dwarven barbarian battlerager type with an accidentally archetypical name
New recruit: Human Evoker, curious about rumours of a witch in the Mushfens
We ended last time with the party striking camp on the edge of the "candlemere island", known in Varisia as the Lady's Light. I roleplayed Wyndham out of the story by having him be mentally consumed by the fear effect around the tower. He grew progressively paranoid and gradually descended into a near catatonic state and retreated to his tent.
Meanwhile, the new evoker fellow bumped into the group's base camp and spent a night there with Abinscole and the Ranger, Shalelu. Early the next morning (the morning of the night the main group camped at the Lady's Light), the two Fey arrived in camp and told Abinscole that the rest of the party was in peril because of where they were heading. Abinscole and the new fellow mounted up and headed southwest as fast as they could.
(This was kind of clumsy but I didn't want a player sitting idle at the table because I couldn't wrap up in a better position to insert and withdraw characters)
Back at camp, the first watch was interrupted by a Will O' Wisp who appeared and in a strange alien voice said he could feel their fear. He attacked but with its fast healing and invisibility at will, the party didn't really stand a chance. Any time they managed to drive the Wisp into dangerous territory, it disappeared and hovered around healing. The chances were altered a little when Abinscole arrived (as he had a potion of See Invisibility) but he couldn't do any significant direct damage and at best could call out locations for the party to attack. It devolved into a stalemate where the wisp wouldn't risk getting into trouble and the party couldn't really do much damage. I fast-forwarded the night, describing a hellish evening of fog, darkness and occasional attacks from a malicious monster that couldn't be killed. I awarded each player a dozen HP worth of damage and the morning came.
They decided to approach the tower, investigate it and get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. They cut through the brush and made their way to the opening of the hollow tower, finding nothing but rubble within. Arcainen used detect magic to search and found an emanation from a strangely curved dagger that he picked up. He identified it as +1 with the ability to become human bane for one day after it is used in a coup de grace attack (he missed finding out that it is cursed with a -ve level for non-chaotics - he's CG so no problem there).
He pretty quickly figured this out though - for the rest of the session, whenever someone mentioned the dagger, whenever there was a question about cutting something and whenever he even thought about wielding a weapon, the dagger appeared in his hand. It was a fun running joke - "did someone say dagger?".
The party had explored the entirety of the western half of my Mushfen map so they headed east (with Wyndham heading to the base camp and then to town to sell some loot) and planned to look for a new base camp location for the eastern half exploration.
Their first encounter on that side was with the Swamp Witch. They saw the smoke curling out of her house from far off and carefully approached her fenced yard. They decided on a direct approach and rang the bell next to her gate. The party had a very awkward conversation with her because everyone wanted to be part of it and nobody could make a diplomacy roll. She was pretty coarse and rude but eventually Abinscole tried a new tack. He serenaded the Swamp Witch and then asked if he could come in for a talk. This warmed her heart and she allowed the Halfling to approach.
Abinscole explained what the party was up to and asked if there was anything he could do for her. She said that all she wanted was to be left alone and if the group could ensure that, she had some information and some barter to offer. Abinscole agreed and she proceeded to mention two places that the party had already been to - she had a map to the dangerous cairn wight barrow and the mud pit with the tendriculous and the rattle cap mushrooms. Abinscole laughed and said that they had been both places with tragic results but bartered a deal where she would buy the rattlecap muchrooms that the party had already gathered and the woman agreed to do some weapon or wondrous magic item crafting if they were interested and provided none of his rude friends ever came into her yard. As they parted, the Swamp Witch warned Abinscole about a crazy hermit that lives to the Northeast and also warned them about going too far into the SE swamps because of the Lizard Man encampment there.
The group shrugged their shoulders and pressed on, heading towards the eastern forest. Their first encounter was with the trapped thylacine which was defused by Jerrick who used his speak with animals ability to calm the beast and help it out of the pit. That night they encountered a curious grizzly bear who approached the camp interested in the horse feed before being driven away.
The next morning, the party headed north and found the Mad Hermit, who pretended to be a lone, peaceful druid. The party didn't really buy it given the Swamp Witch's warning and because I played him as pretty crazy sounding but his words were sincere and peaceful enough. I decided that a group of 6 mounted well-armed folk was too much for the Hermit to face so having heard what their plan was, he decided to set up an ambush for the group later in the forest. He hid and waited inside the trees for the party to approach and waited for them all to pass by, hoping to kill the last person in line. Everyone missed their perception rolls and the ambush was on. The hermit and his cougar nearly killed the new evoker before going down themselves.
The party looted his body, returned to his hollow tree, searched it and found a map to a lightning-struck tree. The party couldn't resist that and decided that the hermit's tree would make a good place for their next base camp and that they would investigate the tree on their way back to their base camp. They found the tree but didn't find anything at it so left it as a mystery.
Winter is approaching and with all the trips back to civilization, the party has really stretched this timeline out (we're at a couple of months now). Between sessions, they plan a trip to Magnimar and to move their base camp for the last push into the Stag Lord's Forest.
***DM Aside***
I am starting to get worried about a bit of a derailment here. It's fun playing a sandbox campaign in that I don't know what will come up next but parts have been tiresome as the party has adopted a methodical approach rather than a story-based one in their exploration. It's almost like they have taken the unmapped wilderness and turned it into some kind of wilderness dungeon where they "do" one room one after the other as though it were a hallway with 30 10'x10'rooms that might or might not have an encounter in it. Maybe there is a mismatch between my larger group and this kind of nonlinear exploration type storyline.
I'll frankly be happy if I can get the party back on the railroad again and back progressing on the RotR storyline. I worry a bit about how to make that happen though as the party has pretty much discarded Sandpoint and chooses Magnimar time and again for their many many re-equipping and loot selling runs. Part of that problem has to do with a mistake of where I put the bridges over the river as it's a half a day's travel closer to Magnimar but the biggest problem has to do with the party's surprisingly slow pace in the face of the coming winter.
I am tempted to drop rumours about a set of murders in Sandpoint that the PCs will hear about the next time they are in Magnimar. If that hook doesn't work, I'll have to make it worse in that a member of the party becomes wanted in association with the murders (perhaps the obsession target). We'll see - I am currently doing some PBEM with Wyndham's player so that may drift into the hook I am looking for but I worry that he's going to just want to do some thiefy things in the big city.
|
|
From what you know, is it feasible to up the power level of Kingmaker 1 & 2 to challenge the PCs, or should I skip Kingmaker altogether? Is it do-able to integrate Kingmaker at this late stage?
I had originally planned on putting all the kingmaker parts in after the PCs liberated Fort Rannick. The plan there was for Magnimar to issue the group a charter to independently expand and pacify the region around Turtleback Ferry. It'd be possible to add the hexploration parts to the Hook Mountain story and have both happen simultaneously but you'd have to change the story that the Magnimarians give from "we haven't heard anything from our remote outpost" to "we believe that something terrible has happened at our outpost and we want you to go there, find out what happened and take control of the town and the lands around it".
I originally thought that it would make more sense if the PCs got to Ft. Rannick however they got there, liberated the Fort and then were offered the charter in that order once they proved their worth.
To answer your question about upping the power level, I'd say yes it could be done reasonably easily. In my opinion, the best parts of KM 1&2 are the NPC interactions, not so much the battles. I liked the story about the Mites and the Kobolds plus the mischievous faeries from KM1 plus the similar interaction between the Dryad, the Loggers and all that from KM2. All of those stories work well regardless of level because they can involve unique and non-violent resolutions (though you'd need to tweak some parts if it did come to blows). When I mapped things out for a 9th-10th level party, I kept almost all of those kinds of encounters and dropped most of the mundane combat ones from the first two books. I'd planned on turning the Stag Lord into something scarier and level appropriate - werewolves or undead somethings or other or something.
One thing to think about is what to do with the extra XP. I started by asking my PCs if they wanted a quick campaign where the narrative thread was pretty tight (the standard RotR line, Fast XP track) or a slower one where they could spend more time at each level and had much more control about where the story took them. They chose the latter and I put them on the Medium XP track and am pulling most of the interesting encounters from KM while dropping many of the filler ones (fights that are just there to build XP and treasure) as well as the XP bonuses for exploration and kingdom building. If you're on the Medium track already and are looking for side-quests, you're in fine shape. If you're on the fast track, you'd need to cut XP awards by a third or half (and put your PCs on a de-facto medium track without telling them) or you'll get to a place where your PCs have levelled ahead of the storyline.
Good day. I am a regular to your post and I have to admit, many of your addings in the adventure path have taken roots in mine as well. My 6 players table are at the Greater barghest room and rushing. I am eager to find out what yours did in starting the second part RotR. I have been Dming for over 20 years now and have a class in donjon at my school, and Kingmaker is a big part of it. Excellent.
|
|
Thanks for the lengthy response - it was very helpful. I could even have Oleg's Trading Post as part of Turtleback Ferry maybe? Since it's a higher power level, I can put in bandits & ogres that threaten the small hamlet instead of just Oleg & Svetlana? (population 430, I believe) Having a few bandits show up is not much of a challenge for level 7/8 PCs.
I suppose but one of the nice things about running a sandbox campaign is that everything doesn't have to be perfectly level-appropriate. If it challenges/threatens the NPCs, it can be appropriate to put up against the PCs by proxy. Having ogres attack a town might be more of a slaughter than a challenge as far as the townsfolk are concerned.
I coopted much of the trading post stuff and ran it concurrently as part of the sandpoint goblin raid. It'd be simple to do the same with ogres or ogrekin in turtleback. Alternatively, you could have the trading post be in the place of that hamlet that is NW of turtleback ferry.
|
|
Good day. I am a regular to your post and I have to admit, many of your addings in the adventure path have taken roots in mine as well. My 6 players table are at the Greater barghest room and rushing. I am eager to find out what yours did in starting the second part RotR. I have been Dming for over 20 years now and have a class in donjon at my school, and Kingmaker is a big part of it. Excellent.
My PCs went after some kingmaker hooks I left them and haven't made it back to RotR yet. They have heard rumours about grusome murders in Magnimar and are soon to hear about something similar in Sandpoint so I expect they will be onto Skinsaw starting next session (or early the one after that if they ignore the murders to persue their exploration loose ends). I have one summary to post still regarding their exploits against the Stag Lord.
|
|
Yes we have. My professional life has been really really busy the last couple of months so the campaign blogging has fallen off substantially.
The truncated summaries are:
********************************************************************
Session 13: Assault on the fortress of the Stag Lord
The team found evidence of the Stag Lord's fort and planned an assault that had almost no subtlety. The Barbarian and Fighter were made invisible while the rest of the group hung back and shouted to the fort outside of reasonable longbow range. This got the fort's attention while the invisible tanks got into position and started battering down the gate.
This led to a really fun session-long huge combat with the Stag Lord's druid (who I had changed to a Weather druid, rather than Elemental Earth) doing crowd control while the various archers exchanged ranged fire. Once they battered the gate down, the Owlbear was released and the fight was on. It was really quite fun and not what I had expected.
Akiros switched sides mid-fight and was eventually taken into custody. My party decided to take him to trial anyway after taking his magic gear. The party returned the Stag Lord's body to the undead ferryman and his head to Magnimar to collect the bounty and deliver Akiros for judgement. This latest action prompted a number of alignment changes as several of my players that had things like CG and NG written on their character sheets were acting in very very lawful ways when it came to the letter of their charters. No hard feelings among the players.
To tie this part of the campaign in with the rest, I had the stag lord group be tattooed with the sihedron rune and Akiros said that some woman had set the Stag Lord up before he joined the group. The party assumed this was Nualia when it was actually Xanesha.
********************************************************************
Session 14: Murders most foul
The group returned to finish up a tiny bit of mapping and returned the finished product to their masters in Magnimar. The Lord Mayor's secretary accepted the map and thanked the group for their efforts, promising to contact them again if the state needed similar services in the future (a perfect hook for Hook Mountain Massacre, if it comes to that).
In the mean time, they had heard of a number of gruesome murders in Magnimar as well as a similar one near Sandpoint. They ignored this thread but I had a weapon to get them back on the railroad. Wyndham needed to rejoin the group (as his player had been away for a couple sessions) so he caught up with the group with quite a story. He had been in Sandpoint and had heard that there had been some murders in the sawmill involving Banny Harker (who Wyndham had previously threatened with death) and his girlfriend (who Wyndham was stalking on behalf of her overprotective father). This caused Wyndham to decide to split town before he got arrested, find his friends and have them help him to avoid the gallows.
The party returned to Sandpoint to find that the Sheriff had already written Wyndham off as a suspect because he had an alibi from Shayliss Vinder (who he had spent the night with) as well as patrons of the Rusty Dragon. The party retrieved Wyndham, who had been waiting in the woods outside of town) and they rendezvoused at the jailhouse. Just then, Ven Vinder, his wife and Shayliss burst in and Ven accused Wyndham of being the murderer. Wyndham denied it but Ven wouldn't calm down until Shayliss admitted that they had been together that night, that they were in love and that (drum roll please) she was carrying their baby!
(Yay!)
After parting with the Vinders, the group was pressed into the roles of detectives and investigated the Mill, talked to Harker's parner and after dark went to the Sanitarium. From that questioning, they quickly connected the dots and concluded that Aldern was the likely suspect and resolved to head his way in the morning. Early the next morning, Wyndham was skulking around town and saw Farmer Grump come into town and go to the garrison for help, muttering a creepy nursery rhyme. The rest of the party was summoned to the garrison shortly thereafter and headed out towards the farms to investigate the walking scarecrows.
I described it as foggy and miserable and the mood was right for some ghoulish action. We ended the night after the fight at the Hambley farmhouse.
********************************************************************
Session 15: Misgivings
After collecting evidence and loot from the Hambley farm, the party debated resting but instead went straight to the Foxglove homestead (deciding that if they were affected with Ghoul Fever - several of them are - they would need cure disease again tomorrow anyway). This means that they are really low on spells and started the haunted house portion of the adventure with no remaining channels for the day and not much magic firepower but what the heck, they made it to the house.
After thinking long and hard about an approach through the well, they decided to tie the horses outside (with Jarek's animal Companion in control of a knot that could untie the lot if trouble arose) and head in through the front door.
I had used the cutout personal haunt descriptions I found on these boards and they worked really well. The party skipped the main floor, went upstairs, did all the rooms there and went up into the attic, where they met Mrs. Revenant Foxglove. Her keening cry incapacitated almost all of the group (bad saves worked out well for the plot for once) and the rest let her pass, deciding to follow her to Aldern. This totally spread out the party as some folk were out for 1, 2, 3, and 4 rounds and they move at different speeds.
One of the slower guys was my pyrmaniac evoker wizard who upon passing through the main hall was attacked by the Burning Manticore haunt. I proceeded to roll a 20 and confirm the critical resulting in 8d6 fire damage so he was dropped to dying but not dead. In the mean time, the few at the head of the Revenant train were attacked by the rat swarms in the kitchen and they lost her trail as she pushed deeper into the basement.
Once the rats were dispatched, they pushed on and activated the Lich origins haunt in the library, which slowed them down while Wyndham and Richard pressed on after the Revenant.
When we finished for the night, Richard and Wyndham were just in the caves (5 rounds behind the Revennat) and the rest of the party was in the basement, a couple of rounds up stairs. Next time will be ghouls from the darkness while Aldern and the Missus reunite.
Greycloak, I wanted to tell you I'm enjoying the heck out of this. It's been a while since I've been excited about Rise of the Runelords, but your campaign blog here is the best advertising those venerable books could get.
I've a short list of Paizonian Dream Team members whom I would love to game with, and you're definitely on it.
Having said that, I wonder if you or somebody just like you could help me out. I'm really intrigued by the maps and notes you've made for this campaign, but unfortunately sites like Photobucket are blocked where I am. If anybody felt really upity, could someone email me those maps so I can see what it is you've done?
My email is gibsonfs -at- lhd4 -dot- navy -dot- mil
Thanks in advance, and thanks again to Greycloak for such an entertaining read. Pass on my best wishes to your lucky players.
|
|
Session 16: The end of the Skinsaw Man
In attendance: Everyone
Wyndham - Human rogue with a nasty streak
Abinscole - Halfling Bard
Arcainen - Human water bloodline sorcerer
Jerrick - Shoanti cleric/bow hunter of Erastil
Richard - Chelaxian fighter, brave, heavily armoured sword and board
Thorin - A dwarven barbarian battlerager type with an accidentally archetypical name
Mark - Human Evoker
So, last time we ended after the PCs had spent a very long day of adventuring - the cleric was out channels and had a couple of spells, the wizard was down to his arcane bolts, the sorcerer was in almost the same state but everyone was healed up. This didn't stop them - they were chasing the Revenant, Mrs. Foxglove and wanted to push ahead before their inevitable disease afflictions caught up with them.
So, they bumped into the first two batches of ghouls and used the tunnel choke points to their advantage killing the remainder of the mobile ghouls up to the large spiral room with the pool at the bottom. They decided to double back at this point to look into the one tunnel they hadn't been down yet (the bottom of the well and the ghoul bat). Pretty cockey, they stumbled into the room and failed their perceptions to see the Bat, who swooped down to attack, being much better at the attack and doing a shocking amount of damage to the fighters. The spellcasters spent their remaining spells, with the two arcane casters dipping into cantrips at this point to take the bat out.
The party debated pushing on (which would have been interesting) but decided instead to climb up the rope that they had left dangling in the well. Little did they know, their horses had been set upon by the carrion storms who were waiting in the burnt out servant's building. The look on my Players' faces was priceless when Richard emerged from the well only to be surrounded by thousands of diseased and undead ravens. Unfortunately, because the right fighters made the right fort saves, the fight was a pretty simple one as Richard was able to position himself for great cleave attacks that soon whittled the swarms down. Looking around, they saw off in the distance the clean-picked bones of one of their horses and so they were worried (mostly for Jerrick's animal companion, Shadowbane). They followed a scene of gore where the tethered horses had obviously fled the carrion storms, leaving behind a number of horse skeletons. I had all the light horses be dead and all the heavy horses (and Abinscole's dog) escape. They tracked the horses and dog to a copse of trees a couple of miles away where they were grazing happily.
Walking back to town, they did an assessment of everyone's disease state (5 of the 7 were infected with something, 3 of them had two diseases from the rat swarms, ghouls and Vorel's Phage). They debated what to do and finally realized that their cheapest option would be to take them to the elven Herbalist, who could professionally attend their diseases for the modest fee of 10gp per person per day.
In the mean time, everybody leveled up (ding! to 5th) and there were several conversations between Wyndham and Jerrick and then Wyndham and Shayliss Vinder about the expected baby and what they were going to do about it. Wyndham was really really harsh about it and said that he wasn't going to be able to stick around for the baby and would help with money but that was about it. I'm not exactly sure where to go from here with this thread but it's going to involve Wyndham being ostracized in town, should he ever return.
Anyway, the party returned to Misgivings - leveled up and full of spells, descended into the well and returned to the spiral-slidey room. I told them that along the way, the ghoul bodies had been fed upon so they knew that there had been some activity along the way.
The spiral room had 6 goblin ghouls hiding in the cracks (that nobody but Abinscole spotted) and that was an interesting fight because I had everyone who got paralyzed start sliding down the ramp towards the water. One of the first to go was Richard, who is also the most heavily armoured so it looked pretty bad for a while. Notably, Jerrick summoned a worker giant ant at the bottom of the spiral to catch paralyzed folk as they slipped by. It didn't stop the slides (I called for ant-grapple checks) but it did manage to pile up the bodies at the edge of the water rather than in the bottom of the ocean.
Having dispatched the gob-ghouls, I decided to bolster Aldern's room somewhat and added 4 ghasts sitting around the table with him feasting on the Revenant body of Aldern's former wife. The ghasts served their purpose, in that they delayed the fight long enough for Aldern to creep everybody out and get in some good old villain speechery before he finally died for good. The party figured out the lich-fungus story and resolved to return sometime in the future to destroy the haunting and burn down the house. They also found Aldern's letter from Xanesha (who signed her note "Xanesha, Harlot of Nature's Pagan Forms" - because I couldn't handle the won-ton jokes that I new would come from her original name). They talked about heading to Aldern's townhouse in Magnimar, but not before they looted the remainder of the rooms that they had missed before.
That part was pretty unremarkable but made much easier and quicker because I had printed out blank floor flans that I had digitized a long time ago. The party had already figured out the story but it gave me a chance to haunt a player that I had missed the previous session so it was worthwhile for that purpose. They missed a couple of their search checks so there is some small amount of treasure left behind.
That's where we ended it. We're probably playing next weekend so I'm going to make some decisions soon about Aldern's townhouse - I'll probably add a couple of faceless stalker servants to the faceless stalker Aldern and Iesha, depending on the number of PCs I'll have.
|
|
We're building up a number of loose ends that my PCs may want to pursue sometime in the future. I like to be someone who thinks ahead so I won't get too surprised when my PCs decide to jump off the rails and go in a new direction. These are my thoughts:
1) Malfeshnekor at Thistletop.
It's been several months (3?) since the Barghest was left locked in his prison and the Goblin Druid Gogmurt was left unkilled in the forest so there is something there. If the party returns, I'm imagining that Gogmurt will have returned to Thistletop and will have been compelled to have released Malfeshnekor (digging him out, because the PCs have the key to his prison). I'm thinking that Gogmurt would start a new tribe at Thistletop using members of the Mosswood and Shank's Wood tribes (him now being in possession of the force shield ring from Malfeshnekor's prison and a new level or so from having de-facto defeated my PCs). Malfeshnekor will be relocated somewhere else (to the Clock Tower or to the Seven's Sawmill, perhaps - that'd be interesting because that's next session. I'll have to do the CR math on that one).
I don't know what my PCs would do if confronted by a repopulated Thistletop. They aren't beyond negotiating with goblins and consider them to be weak-willed mostly harmless parasitic scavengers so I don't imagine a genocidal assault without a plot reason but who knows for sure what they'll do. I'll have to wing it if the party decides on an assault but the fort will be truly full of goblins this time around.
2) A few loose ends from their exploration of the Western Mushfens
The party had resolved to return to kill the Forest Drake, had a treasure map that led to a tree that had no treasure and they talked about going after the Lizard Man tribe that they knew about but bypassed. I may make a new wanted poster for a group to go after the Lizard Men because in my campaign, Magnimar was planning to annex and settle the newly mapped and somewhat pacified Western Mushfen region. Lizard Men would be a problem for the City-state in that plan but I'll probably not post that particular wanted poster until the spring when it will make sense.
3) Misgivings
The group wants to return to cleanse and then burn down the house. If they do this soon (i.e. if they seek out and purchase a scroll with Hallow on it in the short term), I'll allow it to go off pretty easily and will reward them with appropriate XP, provided they bypass the haunts. If they wait for a long time, I'll probably repopulate the house with some new undead baddie of some kind that would be level-appropriate and drawn to the haunting there, maybe even Aldern's spirit returned as a Spectre.
|
|
Session 17: The Star Murders in Magnimar
Small group this time (missing our Sor, Wiz and Rog), everyone 5th level
Abinscole - Halfling Bard
Jerrick - Shoanti cleric/bow hunter of Erastil
Richard - Chelaxian fighter, brave, heavily armoured sword and board
Thorin - A dwarven barbarian battlerager type with an accidentally archetypical name
Having completed Misgivings, the group decided to split up, leaving the PCs not in attendance to make sure there weren't any more stray ghouls around the countryside while the other group (the PCs in attendance) went to Magnimar to sell some loot (maybe look for a scroll of Hallow so they could purge the evil from Foxglove Manor) and check out Aldern's townhouse.
When they got to the city gates, they were stopped and roughly questioned by the guards. One of them explained that there had been some serious trouble in town with bodies turning up in the river and on the seafront so the city guard were stepping up their investigations of any armed persons in the city. The group acquiesced and the investigation was almost over when the guard noticed Jerrick's Sihedron Medallion. Because the murders had had a similar symbol, the group was immediately arrested (peacefully) and taken to the Arvensoar for interrogation. There they explained their past association with the city and that they had found the medallion when doing some good works for the town of Sandpoint. They unerringly told the truth (proven by a zone of truth spell that was active at the time) and so once their stories were corroborated, they were brought before Commander Ismeir Odinburge to retell their story.
Ismeir filled them in on the murders from the town guard's point of view - individuals had been snatched, bodies were found dumped in the river or along the sea shore, they were all marked by the rune and the pace seemed to be accelerating. Because the PCs were keen to continue investigating things from their side, he granted them formal blessing to do so, provided they didn't murder anyone and were reasonable in their investigations.
Happy, the PCs spent the remainder of the day gathering information on the whereabouts of Foxglove's townhouse and then spent the evening trying to look greedy and get snatched by the murderer(s). That didn't work (why pick a group of warriors armed to the teeth?) and so in the morning, they headed over to the townhouse.
I moved the encounter with the Faceless Stalkers up to the second floor in the library (which I had devoid of books, them having been burned). The group swept the lower floor and then ascended the stairs whereupon they were called for from the library by a familiar voice inviting them in for tea. Jerrick cast a Zone of Truth and the group opened the door and saw Aldern and Iesha sitting in the room. This totally threw the group and there was some fun roleplaying as the bard Abinscole tried to hook "Aldern" and "Iesha" into an attempted lie in the zone of truth. The stalkers eventually realized they couldn't speak untruths and attacked. In the larger room, the Stalkers won initiative and were able to flank the doorway with reach, dropping Abinscole in the first round of combat. My warriors burst in and faced lots of sneak attack AoO's on the way. They killed one of the stalkers and the other one jumped out the window to the garden below. My two warriors also jumped after it (both badly failing acrobatics checks) and ended up sprawled on the ground. The stalker fled and was killed by a critical hit arrow from Jerrick just as it climbed over the garden wall.
The party searched the house and found Aldern's stash including the ledger and deed (which I had printed out from some fine docs on this message board). They deciphered the ledger and decided that their next target would be the Seven's Sawmill. Noticing that Aldern always went on Oathday at midnight, they decided to do the same.
They spent the intervening days selling loot, gathering information and unsuccessfully trying to be attacked by the murderer. When the evening before Oathday at Midnight came, they staked out a spot where they could see the mill and waited to see what happened. About a half an hour before midnight, they witnessed a cart with two wagons and a pair of drivers carry a tarped load around into the main entrance. The group decided to wait for Midnight and then went over to knock on the door. All the cultists were having their cult meeting at this time so they debated about break and entering but decided to wait for a while until someone came out.
To break the impasse, I decided that Ironbriar would send a raven with a note to the clocktower identifying their latest sacrifice. I was hoping that this would get them to decided to grapple up to the rookery and climb in that way to see what was going on but instead, Jerrick used his Speak with Animals domain ability, called the raven down and talked with him. The raven talked about needing to fly to another man-tree and Jerrick offered it a bit of meat to get close. The Raven accepted and Jerrick snatched the bird to see the note that was tied to its leg. The note read only "Rassimeri Jaijarko". They released the bird, asking it to fly slowly (successful Diplomacy with a 26) and followed it to the clocktower!
Abinscole knew (Lore Master Bard ability to get a 26 Knowledge Local) that Rassimeri was a Slumlord in Rag's End. Pretty sure that this meant that Rassimeri was the next victim, the group decided that rather than entering the tower, they would head over to Rag's End to knock on Rassimeri's door. He wasn't home yet and his irritated wife said that he was late and usually came home about an hour before midnight from the local pub the "Hook and Harrow". This was enough for the PCs and after updating the guard, they returned to the Sawmill and seeing that nobody had come or gone (tracking in the snow), they decided to grapple up to the rookery (rather than beat down the door) and investigate.
They immediately heard the chanting from below, descended into the office where they found the stretched-out faces and now had cause to attack. Opening the door, they found themselves face-to-face with more than a dozen cultists gathered around a mutilated body in the corner immediately across from the office. Being without their wizard and sorceror at this point made things interesting but fortunately, Thorin had a magic shield of Blinding and in his surprise round managed to blind half of the cultists.
Abinscole and Jerrick spent their efforts buffing (Jerrick had Prayer, Bless and Protection from Evil) and doing crowd control (Abinscole inspired courage and cast summon swarm to attack the now-invisible Ironbriar). The warriors waded into the room and attacked using cleave to good effect against the cultists.
Once the cultists realized that they couldn't hit the two heavily armoured fighters, they switched to a combination of Commands and Death Touches against the surrounded warriors. All in all, my PCs got extremely lucky (helped by Prayer) and only failed one saving throw (Richard was ordered to Flee, which took him out of the fight for a couple of rounds). Ironbriar's Suggestion, Confusion and Curse were all saved against (any of which may well have led to TPK) but they managed to get some licks in before the cultists and Ironbriar were ultimately wiped out. My PCs all failed their Sense Motives so they never knew about Ironbriar's Charm.
They investigated the rest of the sawmill, called in the guard and decided to go to the clocktower the next day. That's where we left it.
Next time, my group will be reunited (maybe) and they are heading into the clock tower - firmly on the railroad now.
|
|
Knowing that Xanesha is coming next, I am pretty sure that this fight will not go well for my PCs. They have not tried to gather any information about who they are facing next mostly because they hate having to deal with prisoners. They are cocky because of high ACs on the part of the warriors and will be wandering in with zero intel and likely no planning, no fly spell, very little in the means of ranged capability, no dispel magic. They are also a bit behind in levels for where they should be at this point (the group is straddling 5/6th level and will likely level up if they retreat after fighting the scarecrow but that is pretty unlikely). Even with 7 players, they will be facing a very difficult challenge. I may throw them a bone on the part of the Scarecrow, giving him some confident dying words something like "My mistress will make you hers like she did to me".
That said, I am frankly hoping that the fight with Xanesha ends in a fair-fight TPK because I have a plan for that:
(This was discussed in another thread but the basic story goes: As the fight starts to turn badly, the PCs will start to be subdued rather than killed, will be turned into Wisdom-drain charm zombies and will be forced to work on Xanesha's Paradise gambling barge at Turtleback Ferry. They will eventually escape in a dramatic sinking barge scene wherupon they see Xanesha change forms and fly away to Fort Rannick via Hook Mountain. They will then return to the sunken ship underequipped and retrieve some of their gear that was around the ship as decoration and will continue on the AP from there.)
If it doesn't end in TPK, it'll be an epic battle for the ages that my Players will remember and talk about for a long, long time.
***********************Xanesha Notes***********************
Anyway, as means of prepping for the fight, I decided to make the Impaler of Thorns a normal-sized Halberd so the party can get some usable loot and so Xanesha has a normal human-sized torso like she probably should according to the PF mould for such creatures. It doesn't dampen her damage much.
I prepared the following notes with spell durations, ranges and consequent adjustments to Xanesha's Stats. The adjustments are to the (hotlinked) PFSRD version of Xanesha:
Spells cast with time to prepare
(Cast as soon as she hears the bells go)
1. Fly – 8 min, Fly Speed: 60, Fly Skill: +10 (i.e. not enough to hover every round without fail)
2. Mage Armour – 8 hours, +4 Armour Bonus to AC (AC -> 29)
3. Shield – 8 min, +4 Shield Bonus to AC (AC-> 33, immune to MM)
4. Mirror image – 8 min, d4+2 images (If an attack misses by 5 or less it destroys an image)
5. Invisibility – 8 min, Stealth +20 (+40 if immobile), +4 to hit with first attack, no dex bonus on 1st attack
(cast when she hears the fight with the Faceless Stalkers draw to a close)
6. Divine Favour – 10 rounds (+2 to hit and damage), +22/+17/+15 (d10+12/19-20x3)
7. Haste – 8 rounds (+1 AC (AC-> 34), +1 to hit (+23/+23/+18/+13 (d10+12)/19-20x3), +1 Ref +16
8. Silence – 8 rounds
Cast for free on the 1st round of combat:
False Life (d10+5+145 HP, 5 min)
First combat hit - Activate Aura of Despair (30' rad, DC 16 Will or become despaired: -2 to everything), target gets a second DC 16 Will or be nauseated for 1 round.
Sometime against an arcane spellcaster - Medusa Mask (DC15 Fort or turned to stone for 1 minute).
Power Attack does: -4 to hit, +12 to damage. She'll use this if she's hitting easily.
Subdual does: -4 to hit, inflict subdual damage
Spell-like abilities left:
At will – Charm Monster (DC21, 50’), ventriloquism (DC18, 50’)
3/day – Deep Slumber (DC20, 50’), dream, major image (DC20, 800’), mirror image (1 used), suggestion (DC20, 50’)
Sorceror Spells (CL 8th, +21 ranged touch):
4th – (4) Dimension Door (400’)
3rd – (5) Fly, Haste
2nd – (6) Invisibility, scorching ray (2 rays, +21 r.t. 4d6 ea.), silence (DC19)
1st – (5) CLW (d8+5), divine Favour, mage armour, magic missile (4d4+4, 720’), shield
0 – (unlim) acid splash, dancing lights, daze (DC 17), detect magic, ghost sound (DC 17), mage hand, mending, prestidigitation
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Session 18: TPK! TPK! TPK! TPK! TPK!
I had 5/7 players in attendance so in order to keep continuity, I had the two missing characters be abducted by Xanesha's agents while the party was selling loot. This was needed because I needed all the characters in attendance, even if the spotlight was to be on 5 of them.
At this stage, my party has bypassed all kinds of opportunity for recon, scouting and intel from prisoners so had no idea what they were stumbling into at the clocktower. In typical cocky fashion they strolled right in, worried more about spell durations than combat tactics.
After an easy time of the golem and the staircase, the party dribbled onto the clocktower roof, spread out and didn't have a coordinated attack at all, with the sword specialist fighter choosing to not melee and each person going one at a time against Mme. Xanesha. Without flanking, without sneak attacks, without any serious buffs/debuffs it wasn't even a close fight. The PCs hit all but 1 of her mirror images and managed to do about 30 points of damage total.
I adjusted Xanesha's spear into a normal sized Halberd and added an ability that it could optionally do subdual instead of lethal damage (because I expected this could be a learning opportunity regarding future encounters in this adventure path and was pretty sure I'd TPK using Xanesha as written).
It was a slaughter and I couldn't be happier. Each character was beaten into submission with no deaths so I can move onto my plan I've been working on for several months:
At the end of the evening, I collected their character sheets and will have to transpose them to equipment-less versions for our next session "Charm Zombies and the Escape from the Paradise Barge". The other good part of this is I'll be able to assess and balance the party wealth if necessary. I think I'm pretty good on that front but we'll see.
I'm half prepared for next time (I have the maps of the barge done and I have the broad chain of events written out) but I need to work on specific descriptions, dialogue and whatnot. The broad strokes are:
1) PCs get a description of snatches of images from months in wisdom-drained captivity. They have endured a hell of forced servitude as oarsmen aboard the Paradise Barge. Their snippits will include images of some of their more recognizable adventuring gear as trophies adorning the walls of the gambling barge.
I think I will leak these dream snippits out over email over the coming days before our next session.
2) One evening in the late summer/early fall (8 months after the disaster at the clocktower) when the barge is full of patrons and out on an evening cruise, one of the other captives finally snaps and smashes a lamp on himself, starting a fire at the stern of the boat. The patrons jump overboard and lady Xanesha (in human form) descends the stairs to the bowels of the ship where the PCs are held locked in place by their wisdom-drained, charmed state. She quickly gathers a treasure box and tells her thralls something like "I suppose your service is nearly over my pets. You have done well in your part to pave the way for Karzoug's Return" and leaves before the fire spreads too far.
3) Once the fire does enough damage to the stern, the barge begins taking on water and once the cold lake water hits the feet of my PCs. At this point, they wake, I return them character sheets with next to no equipment, Wisdom values of 1, and they can start rescuing themselves - somehow - as the barge begins to list and take on water in earnest.
4) The PCs make it to shore having left a lot of their loot behind as decorations on the wall. There, they learn the history of the barge and discover that they have been tattooed with the Sihedron Rune at the base of their necks. They will probably take a break here to regain drained wisdom and interact with the people of Turtleback Ferry.
5) They mount an underwater return to the barge (Cleric + water breathing) and regain whatever loot remains for them there plus any clues I wish to plant to keep the plot moving forward, if at all.
One alternative is to leave them with only sparse clues and a bit of a Mystery and run some RRR Kingmaker stuff out of Turtleback Ferry (the Trolls, some of the Fey stuff, the Owlbear and the Lizard Men remain from that book). Then when I figure that the PCs are ready for a change and some plot, Fort Rannick will fall and we'll start HMM. I'm leaning towards this approach so my PCs can drive the agenda to whether they want to leave the Sihedron Rune and Xanesha stuff behind them or whether they want to pursue that with all their resources. If they do use their resources (and divinations and whatnot) they will arrive just a bit too late to save the Fort.
|
|
Session 18.5 - The Journey
(I just emailed this to my PCs)
*******************************************************
Darkness and pain and then numbness and bright light. You are moving.
*******************************************************
It is impossible to focus your thoughts. Everything is a haze, as if you are looking at your life through smoky glass windows. As you raise your unbound hands to your face, they feel like they belong to someone else.
*******************************************************
An exotically beautiful dark-haired human woman is there, you know that she is a friend. She smiles warmly and touches your cheek and you want to help her, to please her. She speaks to you but you can never remember what she says.
*******************************************************
Is this a dream? Am I sleeping? Is this the afterlife?
*******************************************************
A long journey - a wagon and then rowing on a large sail barge travelling on a long river. There are towns and wilderness but the journey continues.
*******************************************************
Who am I? Who are these other people around me? There is something - a hint of a time before the Journey but it is a fleeting whisper - a forgotten childhood daydream.
*******************************************************
Xanesha. The woman's name is Xanesha and you smile because you can remember that. You hope it will make her happy.
*******************************************************
A lake, snow-capped mountains and a town nestled against the edge of the forest.
*******************************************************
The journey ends in the town and the barge is your home. You cook and clean and row and serve the Guests. There are games and entertainment, cards and dice. You avoid looking at the decorations on the walls - a breastplate, a shield, a bow, a stag-horned helmet, a leather bound book, an axe and several blades. For some reason, they always make you sad.
*******************************************************
The haze continues and the days get longer and warmer, then short and cold then long and warm again.
*******************************************************
Xanesha is your Mother, your Lover. Her happiness is your whole life.
*******************************************************
Hi Greycloak. I can't say I've been following your campaign terribly closely--I will likely be a player in Kingmaker at some point--but I am definitely interested in your means for getting your players from Skinsaw to Hook Mountain Massacre. Ever since I decided to run Rise of the Runelords the transition from Magnimar to Turtleback Ferry/Fort Rannick has always struck me as clumsy and difficult to pull off well.
Fortunately for me one of my players intends to play an orphaned aasimar ranger recently reunited with his half-celestial Black Arrow grandfather.
Having said that, I may use the sinking barge scenario anyway, just because it's awesome. : )
I like your little interludes--especially the part about the PCs' previous possessions making them feel sad.
Only one real question that I'm not sure whether you've answered--while the machinations at the dam can pretty much happen whenever they want, if Xanesha has been free for close to a year, surely by now she will have managed to assassinate Haldmeer Grobaras. That is going to have repercussions in Magnimar--and probably more broadly in Varisia given the power struggle between the three city-states. Given the inevitable difficulties Magnimar will face without its mayor, if Korvosa is so inclined, it could well have made a claim on Turtleback Ferry by the time your PCs wake up. Ah, politics...
All this, of course, also begs the question of what Xanesha has been up to. If she has completed her tasks in Magnimar by killing the folks on her list, presumably she has moved on to other things--and not just running the barge; it seems like that wouldn't really take all her attention.
So...what else could she get up to? Not sure I have a great answer right now, but it's worth thinking about. I'll let you know if I come up with something!
--Mike
|
As good as this is sounding, and interesting this appears to be, I feel you are setting yourself up for an issue at the beginning of book 4.
Youve already had issues with your players not feeling any attachment to Sandpoint, and from the sounds of it, had to put your players on a railroad more or less, to get them to head back there.
If theyve been gone so long now, and will spend a good awhile away from the town again, you may have a hard time getting them to feel as concerned about the town at the beginning of book 4 as they players ought to be.
Just my 2cp.
|
|
As good as this is sounding, and interesting this appears to be, I feel you are setting yourself up for an issue at the beginning of book 4.
I'm planning on giving my players the Keep and giving them a Kingmakeresque exploration and settling charter of the surrounding area. There will probably be a good period of exploration between HMM and FotSG and I would guess that Turtleback Ferry (or whatever they rename it to) will be their home.
Anyway, I will either have the beginning of FotSG occur in their new home town (the Scribbler stuff would be moved to the Dam) or I will have them get rumours of Stone Giant movements and may have the PCs track the raiding party through Varisia, arriving in time to intercept the raiding party there. I'll cross that bridge later though.
|
|
Only one real question that I'm not sure whether you've answered--while the machinations at the dam can pretty much happen whenever they want, if Xanesha has been free for close to a year, surely by now she will have managed to assassinate Haldmeer Grobaras. That is going to have repercussions in Magnimar--and probably more broadly in Varisia given the power struggle between the three city-states. Given the inevitable difficulties Magnimar will face without its mayor, if Korvosa is so inclined, it could well have made a claim on Turtleback Ferry by the time your PCs wake up. Ah, politics...
All this, of course, also begs the question of what Xanesha has been up to. If she has completed her tasks in Magnimar by killing the folks on her list, presumably she has moved on to other things--and not just running the barge; it seems like that wouldn't really take all her attention.
So...what else could she get up to? Not sure I have a great answer right now, but it's worth thinking about. I'll let you know if I come up with something!
re: Haldmeer - The PCs kept the city guard in the loop for what they were up to (Xanesha would have learned that too after questioning her charm slaves). Further, they found Xanesha's murder list as part of the fight and I'm going to say it skittered off the roof and fell into the crowd below the clocktower. Xanesha decided to cut her losses once she knew she was exposed and moved on to plan B, the gambling barge.
In this adjusted version of events, there is no Leucretia, only Xanesha who is operating solo trying to aid the return of Karzoug through various plots: first helping Nualia, then helping a certain bandit lord, then using the Skinsaw Cult and Aldern Foxglove. The description in HMM is that Leucretia was busy for two years with the Paradise Barge stuff, which I am truncating to a year and a half.
Anyway, the murder list gets found and Haldmeer will learn that he was on the list and that the party must have stopped the murderer before they disappeared because the murders stop. He won't know who to thank until the PCs reemerge more than a year later and start a new public profile in Turtleback Ferry, presumably after liberating the fort, depending on how things go.
|
|
As good as this is sounding, and interesting this appears to be, I feel you are setting yourself up for an issue at the beginning of book 4.I'm planning on giving my players the Keep and giving them a Kingmakeresque exploration and settling charter of the surrounding area. There will probably be a good period of exploration between HMM and FotSG and I would guess that Turtleback Ferry (or whatever they rename it to) will be their home.
Anyway, I will either have the beginning of FotSG occur in their new home town (the Scribbler stuff would be moved to the Dam) or I will have them get rumours of Stone Giant movements and may have the PCs track the raiding party through Varisia, arriving in time to intercept the raiding party there. I'll cross that bridge later though.
Sounds good, though you may want to rename the Scribbler, if your players learned the name of Erylium's master, since its him and all. Of course, if they didnt learn it, probably wouldnt make any difference.
|
|
Sounds good, though you may want to rename the Scribbler, if your players learned the name of Erylium's master, since its him and all. Of course, if they didnt learn it, probably wouldnt make any difference.
They didn't as they were very much in the take no prisoners mode then as always. If they choose some down time, my Bard may well return to Sandpoint to do archaeological research in the Cats of Wrath and may get some clue about a connection to the Scribbler.
I personally would like to lure the PCs back to Sandpoint for the beginning of FotSG (because they suspected lower levels in that dungeon and it would be nice to confirm that) but you are right in that it may be difficult to do so. We'll see how that goes though, I'm planning to have a very long time between HMM and FotSG for an extended KM interlude and may well end up beefing up or changing the FotSG events for a higher level.
This all depends on what the PCs do though - if they get hardcore about pursuing the Runelords plot, I'll let them (and will beef up the XP awards to keep them in the right level range for that thread) but if they decide to let that slide, then Runelords plot will happen to them more organically as they do some kingdom building and whatnot from the KM series.
I'm trying to leave the control of the events to the PCs to a certain extent, with the Runelords metaplot happening regardless of what they do. If they choose to really ignore Runelords, it will get worse and may well turn the campaign into one involving a major giant invasion of lower Varisia, including invasion of their startup Fiefdom.
Greycloak, I just wanted to say that your campaign sounds awesome. Just discovered this thread last week, and finally had time to finish reading it. I look forward to your future reports! :)
|
|
I am pretty much ready for tomorrow night. Here is the material I have ready for my PCs after the teaser I posted above (pardon any typos as this is for my consumption):
Stroke! Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!
You live aboard a gambling barge called “Paradise”. The Paradise is a fairly large vessel made from the shell of a colossal tortoise and you are currently seated in a long dark corridor pulling on an oar. Ahead and behind you are others doing the same. There is light coming from a series of hand-sized open portholes that you know open into a kitchen area to your right and to your left, the oar ports open to grey water.
Stroke! Stroke!
Sometimes you have other tasks but, right now, you row, because Mistress Xanesha wants you to.
Stroke! Stroke!
This night is different from others because, as you row, you notice one of the Others who serve aboard the Paradise suddenly stop what he was doing, grab a full lit oil lamp from its stand in the galley, and smash it on himself, engulfing himself in orange flames that quickly spread through the galley and up the stairs.
You continue to row. Stroke! Stroke!
You smell smoke and you are vaguely aware of some commotion above and splashing in the water beside you. There is a bright flickering orange light coming from the galley that eventually licks through the walls on the port side. Xanesha appears suddenly from her room carrying a large, heavy chest and a familiar spear.
She addresses you:
“Well my pets, I suppose this was bound to happen sooner or later as my work here is all but complete. I expect I will not be seeing you again but I thank you for your help bringing in the dawn of a new era.” Before your eyes, she transforms, her feet merging and extending into a long serpentine form while her torso and upper body remain the same. She speaks a few unintelligible words and with a puff sound is suddenly gone.
For a time, you continue to row.
Then I hand each player a new character sheet and a personalized message such as this one:
Abinscole, as the cold water hits your boots you are suddenly fully awake for the first time in...
Weeks? Months?
It couldn’t be years could it?
Your vision and hearing are fuzzy and your reactions seem muted but now it is more like the feeling of a hangover than the waking sleep, living death that you have felt for days without end. You suddenly experience new fragments of memory.
Your life has been as an oarsman on a boat of some kind, rowing to serve your Mistress who was at once kind and cruel. In addition to rowing, you also were employed as an entertainer for the Guests, and sometimes for the Mistress herself in her chambers. During these intimate times, she sometimes spoke softly in a language that you did not understand but that sounded familiar, like it was an amalgam of three modern languages – Giant, Varisian and Shoanti.
You are clothed in a simple brown shirt over grey woollen breeches and soft leather boots. You are sitting on a rowing bench with an oar in your hand that goes through a steel oar lock and a slot to the water outside the ship. You are not chained.
(Your wisdom is currently drained to a value of 1. All of your class abilities such as Bardic Performance etc. are as normal but to be able to cast any spells other than cantrips, you will need a full night’s rest and 15 minutes of preparation time.)
Followed by an escape from the sinking barge...
There are 10 rounds before the boat fills with water. Rounds 1-5, the boat is filling with water to chest high, round 6 the water reaches the oar holes on the starboard side and quickly pitches, round 8 it is totally on the starboard side (and the fire is quenched), round 10 it is submerged and sinks 10’/round until it settles on the bottom at a port-side depth of 60’
3 ways to escape
1) The oars are in oar locks but if they are fully extended, they can be used to do damage to the oar slots (attack roll, damage as quarterstaff) HP 30, Hardness 5 to make a hole large enough to squeeze through without making an escape artist check, Str 22 to break the oar from the lock
2) The benches are nailed in place. It is a Str 20 check to pull the bench out to free a nail which can be used to pick the DC20 lock in the door to the galley where there are many tools including 6 knives, a hatchet, pots and pans and food enough for 3 weeks.
3) After round 8, the fire is submerged and quenched. There is a hole in the Starboard side that can be swum through.
On the surface of the water
You find yourself swimming on the surface of a cold lake. The sky is clear and it’s after sunset but there is still a glow in the western sky. You see a number of people swimming towards the western shore about a quarter mile north of your position, as you watch, some dip below the water. To the North, you see a mountain range running more or less east-west. Below the range, you see lights from some kind of settlement several miles across the water to the northeast. To the south, the lake stretches on to the horizon and to the east, you can just barely make out some forested hills poking above the horizon. The western shore is closest, just 200 yards across the still cold water before you see reeds growing from the shoreline in front of several forested knolls providing a rolling silhouette against the western sky.
PCs must swim 600’ across the water (DC 10), swim half speed as a full round action (15’ for med, 20’ for small)
Every minute, they take 1d6 points of lethal damage and must make a DC 15 (+1 for each previous check) or take 1d4 points of nonlethal damage from exposure in the cold whater. Characters who take this damage are treated as fatigued (-2 str/dex, can’t run or charge) – 8 hours rest, with a second failure they are exhausted (half speed, -6 str/dex) – 1 hour rest to be fatigued.
...an Anaconda attack in the reeds near shore, presumably without weapons unless they get something off the barge on the way out. I'm hoping for something in the Conan punch the snake vein...
After the party moves on, presumably towards one of the treed knolls within the mushfens, the lead party member is attacked by a large anaconda that is hunting in the weeds that make up the lake shore (as Level 4 Animal Companion, Stealth = 22 due to a lack of light and being submerged, 18 for Darkvision)
Large Anaconda Cr3
xp 800
N large Animal
Init +3; Senses scent, Low light vision; Perception +12
AC 17 (+6 Nat, +2 dex, -1 size), touch 11, flat-footed 15 (improved cover +8 AC in water)
HP 34 (4d8+15)
Fort +7, Ref +7, Will +2
Speed: 20’, climb 20’, swim 20’
Melee: bite +8 (1d4+8 plus grab)
Special attacks: constrict (1d4+8 on successful grapple)
Str 24, Dex 16, Con 17, Int 1, Wis 12, Cha 2
BAB +3; CMB +8 (+12 grapple); CMD 20 (can’t be tripped)
Feats: Skill focus (perception), Toughness
Skills: Acrobatics +15, Climb +15, Perception +12, Stealth +7, Swim +15, Survival +5
Racial Modifiers +4 Perception, +4 Stealth, +8 Acrobatics
Environment: warm forests, swamps and fresh water
Morale: The snake flees if brought below half hit points
...and finally a night attack by a Kobold scavenging party with whatever improvised weapons the party has managed to manufacture in 4 hours on shore.
Rich from scavenging bodies and survivors further north, the war party sees a camp fire (if any) and approaches to get more riches, 4 hours after dark stealth 15, stopping at 50’(-5 to perception), closing to 30’ to attack with slings first.
10 Swamp Kobold Warriors CR 1/4
xp 100
LE Humanoid
Init +1; Darkvision 60’, perception +5, light sensitivity
AC 15 (+2 arm, +1 Dex, +1 nat, +1 size)
HP 5 (d10)
Fort +2, Ref +1, Will -1
Speed 30’
Melee Spear +1 (d6-1)
Ranged Sling +3 (d3-1), 10 bullets each
str 9, dex 13, con 10, int 10, wis 9, cha 8
BAB +1; CMB -1, CMD 10
Feats: Skill focus (Perception)
Skills: Swim +5, Perception +5, Stealth +5 (Trapmaking bonus switched to a swim bonus for Swamp Kobs)
Gear: Leather armour, small spear (medium short spear), sling, coins)
Chief Sootscale Kobold Rogue 3, CR2
xp600
LE Humanoid
Init +7; Darkvision, perception +5, light sensitivity
AC 19 (+3 dex, +3 arm, +1 dodge, +1 natural, +1 size)
HP 16 (3d8+3)
F: +1, R: +6, W: +1, evasion, trap sense+1
Speed 30’
Melee: mw club +4 (1d4)
Ranged: Sling +5 (1d3)
Special Attack: Sneak Attack 2d6, Rogue talent (surprise attack) – opponents are considered flat footed in surprise round even if they have acted
BAB: +2, CMB +1, CMD 15
Feats: Improved initiative, Dodge
Skills: Acrobatics +9, Climb +5, Disable Device +9, Intimidate +7, Linguistics +3, Perception +6, Stealth +13, Swim +8 (Swim bonus rather than trapmaking)
Gear: Small mw club, Leather armour +1, sling, 20 bullets
Morale: If brought below 5 hp, the Chief flees 2 miles south along the coast to his lair. Warriors fight to the death until the Chief flees.
Treasure: Among the Kobold war party, there is a total of 23gp, 154sp, 128 cp plus a handful of rings and other simple jewellery worth another 25gp and 4 daggers with sheathes scavenged from the dead (and the not-dead) from the Paradise Barge.
After that, they can either go after the fleeing kobolds to their lair (I'll use the Sootscale lair from KM1, this time with hostile kobolds inside instead of birdcruncher goblins, and the layout juggled a bit to throw my PCs off - shouldn't be a problem as they didn't really explore it last time), head to the town to regroup, presumably to return to the barge underwater after a week or more of rest, or go anywhere else they wish to go. If they dally in the mushfens, I'll hit them with a random encounter or two and if they really stray far afield, I have the whole area for almost a hundred miles in every direction from Turtleback Ferry populated with Kingmaker hex encounters from KM1-3 for when they have the option to do hexploration after they liberate Fort Rannick.
I'm not totally prepped for a return to the barge so I'll have to wing that part if they get that far tomorrow but it'll involve a gar attack on the way down (as shark), followed by a school of gar (as a group of shark, depending on how strong I figure the party is), followed by a giant eel who has made the sunken gambling barge his home.
(edit)
As for my wizard, who will be without spellbook, I will allow him to "research" the spells he used to know at a cost of 1 day for all the cantrips, and 1 day/spell level with a DC15+spell level Spellcraft check to re-learn and write into a temporary spellbook. In addition, he will be gaining a level and will get new spells that way, written wherever he wants to.
Hey Greycloak, your prep work sounds great. How did it all pan out?
|
|
Session 19 - Shipwrecked!
In attendance:
Wyndham - Human rogue with a nasty streak
Abinscole - Halfling Bard
Jerrick - Shoanti cleric/bow hunter of Erastil
Richard - Chelaxian fighter, brave/foolhardy, heavily armoured sword and board
Thorin - A dwarven barbarian battlerager type
Mark - Human Evoker
Missing: Arcainen - Human water bloodline sorcerer
The PCs started off as charm zombies aboard the Paradise gambling barge.
This is the map I made for this event:
http://i751.photobucket.com/albums/xx155/greykloak/Paradise_map.gif
While they were rowing (another day of rowing indistinguishable from many before it - about 18 months had passed from when Xanesha TPK'd them), one of their fellow charm zombie slaves snapped, smashed an oil lantern over himself and started a fire in the galley that quickly spread to the starboard side of the boat and up the stairs. This didn't stop them from rowing. They saw Xanesha (in human form) emerge from her cabin carrying a large chest, thank them for their service, transform into her natural form and dimension door away. They continued to row until the fire compromised the hull on the starboard side and the cold lake water was over their boots - the shock of which pulled them out of their stupor.
They found themselves not chained down but in port-side corridor with locked oars in narrow oar slots, rowing benches, 5" portholes to the interior of the barge and locked behind a reinforced door. They knew that much of their gear was on display in the gambling area of the barge but between them and that were the locked door and a fire. I started initiative at this point and they spent several rounds trying various things - ripping oars out (unsuccessful), battering the door down (unsuccessful), breaking the door (unsuccessful), and trying to pull nails from the oar benches to fashion into lock picks.
By now, the water was mid-thigh-deep and the ship was subtly listing to the starboard side.
They decided to work together and ripped one of the benches up to get at the nails and were successful at that. Wyndham began working at the lock while four of the stronger guys swung the bench at the hull trying to break a hole to escape. They got an amazing combined break check (28 or so) so they smashed a hole through the hull. In the mean time, Mark the wizard had swam under the water and discovered that there was another means of escape on the fire-damaged starboard side.
Wyndham opened the door on his second try while several of the party members scrambled through the hole they had made (enough for the halfling to move through but I asked for DC10 escape artist checks for the medium folk to get through). Now there was a 30 degree tilt to the ship as water was now coming in through the oar channels on the starboard side.
In a fit of typical PC greed, Richard decided that he would try to head up the stairs (through the fire) to attempt to retrieve his gear. I gave him 2d6 of fire damage for 5 squares of fire, which hurt quite a bit and burned most of his clothes away but he emerged into the smoke choked main salon. Mark decided to check out Xanesha's room to scavenge there while everyone else scrambled through the hole, with several trying to climb the side of the pitching boat to go after gear and Thorin waited behind. Wyndham, made it above decks first followed by Abinscole.
Now the boat was at a 60-degree angle and about 1/3 full of water. This quenched about half of the stairway fire so Thorin scrambled up the steps to search for gear after Richard. I rolled random dice for what they could find in each search attempt (first die was whose equipment was found, second die was what piece of equipment).
Richard found his shield and armour and picked the shield off the wall first. He went over to his armour but found that each piece of the full plate was mounted separately and figured it would take a minute to grab it all off the wall. Thorin came out of the fire (1d6 damage for each square because it had been significantly quenched).
Mark found nothing but wall hangings and art in Xanesha's room and returned to the galley, which was now half full, Thorin climbed out of the stairwell just as the boat rotated to fully on its side and Wyndham climbed along the edge of the boat and jumped to the upper deck through the window, landing in a mess of tables and chairs.
While the others looked around on the surface and tried to secure any flotsam, Wyndham found Jerrick's bow on the wall and grabbed it and Thorin climbed up the wall, finding his shield on the way, grabbing it. Mark tried to go through the hole that the rest of the party went through but got stuck and Abinscole climbed down to open the door to the main deck salon. The boat was now sinking at 10' per round and everyone got out and swam free, using a table as a makeshift raft. Abinscole summoned a chello (summon instrument) and climbed on top of that. Now came the swim through extremely cold mountain lake water in the dark, which had some tense moments (and cold damage) and everyone made it to the reedy swampy shore.
When they looked around, they found out that Arcainen had severe amnesia and didn't remember who he was or who any of the people were (making him an NPC non-combattant and therefore easy for me to deal with). The party healed (channel heal) and ripped the table apart the table (4 clubs) and headed towards a low forested island that they had seen poking up above the trees. On the way, they were attacked by an anaconda that they managed to drive away and they finally made it to the island.
There, Thorin started a fire (I required a DC20 survival check) and gathered food, Richard made torches out of sticks and grass, Jerrick made first a stone cutting tool and second started work on arrow shafts and the rest eventually fell asleep. After 4 hours, they were attacked by a kobold war party who had been scavenging on the shore from the dead and nearly dead survivors from the sinking ship and that fight was pretty fun - level 6 with 4 clubs and 2 shields between them against 10 warriors and a 3rd level boss rogue. It ended when the PCs killed the boss and half the warriors and the balance decided to run away into the night. They split the short spears, small leather armour and miscellaneous gold, silver and copper spoils from the kobold party.
The next morning, the party noticed that everyone had been tattooed on their upper back below their neck with the Sihedron Rune and Mark remembered that he had done some tattooing (he decided he's gonna take a rank in Craft: Tattooing, which I loaned to him until his next level). They looked around, got their bearings and ignored the kobold trail, which hooked back south and proceeded to travel north through the Shimmerglens towards Turtleback Ferry, a journey that took 2 days. Along the way, they found several kobolded bodies but eventually made it to town, looking a strange site indeed.
They found a sympathetic ear in the Mayor and priest of Erastil who allowed them to sleep on the floor in the town hall while they sold their kobold loot and rested for two weeks to regain lost Wisdom. In this time, Mark got quite lucky with his spellcraft rolls and managed to recreate about half of his lost spellbook (though he is still in dire straits because he has a bonded staff that is at the bottom of the lake), while the others found jobs for themselves to pay for food, Abinscole Barded in the Tavern and Wyndham worked shell games there. Jerrick spent the time in the church trying to help Arcainen get past his amnesia.
They didn't have enough money to purchase very much at all (about 20 gp each) and so they had to make some really tough choices - armour or longsword. :-)
They have resolved to hire a boat to take them to the site of the sunken barge and will be going to the bottom with Water Breathing after their gear now that their Wisdom is all back and their cleric's spells are back.
And that was it for last night - a really fun session that was unique in my 25 year D&D experience.
|
|
Next time (August when everyone's back from vacation):
I have a Gar attack planned on the way down (as Shark, CR2), a giant eel inside the sunken barge (CR5), I'm thinking some kind of hazard inside the boat (snagged tables and chairs that want to escape if they aren't careful on the high side of the boat - maybe CR6) and a school of Gar (4 or 5 as shark again - CR6-7). I'm not sure if the PCs will go after the Kobolds or not as there was some debate on that front.
There won't be much mystery about finding the sunken ship as they have locate object and endure elements to avoid hypothermia so the only question will be how much of their treasure to take from them.
I am thinking that I'll look at their character sheets and try to get an even amount of stuff from each of them in terms of missing items (most likely potions and rings) and I plan to take the equivalent to their party pool, which is a collective fund that they pay into to pay for resurrections and whatnot. All this extra stuff will be in Xanesha's chest in her room at Fort Rannick so in the long run, they won't be shy of monetary wealth but in the short run they will be a little short. We'll see, I'm not exactly sure about that - I may actually give them more money in artwork and whatnot to make up for their missing out on Xanesha's gear. I'll probably add everything up and see where they're at.
Richard sent a messenger to Amieko, who he was courting, saying he is alive so she is going to message back saying that servants of the Lord Mayor were asking about the party (because the guard found Xanesha's list and they pieced together that the Lord Mayor was soon to die) but that after they had been gone for the winter and spring, they were mourned for dead.
I expect that they'll want some down time to do some crafting and stuff but I have no idea about that. If they go back to Magnimar to meet the Lord Mayor, he'll reward them per the end of Skinsaw Murders and then they'll get their down time before he contacts them again about the trouble at Fort Rannick. If they seek adventure around Turtleback Ferry, I have lots of Kingmaker stuff ready to run around there before I spring HMM on them.
We'll see.
It sounds like everything went really well, congratulations! It's great when all that prep work pays off, isn't it?
I look forward to reading the next instalment.
|
|
Session 19.5 - Letters from home
Characters:
Arcainen - Human water bloodline sorcerer
Abinscole - Halfling Bard
Jerrick - Shoanti cleric/bow hunter of Erastil
Richard - Chelaxian fighter, brave/foolhardy, heavily armoured sword and board
Thorin - A dwarven barbarian battlerager type
Mark - Human Evoker
Wyndham - Human rogue with a nasty streak
After a bit of a summer hiatus, we are back to regular biweekly games again. Last time, we finished with the characters being dirt poor, a couple years older than when they were captured by Xanesha, in Turtleback Ferry and spending two weeks recovering from Wisdom damage so they could return to the sunken Paradise Barge to hopefully retrieve their loot. This gave them an introduction to the region and got them the chance to see what it's like before it gets blown up in HMM.
When my characters arrived in Turtleback Ferry, Richard sent a short letter to Amieko, who he was courting before they disappeared. His letter was something along the lines of, "We're alive. We were captured for a long time but now we've escaped and we're in Turtleback Ferry. I miss you."
This spawned three return letters from various people (spoilered for length), that travelled to the Mayor, to Fort Rannick by carrier pigeon and was finally delivered by Orik Vancaskerkin, who was exiled to the Black Arrows. This closed a circle that was started at the end of Burnt Offerings and I liked it because it reminded the PCs about NPCs past.
The first and juiciest important letter was:
Richard,
I am overwhelmed to hear that you are alive and well.
Three weeks after you travelled to Magnimar, a prissy man named Valanni Krinst came to town asking about you and your party. Mr. Krinst is the personal assistant and messenger to Lord-Mayor Grobaras, and he said that your group had been working to catch whoever was behind a set of murders similar to the ones here in Sandpoint when you disappeared following a flashy fight atop a clock tower in the city. He said that the Lord-Mayor wanted to give you some kind of reward for your service to the city or something like that because after the fight at the clocktower, the murders stopped. I will send him a letter saying that you are alive and well in Turtleback Ferry along with this letter to deliver to you through their agents at Fort Rannick.
Shalelu and I spent weeks retracing your steps in Magnimar looking for you. We found the inn you were staying at and claimed your horses, and we even found that you had paid Leis Nivlandis to enchant your longsword. Master Nivlandis said that an exotic and beautiful dark-haired woman came with your letter of rights, paid the balance owing and collected your sword “for you” but that turned out to be a dead end as well. After a time, we believed that you were gone forever and after you had been missing for a year, you were officially declared dead.
We sold your horses and tack and gave the money to the Turandarok Academy. I found a stash of money in your friend Wyndham’s room and I gave that to Shayliss Vinder to help with her new baby. Shayliss had a girl with curly brown hair and brown eyes and named her Wynnifred after your friend. Baby Wynny is crawling and pulling herself up on things now and is quite the little charmer. Shayliss and Arcainen’s half-brother Belven bonded during the time you were missing and to old Ethram Valdemar’s displeasure, they are engaged to be married at the end of the year. She feinted when I gave her the news that you were alive so it’s clear that she is at least conflicted about Wyndham.
A hard man named Akiros Ismort came asking about your party late last winter but he left after I told him about your disappearance.
Master Valdemar found some money that Arcainen had squirreled away and donated it to the town so a monument could be erected in honour of what your group had done for the people of Sandpoint during the Swallowtail Festival Raid and in stopping the Skinsaw Murderer. The monument is a simple marble obelisk in the green near the Cathedral with a bronze plaque inscribed with your names, the names of your fallen companions as well as the names of all of the town victims. It was erected on the first day of spring of this year and Father Zantus led a memorial service.
As for me, I don’t know what to feel.
I missed you terribly for a long time so I threw myself into my work. I have rebuilt Father’s my glassworks and have hired a master glassmaker from Westcrown named Piter Fendrast to run it for me while I manage things here at the Rusty Dragon.
Ryley must have seen me crying as he just came over for a scratch. Bethana kept Abinscole’s dog, Misty. I asked her if she wanted to send a letter as well but she declined saying something about Desna’s will. Maybe she has it right.
Amieko
(I liked this resolution for the Wyndam-Shayliss baby saga. If the player wants to resume something, he can and otherwise he's off the hook more or less, but will be generously teased about what happened. The other hints include: Richard's big sword was taken by Xanesha, the horses, including Jerrick's animal companion were sold and Arcainen's big nest egg of gold was lost, and Akiros Ismort, who served a year of hard labour in the Hells is free and looking for them, should I want a return NPC sometime after my PCs make it rich an famous again)
Arcainen,
Mother and I are pleased to hear that you are well.
We trust that you have come to your senses and will finally put this adventuring unpleasantness behind you. Now is the time for you to settle down, assume an active role in family affairs and take a bride appropriate to your station. A perfect time to make introductions would be at the wedding at year’s end here in Sandpoint. It seems your brother Belven has become entangled with the Vinder Girl.
I have dispatched a messenger who will secure you passage on a river boat to Magnimar and from there, a coach to Sandpoint. The messenger should arrive about a week after this letter.
Warmly Yours,
Father
(This letter was seemingly cold but so familiar in tone as to trigger Arcainen to recover from his amnesia. It will spawn some other Roleplaying as I'm sure he doesn't intend to look after the Family Business anytime soon. Also, the date for the wedding is 3 months in the future and could be a good time for the events that start Fortress of the Stone Giants, should I need/want it to occur in Sandpoint)
To the group who surveyed the Western Mushfens and who so valiantly served the people and City of Magnimar two winters ago,
Dear Sirs,
I would dearly like to thank you in person for your past service to the good people of Magnimar. If you are in the city, kindly present this note to my assistant, Valanni Krinst and arrangements will be made for a proper introduction.
Truly Yours,
Lord –Mayor Haldmeer Grobaras
First of the Council of Ushers
Magnimar
(This was intended to get the PCs back to Magnimar in their own time, to be told that a murder list was recovered after the clocktower fight and set up the Mayor rewarding them and being in the group's debt for the beginning of HMM.)
My over-arching goal here was to plant a bunch of seeds and to hint that some of their treasure would be lost for ever so that the PCs would be happy when some of it was found. I intended to punish them for their loss at the clocktower by liquidating an equitable amount of their possessions and to restore treasure and wealth by level balance among my PCs.
My plan for the next session is:
1) They get to the sunken barge.
2) They find it impervious to scrying (explains why attempts to track them failed).
3) They find that someone got there first and a portion, but not all of their gear has been whisked away somewhere.
4) They get a chance to do some underwater combat.
5) They figure out that it was Boggards who had been to the site before them (tracks in the sea bottom plus a marker on shore indicating where the wreck was).
6) They track down and go to the boggards (I'll take the Lizard Man camp from KM2 (which they bypassed in the Mushfens) and up the Lizardfolk to Boggards mostly on the fly) and they retrieve much of their lost wealth with some new different wealth and items thrown in.
7) This should end with the group flush with cash, balanced PC to PC, with time off planned for crafting while being experience-wise and story hooks-wise ready to face HMM.
Also, the date for the wedding is 3 months in the future and could be a good time for the events that start Fortress of the Stone Giants, should I need/want it to occur in Sandpoint)
... I'm in awe. You're a master. Congratulations, sir.
|
|
Also, the date for the wedding is 3 months in the future and could be a good time for the events that start Fortress of the Stone Giants, should I need/want it to occur in Sandpoint)... I'm in awe. You're a master. Congratulations, sir.
It's about as likely that it'll be some anniversary of Goblin Day (about one year into the future) or relocated to another town as my PCs are likely to keep the Keep after (during) HMM. At that point, they will be freed up to expand their kingdom using the Kingmaker rule set, using set encounters from KM3-4 relocated to the Sanos Forest etc. near Ft. Rannick.
I guess that'll all depend on whether my PCs seem to be enjoying being on the railroad (and want to push the Runelords path) or whether they want to stretch their legs. I asked before the campaign whether they wanted a slower-paced game with opportunity for kingdom-building and they said yes but I'm not so sure that this group will function well in a true Kingmaker campaign.
We played last night and it was awesome so I'll post a summary soon.
I look forward to it. :D
Nice work. I love letters. I once kicked off a d20 Modern campaign by writing real letters on a letterhead I created and sent them to my players' home addresses. Worked a treat. : )
Look forward to hearing how everything went.
|
|
Session 20 - Letters from home
In attendance:
Arcainen - Human water bloodline sorcerer
Abinscole - Halfling Bard
Jerrick - Shoanti cleric/bow hunter of Erastil
Richard - Chelaxian fighter, brave/foolhardy, heavily armoured sword and board
Thorin - A dwarven barbarian battlerager type
Mark - Human Evoker
Missing:
Wyndham - Human rogue with a nasty streak
After two weeks recouperation in the rainy town of Turtleback Ferry, the party hired a fishing boat to take them to the site of the sunken barge. As part of that journey, I had the captain make an off-hand comment about watching out for Black Magga. After some conversation about that legendary beast, they let it go and finished the journey. To confirm that they were where they thought they were, the party waded to shore, travelled to the island that they though they had camped on and found their old campfire. Turning their eyes down the shorline to where they would have emerged from the lake the night of the sinking, they noticed that a wooden staff was jammed into the edge of the weeds on shore. This staff was carved with patterned lines and marked with a feather.
Unable to decipher the meaning of the staff (it was a boggard marking-pole, left there to mark the location of the shipwreck for future salvage), the group shrugged and pushed on to their plan of circling around and scrying using Find Object to look for stuff to pinpoint the wreck.
Mysteriously, Find Object didn't work so the group estimated the site of the wreck, cast water breathing and dove overboard. They attracted a giant gar on the way down, that was dealt with fairly easily and eventually found the wreck in 60' of water. The site of the wreck had clearly been disturbed in the two and a half week interim. There was non-buoyant furniture and objects scattered over the lake bottom and there were tri-lobed footprints in the mud.
Pushing into the wreck, the party searched for what was left and retrieved a number of objects before being attacked by a giant eel that had made its home in the bottom deck. The eel provided more of a challenge but was eventually dispatched. (I had planned another encounter, a school of gar on the way up but I felt that the novelty of underwater combat had worn thin for both players and DM and so decided to drop that one.)
In the end, it was discovered that there was a beam on the barge that was projecting a nondetection field, obscuring the scrying. It was deduced that the creatures who had salvaged the wreck were most likely boggards (known to live in the swamp beyond the southeast part of Claybottom lake, confirmed by their boat captain). They scoured the ship and recovered a small portion of their gear (enough to make them barely combat effective) but they were missing anything that was light (taken by Xanesha when she fled), mundane (dumped overboard), obviously valuable and not too heavy (taken by the Boggards, who can't breathe underwater and so were salvaging in short spurts).
The party returned to town with what they found and bought a pair of flat-bottomed marsh boats (plus tools to extract the nondetection beam from the Paradise Barge), with plans to track down the Boggards who had the balance of their possessions.
The group spent several days rowing through the sodden Shimmerglens and eventually found the Boggard Encampment (it rained the whole time and they couldn't see much but neither could the random encounters it turned out).
(The Boggard Encampment was the Lizard Man camp from KM2 with anyone but the bosses bumped up one CR from Lizardfolk to Boggard to account for the extra players and the extra level. I was pretty much spot-on with my challenge assessment here as you'll see.)
After much discussion, the group decided to assault in the pre-dawn darkness. The plan was for Abinscole to change his appearance to that of a juvenile boggard, sneak through/over the pallisade wall that protected the mud island encampment and somehow open the gate so the rest of the group could begin an assault.
This plan went off without a hitch. Abinscole's disguise was perfect (he has disguise self) and he decided to Fascinate the two boggard guards (both failed their saves), walk up to the gate and opened it. Meanwhile, the party was hovering 100' away from the encampment with Richard having Water Walking active, ready to charge into camp while the rest of the party rowed the boats to the island.
The party worked its way systematically through the Boggard encampment killing individual groups of warriors, braves and blood caimans (lizards) one at a time. This was a good battle for my two arcanists because they did some serious damage with fireball and were really able to control the crowd well. The cheif was a giant boggard weilding a trident with a pair of nasty crocodiles and once he was killed the group split up to explore the remaining mud huts. (Their only mistake so far)
This left the group compromised when a nasty will'o'wisp attacked one of the weaker groups but it was eventually killed.
In the end, the party retrieved everything but a magic ring or amulet apiece, their mundane gear, their potions, their scrolls and their cash. They found some money that wasn't theirs (it was Xanesha's, in platinum, stored in my Wizard's Bag of Holding), plus the treasure from the Boggards.
The party returned to Turtleback Ferry, took a riverboat down the Yondabakari to Magnimar and met with the Lord-Mayor. He explained that during your fight on the clocktower, a list of names fell off the roof (Thorin remembers this fact too). It was recovered by the guard and they learned that every crossed-off name was a murder victim and that the Lord-Mayor's name was on the list as well. The Lord-Mayor asked that the group keep him informed of their whereabouts in case he has a job for them to do in the meantime.
The group is now flush with cash and so decided to take a hiatus to craft some magic items and stake a claim on a potential gold mine they had found when exploring the Mushfens. I'm not exactly sure what's going to come out of this as there is some talk about also tying up some loose ends (for instance, they never de-cursified Foxglove manor, despite purchasing and then losing a scroll to do so with).
Nice work Greycloak.
Have you worked out (other than what Xanesha was obviously up to in Turtleback Ferry) what Karzoug's forces have been up to in the past year and a bit? I can't help but think that if Mokmurian is left alone long enough he will discover more and more about Thassilonian magics and perhaps cause an even greater problem than he does in the original AP.
Although there might be something in Kingmaker to handle that, I'm not sure.
Good reading, I'm enjoying your campaign!
--Mike
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Nice work Greycloak.
Have you worked out (other than what Xanesha was obviously up to in Turtleback Ferry) what Karzoug's forces have been up to in the past year and a bit? I can't help but think that if Mokmurian is left alone long enough he will discover more and more about Thassilonian magics and perhaps cause an even greater problem than he does in the original AP.
Although there might be something in Kingmaker to handle that, I'm not sure.
Good reading, I'm enjoying your campaign!
--Mike
I suppose that is a valid question. I run a dynamic world where PC decisions and indecision affects the world around them but I am not a slave to events happening as they are outlined in the time line. If the Giant attack doesn't happen for 3 or 4 years of game time, I'm fine with that and then everything relevant to that attack will just have been moved forward by those 3 or 4 years. If, for instance they weather the giant attack and don't go after the source then the source will come to them in its own time and form.
The short answer is: My PCs haven't heard anything about Karzoug and his forces so they don't really exist until the plot dictates they are needed.
I did some reading ahead and I may a bunch of HMM etc. until and unless my PCs start spoiling for a fight. If they push through HMM on the medium advancement chain, they won't be more than 8th level by the end of the adventure so it'll start getting really hard for them.
My preliminary plan is to have them liberate Ft. Rannick (which I think they can safely do at 7th level with help) and then stop things there.
If they are eager to do some kingdom building at this time, I'm ready for that and one of the first encounters will probably be with the Shimmerglens Nymph, whatever her name is, so my PCs can be the ones to tell her about the attack. She'll rush away, never to be seen in corporeal form again and the rest of that thread will make more sense than in the original HMM version.
I'll probably give my PCs a couple of months to explore, govern and wonder about the wet/snowy weather before I spring the dam encounter on them. There will be red herring evidence from that one that will lead to the troll site from KM#2 if they follow it.
If they decide to be aggressive about pursuing the runelords plot, I'll let them do that as well but I'll probably be forced to up the xp awards to speed things up a bit in that respect.
|
|
Session 21 - Mammy! Im'at da frunt doorr!
In attendance (everyone):
Arcainen - Human water bloodline sorcerer, focused on rays
Abinscole - Halfling Bard/Pathfinder Chronicler
Jerrick - Shoanti bow hunter cleric of Erastil
Richard - Chelaxian fighter, extreme AC and board
Thorin - A dwarven barbarian battlerager type - falchion
Mark - Human Evoker
Wyndham - Human rogue/shadowdancer with a nasty streak
We started the game off with a bunch of business - shopping, crafting, player-DM discussion stuff, individual roleplay things to be resolved before the beginning of Hook Mountain Massacre. My PCs found a prospective gold mine when they were mapping the Western Mushfens and kept it secret so they decided they wanted to see about mining it. I generated a set of rules that involved a bunch of upfront expense (staking the claim, hiring a master miner for an assay, building a mining camp and roads and all that) in exchange for a monthly profit. My PCs sunk more than 2000gp each in exchange for a profit of 150gp a month for a little under 4 years. I was fine with that because if anything it keeps them behind in wealth by level terms in the short run and makes them feel like badassed landowners.
Abinscole spent his time doing archaeological research in the Catacombs of Wrath so as to publish an article on them for entrance into the Pathfinders. There, he learned that it was a Thassilonian-aged "runewell of justice" and that it was fed when people died in violent ways nearby. It'll help them put together the plot later I think.
Jerrick asked Shalelu to help him track down the person they sold his horse to (animal companion that had horseshoes of speed). The short of it was he wanted his old horse back and found that he had jumped his pen, bred a couple of the owners mares and had escaped. Jerrick went to an old cave he had found that was sacred to Erastil, prayed for a day to gain an animal companion and the horse returned to him. Cheesy but my player was happy.
Once everyone was done, I had a courier from the Lord-Mayor arrive with a letter asking them to return to Turtleback Ferry to investigate a lack of communication with the Black Arrows. I was happy in that my PCs knew the area fairly well, had heard of the Black Arrows since the end of Burnt Offerings and had even met a couple of them when they were up there. There was no "We have to go where?" and that made all that work worthwhile. Shalelu showed up on horseback when the players were ready to leave and asked to tag along, not saying why.
Anyway, I handwaved the trip and described Turtleback Ferry as a sodden, muddy mess after another month of rain with the rivers swollen and the lake muddy. They understand that the rain is unusually heavy and long-lasting. They talked to folk in town and found that they are worried because a local trapper has been missing for 10 days and with no Rangers to ask the townsfolk are uptight.
I ran the Grauls pretty much by the book (my PCs were 5th-6th level but with 7 of them it wasn't overpowering). They investigated the bear sounds, drove off Rukus while they killed the remainder of his dogs. They then approached the farm and were ambushed by Crowfood in the cornfield before deciding to go to the barn first.
They didn't handle the barn as best as they could have and were surprised by how strong Biggin' was but they prevailed in the end and freed the 4 remaining Black Arrows (Jakardros, Vale, Kaven and Orik, who was with the Rangers since he was sentenced at the end of Offerings). Shalelu took the rangers and the horses away to camp and safety while the PCs investigated the house to see if there were any survivors left there.
They went in through the front door, missing many of the interesting traps through the kitchen, into the diningroom - disabling all three scythe traps (my rogue has trapspotting) and found Lucky and Maulgro in the playpen. They made a ton of noise in that fight so I rolled perception for Mammy and she started casting spells. My PCs also got perceptions and a handful of them heard her casting in her room.
I had adjusted her spell list a little (I'll post that later once I'm at my other computer) but the important thing was that I had given her another Summon Monster III and had given her Stinking Cloud, which she readied to centre in the hallway leading to her room.
My PCs spread out badly at this point - Arcainen put a Grease Spell in a bad spot (in the corner of the hallway near the door to the livingroom) before the two warriors rushed through. Richard made it but Thorin did not. Richard as always rushed ahead and opened the door.
At this point, Mammy had been aware for 5 rounds so she had shield, a couple of summoned leopards and had readied a stinking cloud to fill the hall when the door opened. Richard opened the door all alone and was suddenly in the cloud, boxed in by zombies and summoned beasties. I had a couple of failed saves against the cloud (not Richard to start) and he tried to fight into the room, relying on his amazing AC to protect him.
He got hit with enervation and ray of enfeeblement while the rest of the group fumbled with trying to avoid the cloud and was really unhappy. Meantime, Thorin finally made it out of the friendly-fire grease spell just in time for Richard to get nauseated and retreat to the dining room and then the kitchen.
Wyndham, Arcainen and Mark opened Rukus' door in the meantime while much of the group was incapacitated by nausea. They finished him off pretty easily. The zombies were killed in the stinking cloud but the group was pretty spread out at this point.
To liven things up, Hucker ambushed Richard at the door to the basement and after missing his attack with a decent swing, switched to sunders to open Richard's armour to make him easier to hit. This got Richard moving towards the exit and made room for the donkey rats to enter the fray. Meanwile, Thorin had fled the cloud and was trying to cut through the wall between the Privy and Mammy's closet. Mammy cast her mirror image and waited.
Hucker followed Richard and pounded him pretty badly, yelling "Mammy! Im'at da frunt doorr!" Mammy grabbed her summoned cats and dimension doored outside and they managed to drop Richard in the entrance of the house (-10/-14HP).
The group killed the donkey rats just in time to stand in such a way that Mammy could hit the entire party with her Fear spell, sending 3/7ths of the group a'running leaving Thorin, Jerrick and Abinscole to fight a wounded Hucker and an untouched but sorely low on spells Mammy.
Abinscole fell next before Thorin got a critical hit on Hucker, knocking him down to 1HP. Hucker fled while Mammy and Thorin beat on each other (Mammy losing mirror images and vampiric touching Thorin). Abinscole was healed and went after the ones who had fallen to fear and un-feared Wyndham who returned to the fray and managed to flank Mammy and get a good hit on. She blinded him for his efforts but eventually the group killed her in a pretty epic fight, all-in-all.
The party was 100% out of healing and so decided to retreat (uncharacteristically not even stripping bodies) with the plan to return in the morning after they could mend Richard's armour, de-blind Wyndham and cure some strength damage from the Biggin poisonings.
For next time, I think I might have Hucker drink his healing potion and try to sneak back to the house to get Muck Graul (the tendriculos) for a nighttime revenge attack at the PCs' camp before they get a chance to heal up. Depending on where the group retreats to, Hucker may well get suited up in all his fallen brother-son's best gear for this fight and drink Mammy's potion as well.
I'll do a little Roleplay with the Rangers first because everything was rushed initially but I think that having Hucker and Muck attack their camp will be a fun way to start things off with a bang before it becomes a mop-up operation in the house and a no-challenge anticlimax of a fight in the basement.
|
|
If you decide against the nighttime raid, you could reset some of the traps (the 3 scythes at least), maybe add a few extras to the house of your own design, and have Hucker try to force them through some of them. If he engages from past the kitchen, they may well forget about the scythes and rush straight through.
You could also set Muck loose in the house. The narrow hallways and doorways ought to give him enough cover to keep him from getting ganged up on and slaughtered quickly.
I might not do both the traps and Muck in the house though, since Muck is just as likely to set them off as the PCs are.
|
|
Good ideas there. I'll probably play that by ear.
They were talking about pitching tents right in the yard and if they do that it gets tough for Hucker to sneak in until after dark and gets close to impossible to imagine a huge Muck making his way upstairs without making a huge racket.
If they do that, I might have Hucker watch the group from the treeline (which they'll have a really tough time with given the rain and distance). After dark, they'll hear cracking plaster and groaning floorboards as a hungry Muck rips out the door and comes up the stairs in the middle of the night. If they go in to investigate, Hucker'll attack from behind if he can (or attack whomever's left in the camp) or react in whatever way makes sense.
Another idea is whomever's on watch has a chance to see Hucker sneak (and then sprint) in through the trapped porch door after dark. Depending on how much time they leave Hucker, he then resets the traps, goes down the pit trap in the living room to get Muck and is gone from the upper level if they come looking for him. If they don't come in, they hear the noises from the previous scenario, Hucker resets the traps, grabs his brothers' best gear and might try dashing away if he can.
I have to make sure I don't play him too smart though. He's crafty and sneaky but fairly stupid so I can't be too good with his tactics.
|
|
In preparation for next week's game, I sketched a side-view of Fort Rannick as seen from across the valley (link below). I also made PC-friendly versions of the castle and keep maps (as sketched by the freed rangers) but I can't share those because they have the artwork from the adventure. Blue-green is glacier, green is trees; roads go to Turtleback Ferry, the dam and up to the Aerie:
http://i751.photobucket.com/albums/xx155/greykloak/Rannick-side_look.jpg
Also, I looked at the d20pfsrd conversion of the supposed to be CR6 Tendriculous and it's way way way stronger than a supposedly same-challenge CR6 Plant, the Shambling Mound. My PCs are severely depleted at the moment so I'm not going to throw that converted monstrosity at my players just now and will use the Shambler instead, maybe with the simple advanced template once I figure out how weak or strong they really are.
|
|
I found another Tendriculous that's more like a CR6 critter. I suppose it's like the one in my Bestiary 2 if there's one in there.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/plants/tendriculos
I still worry about the regeneration and swallow whole paralysis but I think I'll use this version anyway. I think my arcane casters are strong enough to do some decent damage.
Cloak, if you tell me where you live, I'll start the process of moving my family to your town and bring pizzas to your house until you let me join your gaming group.
If your campaign is this much fun to read, I can't imagine how exciting it must be to actually play.
|
|
Cloak, if you tell me where you live, I'll start the process of moving my family to your town and bring pizzas to your house until you let me join your gaming group.
If your campaign is this much fun to read, I can't imagine how exciting it must be to actually play.
1) You are definitely right about how exciting it must be to play.
2) This post made me lol.
|
|
Session 22 - The b!tch is back
In attendance (everyone):
Arcainen - Human water bloodline sorcerer, focused on rays
Abinscole - Halfling Bard/Pathfinder Chronicler
Jerrick - Shoanti bow hunter cleric of Erastil
Richard - Chelaxian fighter, extreme AC and board
Thorin - A dwarven barbarian battlerager type - falchion
Wyndham - Human rogue/shadowdancer with a nasty streak
Not there: Mark - Human Evoker
First off, I had some disastrous news last week that affects my bi-weekly Saturday night game and that's why I despaired and am late posting this. I got my winter rec-league hockey schedule and I have games on 95% of the Saturday nights between now and April (after having all of 3 Saturday games last year). In the end, I think we're going to be able to swing Fridays instead (a little trickier because of traffic) and I may lose a player or two in the process.
So, my party decided to pitch their camp just inside the trees to the north of the gap between the Grauls' house and barn; the only remaining Grauls were Muck and Hucker. We did some RP with the rangers and gave the party a chance to spot Kaven's tattoo (which they haven't done yet) and they decided to clear out the remainder of the Graul house in the morning while the rangers, Shalelu and Mark return to Turtleback to buy some gear funded by the party. They would then head to scout the Fort from across the valley later that day and decide what to do.
After dark that night, Hucker snuck back into the house (I gave my folk perceptions but they never really had a chance with the rain and distance), he drank his and mammy's healing potions, took some magic items from his brothers, reset the traps and he went down and unlocked Muck, telling him he wasn't gonna get fed. Hucker then snuck out of the house, circling into the bush to the west to join the attack when his brother came out.
Muck basically destroyed much of the house, smashing his way up the stairs and through the kitchen door. This more than alerted my PCs who arrayed themselves along the treeline and waited in the dark, unable to see the house either in the dark. Wyndham was blinded so I gave him Shalelu and the rangers to run for the fight. The group eventually joined the attack against the tendriculous and was attacked from the rear by Hucker. Because the party was so depleted, it was a tough, rough fight with the highlight being Shalelu getting swallowed whole and rescued by Jakardros who dove in (while the plant was inactive and regenerating due to non-lethal damage).
In the morning, the parties split up. The rangers went to town for bows, swords, arrows, axes and armour (funded by some party members) and the group went back into the house. They triggered one of the reset scythe traps and they pretty much discovered everything there was to find there. They eventually torched the house and the barn and waited for the rangers to return.
They then scouted the Fort and I gave them a detailed map of the layout (extracted from the pdf with place names on them), with everything but the shocker lizard warrens being shown clearly. They hatched a plan whereby the rangers and the evoker Mark would attack the eastern gate as a diversion while the rest of the party went through the waterfall to attack the shocker lizards and enter the keep from the jail. They loaded up with anti-electricity defensive spells and in they went.
The diversion happened off-screen (so no ogres or rangers killed) and they entered the falls unseen. This time, they had Wyndham (shadowdancer, who now has Darkvision) scout well ahead in the darkness with a Message cantrip running, courtesy of Abinscole. He found the first couple of lizards and coordinated the attack and then he did the same against the larger group of lizards in the warrens (I had them hiding among stalactites/stalagmites in the room with the number in it). Both fights were a slaughter for the lizards who were unable to do enough damage to pierce the party's protection magics.
Unfortunately, their fight was loud and close enough to alert Xanesha (who was in the Jail in Leucretia's room) and she started buffing herself up as she is wont to do. The party heard her spellcasting and had a discussion about what to do. I ran a stopwatch during their conversation (to keep track of everybody's durations) and they ended up being 3 minutes in, so enough that her shield, mage armour, mirror images, and invisibility were still running. They sent the rogue in with invisibility running and then followed not too far behind.
She recast silence when the door opened and moved back to cast divine favour and haste while the PCs crept forward into the silence (but with the advantage of Message running so they could communicate through the bard Abinscole). When the PCs were in the room, she taunted them and attacked. The fight was a near-TPK again but the party got a good dispel magic (dispelling the haste) and a couple of big critical hits that scared her enough to step back from melee and dimension door up to Jaagrath Kreeg's room, despite there being 2 or 3 of the party members bleeding on the ground.
Xanesha has now healed herself up some, as has the party and they are deciding whether to press on while they have her wounded and depleted or whether to try something else. Xanesha is going to find that Jaagrath is unbothered by the imminent attack and won't go to investigate. I anticipate that my party is going to get part way through the ground floor of the keep before they retreat for the night and won't see Xanesha again until sometime later.
In that case, I'm thinking that Xanesha will move her nest somewhere else like the top of the watch tower (B36) and there'll be some regular ogres drinking or sleeping in the jail if the party returns that way.