| Askren |
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I did it with Rise of the Runelords, so it stands to reason I'd do it with Curse of the Crimson Throne. That is to say, taken on the task of re-writing the campaign in my style, which means more padding, more content to explore character relationships and choices, and more exploring Korvosa and hopefully developing deep and meaningful connections to the people and places within.
Let me start by explaining my experience with CoCT. I've attempted to run this campaign like, 5 times now, all with mixed success. My farthest was level 8~ in book 3, my shortest didn't even make it to session 1. But through all of it, I've always loved CoCT, and I've spent every time polishing my knowledge of the city, and making the way I bring players into the game down to a science. So when my Rise of the Runelords group decided to go on hiatus as one of our original members had to excuse himself to deal with personal stuff, my group decided they were tired of the one-shot modules, and wanted to play something they could really explore characters in, rather than just throwing together a build for whatever level one-shot I can throw together. I, of course took the opportunity to pitch Curse of the Crimson Throne, knowing these guys are fantastic roleplayers, and if they buy into it, we could do great things with this campaign. They bit the hooks, and we went right into it.
Character creation went about as well as it could. All human save one Dwarf, all melee save the Cleric, things are looking good, and I'm excited to play.
So let's look at our dramatis personae:
Harald Frontsman
Finn Dawley
Balthur Stoutforge
Shinji
So this sets the stage for our characters. Aside from these, for CoCT I have every player write me up to 3 NPCs, small characters of their creation whom they have a relationship of some sort with somewhere in the city. Not important people, but enough so that the players can have a minor resource and a familiar face in the sea of strangers Korvosa can be. I won't detail these unless they come up.
And so our party meets. We didn't have much time to play our first session, but we got enough done to set the proper scene.
Session 1
I always open this game by having every player describe what a standard day in the life of their character is, and walking us through the events of that day, because Curse of the Crimson Throne starts on what is otherwise an ordinary day in Korvosa. The only difference is, each character stumbles upon a Harrow card, hidden away in their personal belongings in a place they are sure to find. I've assigned the card, it's picture, and given the text on the back to each player so they can weave it into their narrative. Everyone finishes their description with their player waiting for sunset and then heading to Zellara's house.
When they meet there, there is some uneasiness, maybe even some hostility, but after someone mentions the name Gaedren Lamm, everyone relaxes a bit. They go inside, look around and talk for a bit before Zellara joins them and tells of her need of their help. Of course, everyone is skeptical for their own reasons, but she suggests that she read the group's fortune before they go. You can find my write-up of my Harrow Reading for the group HERE (ignore the bit at the top, it's old). Needless to say, some of the details in the reading resonated a bit personally and the party decided they needed time to plan.
So they left Zellara's and hunkered down at a nearby tavern, talking over what they knew, what resources they had, and where to go next. Knowing that Gaedren cleaned house a few years ago and has gone into hiding, his location unknown to most everyone, the group decides they need to follow the only lead they have, which is drug traffic. Luckily, Harald has a bit of a Pesh problem, and one of his few "friends" is a street-level pusher known as Sid "Swarthy" Swartham, a jumpy little man who is trying to get out of the game. Under a little bit of pressure, he tells Harald that he doesn't know where the product comes from, only where he picks it up, but that his best bet is to check out the old church-turned-flophouse known as St. Caspeiran's, a crash spot for junkies of all types. And so with that lead in hand, the group has a direction.
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So that's where my campaign is kicking off. I'm going to use this section after every write-up to detail some of the major changes I have made, and am planning to make to the story as it goes. So, here;
So, we fix it. First, we stretch out the intro segment. I give huge credit to Olondir and his thread HERE where ideas were workshopped that I ended up putting into play. My final writing of the chapter sends the group from Zellara's to St. Casperian's, where they engage with Belphais Splithog who offers a trade for information. He "sells" the party the location of the Fishery, which they can raid as they choose. Gaedren is not at the Fishery, but with the right pressure Yargin can betray his status. The actual transition to the Warehouse is a bit awkward currently, having intended to use the dock chase from Mad God's Key, but ending up using that scene for this same group in Runelords, I had to change it. Still haven't figured out how to smooth the path to the Warehouse.
Anyway, Gaedren makes his last stand at the Warehouse (the same one that turns into a Hospice in Seven Days), and Zellara reveals herself to the players. The Queen's Brooch is found, unknowingly, and the players leave unsure of what comes next.
The next bit is one I've been writing, but haven't road-tested yet. When the players emerge from killing Gaedren, I'm not having the city be in riot-mode at all. Rather, everything is still perfectly normal. I want the players to take time trying to appraise/sell their loot, talk about their Gaedren-free future, and contemplate what the Harrow told them, all while rumors of things being not right at the castle spread. Once the players learn that the Brooch belongs to the queen, news will hit the streets like wildfire about the King's death and controversy over the Queen being fit to rule.
I'm going to pepper in specific book-written events on the streets as the city's demeanor changes, while workers and citizens from all over are going to mass in Endarin Square to voice their displeasure, huge numbers of Hellknights called in to keep them down. I actually really want it to be ambiguous as to who hit first, so that no one has a clear story of what exactly started the riots. Someone did something stupid, and panic and chaos take over. The whole rioting thing is going to be a bit of a slow burn, because more than anything I want the players to FEEL like they're in the middle of a city sliding down into chaos.
I don't expect I'll change anything about the meeting with the Queen or Kroft, and I have not yet written anything for All the World's Meat or Eel's End. I'm getting to those now.
So that's my Curse of the Crimson Throne. I hope I can keep this thread going and maybe have some discussion on changes, additions, different use of characters, and ideas people want to see played out. I know my group will be up to the task.
| Can'tFindthePath |
Yes, looks fantastic. I have acquired the last 3 chapters of CoCT, and I've been considering running it in a few months (and completing the set). This will help immensely. I don't know if I would have thought to make these changes, but I am sure I would have found the original wanting.
Thanks!
| Askren |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Thanks for the interest. Gonna move right along with this past Fridays session, where things went about as well as could be expected.
Session 2
The party reviewed the information they had and decided that it would be best to give St. Caspeiran's flophouse at least a pass-by so they can see what they're dealing with, and either approach that night (it was midnight by the time they got there) or in the morning. Well, the place wasn't hard to find, and they discovered what was clearly an old church that had been left to rot for some time. Two stories tall with a bell tower on top, boarded-over windows, and graffiti covering the doors told them they were in the right place. They entered and saw much of what they expected, piles of drug-addicts and homeless people in various catatonic states, either passed out or twitching with Shiver-induced dreams. One or two cogent people caught their eye, but it wasn't long before they realized none had much to say. Soon after, they found themselves greeted face to face by a man calling himself Beltias Kreun, the Splithog Pauper, self-styled leader of the Splithog Alley Paupers, a gang of thieves and cutpurses who hide in plain sight.
Kreun made it clear that he had no intention of starting a fight, his house was one where all those broken by society were welcome, as long as they paid proper respect. He could tell right away that the party were not there for drugs or shelter, so they wanted something. He offered the party a bargain for the information they needed, he puts them on a path to Gaedren Lamm, and in exchange, when the group puts Lamm in the dirt, they return to him with the crime lord's ledger full of contacts, business details, and other information. He made no secret of the fact that killing Lamm would create a power vaccuum and he would like to be the one to snatch some of that. Uneasy, but desperate for the lead, the party accepted the deal.
Kreun pointed the group towards one of Gaedren's old business fronts, the Fishery he used to sell dock dumpling slop to merchants, used as a front for his other activities. Gaedren has gone into hiding, so he's not likely operating this business directly, but it's still operational, and drug pushers still make pick-ups there, so someone in the building must know more.
The party scouted out the Fishery early the next morning, the Cleric investigating around the dock area early while the Fighter knocked on the door later in the day. Together they didn't gather much information, but it was enough that the party decided it was obviously still a front. They waited until nightfall and then assaulted the building, busting in both doors and engaging in combat with a human thug and a half-orc brute. The orc died, but the thug was saved from death by the Cleric as a prisoner.
Our session came to a close as the group had made their way into the building and began looking around, putting together the pieces of what kind of business is done in this old warehouse. Specifically, a business using children.
Yargin is below where Gaedren was, as he runs the drug operation from there. People who buy and move drugs from him know to enter via the back dock and the ship, which keeps the drug business away from the legit fish business. I'm keeping the alligator too, because why not. The important part is that Zellara's head is NOT here. It's at the Warehouse with Gaedren.
When the players do raid the lower floor, they're going to find a decent sized shipment of Shiver, marked with Devargo's seal. It's not meant to be a direct link for them, but a foreshadowing to another drug-dealing criminal they'll meet shortly after the city falls to chaos.
Anyway, that's all for this week.
| Askren |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So I neglected to make a post for our last sessions, so I'll dump them both here. My players are drawing closer to the end of their story with Gaedren, but things are a bit complicated (as they always are with me), and the plot is always thickening.
Before I recap, I should give a big shout-out to Inspectre, who's thread I've been reading and details of which I couldn't help but crib because they were pretty awesome.
Session 3
So here the party began in the midst of the Fishery, with Giggles the half-orc bled to death on the ground and the other thug beaten unconscious in a corner. They combed the building over, finding various documents and details about the fish business, realizing that on the surface, it seems to be somewhat legitimate, if not scummy. The obviously found themselves in the odd position of having to deal with the small herd of Little Lamms who were a combination of shocked, terrified, and confused at what happened. None of the PCs being particularly good at talking to children, this wasn't an easy task. However, some strange actions by the children and talking later, a few decided to leave with Finn, led by one of their number. However, when Finn turned his back, the leading child pulled a knife from his clothes and attempted to drop the Cleric from behind, only just saved by Balthur the Dwarf noticing in time and yelling a warning.
When faced directly, the players realized the child was not a child, but rather a disguised Gnome, Hookshanks, and Finn retaliated by using his domain power to knock Hookshanks backwards through the hole in the floor to the river below. The Gnome caught himself on the ledge, but Shinji immediately followed up with a strike right through his collar that killed the Gnome instantly, sending him tumbling into the water below, and unfortunately taking Shinji's sword with him.
One emotional reaction later, Shinji had dove straight in after his favorite sword, sinking to the bottom to attempt to retrieve it. Finn reacted too, diving in after Shinji to save him. Balthur, left a bit confused, could only attempt to grab one of the children's hammocks to help pull them out of the water, but in his distracted state, the Little Lamms all fled the building.
Sword in hand4, Shinji was pulled to the surface and the two were helped up, but not before noticing the under-structure of the Fishery, the secret walkway at water level. They decided they needed to get there, and the only way was through the boat. Some time later, Balthur in his extremely heavy armor had broken through the walkway on the side of the building, and decided it was best if he stay behind, while Shinji and Finn carefully went ahead, though it didn't save Shinji from falling through the rotted deck of the boat in his own turn. After swatting away some large spiders, the two investigated as best as they could, eventually finding the clues that led them to discover the secret door. Making their way along the under-pier, they barged into the room under the Fishery where Yargin was hiding.
Even though Yargin was across the room with a wand pointed at Shinji, the swashbuckler managed to keep his calm and engage the man without attacking, reasoning with him that all they wanted was Gaedren, and Yargin could walk away and hide, surviving to see another day. The peaceful engagement worked, and Yargin told them all he knew, that Gaedren is in hiding somewhere and sends special crates of shiver to the Fishery to be sold, and to do it he has to maintain a supply of raw shiver from somewhere. He told them that while he doesn't know where Gaedren is, he knows that his shipment is being picked up on the docks the following evening, and all they need to do is take a prisoner, intercept the shipment, or follow it to find out where it's going.
With the players holding their next clue, the session ended as they planned on how they were going to proceed.
Outside of that, the players didn't really get any loot from the "boss room" of the Fishery, so I'm just moving everything from there to Gaedren's new digs in the Warehouse. Also, I planned on having Gobblegut be in the fight, Yargin taking care of him in place of Gaedren, but as that fight never happened, I got to keep the "bad guy's pet" aspect for Gaeden. I gave him a Young-template Basilisk, a companion he found caged in the abandoned Arkona warehouse.
Anyway, more to come in the next session post.
Session 4
So with the players locked in on their path to Gaedren, and a day to kill in town, they decided to spend the time gathering some local information. They scouted out the pier they were going to ambush the drop-off, and took in the surrounding area and some local flavor, learning that a lot of the warehouses and piers in the area go unused or abandoned. Some of this, the locals think, is due to major trade powers like the Arkonas pulling their money out and spending it elsewhere, but some of it also comes from the ailing king's weakening control over things. There were also floating rumors, local young women going missing, no news from Castle Hill in quite some time, and even people claiming Hellknights were flooding the streets, though that's not really true. But sorting out what is important and what is just rumor is something the players need to do for themselves.
Anyway, after they did some investigating of the pier, finding out that it doesn't seem to be operational at the moment, which is why the existance of a lower water-level deck area for mooring small rowboats, complete with recently-wet rope was a bit out of place, and led to the PCs concluding that they must be arriving by boat.
When nightfall came, the party hid themselves, watching two men wheel a small wagon onto the pier and start unloading crates as Finn spotted a lantern moving in from the river. Rather than waiting for the drop to happen, the players attempted to engage the two men, a failed bluff causing the situation to go bad. One of the men dropped the name of The Spider King to try and scare the players off, but the bait wasn't taken and combat ensued. One death later, the other man attempted to run, but was caught and questioned at swordpoint, also offered the opportunity to live if he gave them Gaedren. This man, working for Devargo, didn't know anything about Gaedren's location, only that the "Old Man" was buying shiver in large quantities and no one's seen him for months. However, he also didn't know Devargo, even by name, only ever refering to him as "The Spider King", as I wanted to save that puzzle piece for later.
The person in the boat never made it to the pier, the fight scaring them off, and the party proceeded to split, Balthur and Harald securing the shiver crates and bringing them to Balthur's blacksmith shop, and Shinji and Finn doing their best to follow the boat from the shore. They couldn't follow it completely, but they could see down the river where it appeared to dock at a pier jutting off from a boarded up warehouse...
Like I said, the Warehouse Gaedren is in is the Arkona warehouse, which turns into the Hospice in Seven Days. I like it because it shows a bit of evolution in the city, now it's a boarded-up, forgotten storage where a criminal can hide and work uninterrupted, with obvious doors and stairs that the players can't get to, and later it's a place seemingly given new purpose in the midst of a plague.
I've worked out the slow-burn style of progression into anarchy that's going to happen when Gaedren is dead, the foreshadowed connection to Rolth, and I'm currently working on how the players will deal with the Splithog Pauper and their deal.
Anyway, that's what's been going on the last 2 weeks. Thanks for keeping up if you are, I'm looking forwards to seeing what happens next.
| Askren |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
And so we return for the final session of the "Gaedren Saga", with the players squaring off against the man they've been hunting for these past weeks, and the final realizations of bigger things that they've become a part a part of leaving them unsure what happens next.
Session 5
After spending the next day regrouping after going their separate ways following the altercation on the docks, the party sat down to discuss their situation. The most pressing concern for all of them was that they were now in possession of a sizable amount of Shiver belonging to someone calling himself the Spider King, who they could only assume was a significant player and one they certainly had to worry about. They reasoned that their best course of action to keep themselves safe was to, if possible, return the drugs and thus not invoke any more ire than they already had.
Outside of that, they had finally honed in on Gaedren, and this demanded their attention at present. Following their standard tactic of scouting out their target location and infiltrating at night, they proceeded to spend the rest of the day trying to locate the warehouse they had only seen from a distance. Eventually they found the location and staked it out for the rest of the evening. I'll save the details of this part, they are largely unimportant and just a lot of local flavor and describing the geography of the location. Once the sun had set and they were convinced that no one had gone in or out, the party maneuvered their way around the back of the warehouse, where they found three large wooden loading-bay doors. Some straining and strength checks later, they had lifted one of the doors on it's metal tracks and found their way inside.
After exploring what appeared to be a long-disused warehouse full of forgotten trade goods and mountains of crates was quickly disrupted as Gaedren began taunting the party from the shadows. With wheezing laughter and shouts of "Whoever sent you, you're already too late!" and other cryptic messages, Lamm led the party into the darkness where he taunted that he was not alone. This was immediately followed by Harald the Urban Barbarian being caught off-guard by a loud crashing sound as Gaedren's new "pet", a Young Basilisk (liberated from one of the Arkona's exotic creature cages) barreled into him and knocked him backwards, proceeding to tear into Harald with it's jaws.
The group had sort of split up in this warehouse before that point, so the crashing sound that got all their attention forced many PCs to run around in near-total darkenss to help. Sensing his advantage, Gaedren even used the opportunity to slip from the darkenss and land a sneak attack on Harrald, taunting him a bit before slipping back into the shadows. The fight raged for a bit, with Shinji the Ronin using his sword to inflict some wounds on the Basilisk and keep it at bay while Harrald fell to Gaedren's taunt and chased him into the darkness, where the two dueled. Eventually, Balthur the Fighter managed to join Harrald, and together helped Harrald grapple and eventually pin Gaedren to the ground, but not before taking a knife to the leg (critically). After that, Balthur turned his attention to the other two and the monster.
It was at this stage of the fight, with Shinji and Finn attempting to hold off the Basilisk that it glared with it's burning vision and turned Shinji to stone, while giving way to it's wounds and scrambling back up the mountain of crates it came from. Balthur gave chase. While that was going on, Harrald succumbed to the overpowering rage at Gaedren, and while pinning him, forced him to ingest a total of three full vials of Shiver taken from Devargo's shipment. Gaedren began convulsing and went unconscious.
Eventually, Balthur cornered the injured beast and with Harrald's help, they slew it. The party then spent the next while puzzling over what happened to Shinji, and whether he was dead or what they could do for him, none of them having any ideas or success in figuring out what to do. Unfortunately for Finn, who had encouraged the group to try and take Gaedren alive so he could question the crimelord about his lost brother, Gaedren had succumbed to the Shiver and was dead.
Balthur put his hand on Shinji's stone shoulder to say goodbye to him, and it was only through dumb luck that most of his body and clothing had been covered in the blood of the Baslisk he just slew, as Basilisk blood is the only cure for a petrified victim. Seeing the effect of the blood on Stone Shinji, they proceeded to use the monster's corpse to paint the Ronin in blood hastily to revive him, and Shinji was returned to life, albeit very confused.
After taking stock of their surroundings, the party decided to investigate the rest of the warehouse, well aware that part of it where they fought had been turned into a makeshift bedroom by Gaedren. The contents of the room were the same ones written for the Fishery, meaning that they found his trunk of "treasures", including the damaged Royal Brooch, and more importantly, they found a pile of junk among which sat the fly-covered hatbox containing the dessicated head of their former benefactor, Zellara.
Before they had a chance to finish puzzling over the sight, they were greeted by the apparition of Zellara, this time taking no precautions to hide her magical nature, and was more than happy to admit to being dead, as well as apologizing for her deceit, necessary though it was. She informed the PCs that while it was true that she had brought them together to bring down Gaedren, he was only the catalyst, for it was the Fates that guide the Harrow that had truly chosen them, and she believed that they were brought to answer the ill omens that she has seen in her readings. While she could not say what this impending Eclipse was, the Harrow seemed to indicate that it is a great evil, The Tyrant, and that whatever it is it has already been set in motion somehow.
The hatbox also contained a small bit of foreshadowing, a little note from Gaedren reading "Here, a gift. Make a pretty one. -Lamm". The room also contained two separate books a small one which seems to be a coded transaction ledger, and a larger one which seems to be some sort of journal, filled with everything from rants and scribblings, names and places, transaction details, and various other things, all kept in disarray as Gaedren tends to do. They have not had time to make sense of any of it yet.
And so that's where we ended our session, with the party leaving the Warehouse, Finn insisting on giving what little of Zellara's body they had a water burial, even though she didn't seem to mind not being buried much. Zellara's Harrow deck in hand, and urged on by her promise that as long as they hold on to her deck, she will always be there with them and will do everything she can to make sure they are made whole, the party strode into the city contemplating what was next for them.
The important thing to note is that while there have been rumblings about the aging King and the unfit Queen, King Eodred is not dead yet. In fact, he won't actually be "officially" dead until about a day or so down the line, and it's only after that when the atmosphere in the city starts heating up and eventually comes to a boiling point.
What I'd really like to do is keep the party occupied with mundane things, forcing them to move around the city and see it turn into the powderkeg of civil unrest, until things eventually come to a head and finally explodes, which will either force the players into hiding or into the midst of things. I've got a "script" for all of this, but I'll be playing a lot of it by ear, using bits as I need them, and letting the group fill in the rest.
The next major "chapter" is going be All The World's Meat. I haven't decided how or if I need to change anything here, but I like the setpiece enough to keep it mostly in-tact. It fits the general "underworld" themes we have going on, and obviously I don't want to pass up an opportunity to foreshadow the Arkonas. Also, it may just be my devious side, but I can never resist the chance to put an object like the Raktavarna in the hands of the players. I know it's something they'll just forget about or ignore, and I love having the intelligent object use subterfuge to remain hidden while spying on them. Even if they players never know it's there, the little assurance in my mind that a BBEG somewhere knows exactly what the party is doing at any given minute gives me giggles of joy.
Again, if you're reading, thanks for sticking with me. I'm really enjoying the places this campaign is going, and I look forward to testing out some new ideas soon.
| John Lynch 106 |
Thanks for posting this. I like the suggestions on how to get the players invested in the city and how to showcase it before it all blows up in smoke. I'm preparing for running CotC myself so I'll be stealing liberally from this.
| Askren |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That's pretty cool to hear, I always appreciate people liking my methods enough to steal them, as I've certainly acquired most of them via other DMs, so the more you can pick details up from all over the place and roll them together into a better whole, the more you can pass on to future DMs.
As for starting a new game, I heartily recommend getting every player a PDF copy of the Guide to Korvosa and having them read it. We know how heavily this game depends on investment in the setting, and having them talking the slang and knowing which parts of which districts mean what is the best thing you can have coming into CoCT. The more they buy Korvosa as not just a campaign setting, but a home for their PCs, the more they want to save it.
On another note, I've not actually had time to do much writing for the next sections of the book, so I'm sitting here puzzling about how I want to run All The World's Meat and what I want to do here, so I'm hoping to solicit some ideas.
The setup as-written is pretty straightforwards, Ileosa refers the players to Kroft, who enlists them while dealing with the riots, and sends them after Vancaskerkin who is instilling rebellion among some guards. Party goes in, fights three guys, comes out.
What I'm thinking off the bat is that I want to do more here, specifically with the rebellious guards. It's a problem that is never really addressed in the book and is assumed to be over once Verik is in custody. But I think that creeping tendrils of sedition and the threat of a guard coup in the middle of riots incited by lack of faith in the Queen is a tense and interesting set-piece to play with. One of my players already has a contact in the guard, who I was really just going to use to do the Grau Soldado thing, but if I tee up Grau and the PC's contact, I may be able to leverage them into a resource to help the players hunt down a troupe of more than 3 rogue guardsmen.
The only problem is I'm drawing a blank as to how I want to do it. Obviously Verik is at the head of things, but I'm not sure how to lead the players to him, while rounding up rebelling guards along the way. Expand on the "meat" business? That seems a bit harsh. I don't know, I need ideas here.
| Inspectre |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well, you asked, so here's some ideas!
If you want it to be more than just a one-off "go into this building and crack some heads" thing, maybe ramp up the paranoia. Instead of just sending the players off to go help Kroft "just cause", maybe Queen Ileosa has become aware of corruption within the city guard. Graft has been an ongoing problem in the city for a long time (see Gaedren Lamm), and Ileosa wishes to have "someone she trusts" investigate the city guard and report back on who is corrupt so that she can clean up the guard as one of her first acts.
Of course, her real motivation is to give Kroft some grief/figure out who is exploitable within the guard for later use. Or perhaps she somehow has learned of Vimanda's actions in trying to bend the city guard to her own purposes.
Cue an undercover police thriller for a couple sessions while the party tries to sort out who's behind all this, perhaps even initially wondering if Kroft is behind it all (or poor, poor Grau).
This is also an opportunity to expand this part of the adventure by introducing new characters early. Maybe Blackjack, being a vigilante Batman/Zorro wannabe, is getting involved somehow? That way the party knows about him ahead of time instead of going "who is THIS GUY?" at Trinia's execution?
Really though, the best thing to do would be to think about the purpose of this corrupt guard segment. Is it just a one-off thing like it is in the AP where you don't want to spend any more time in it? Do you want to use this to make a point about the condition of Korvosa due to Eodred's negligent rule and Ileosa's malevolent one? Introduce more characters within the city for the players to get to know and interact with? The purpose you decide for this segment should help inform what you do with it, even if it is indeed simply as a one-off adventure with no real bearing on the rest of the game (as it pretty much is in the AP - most of the chapters in Book One are disconnected vignettes).
| Askren |
I don't really mind Ileosa being the one that insigates the investigation into Verik and his troupe of runaways, as I think that having her drop the lead and then point the group to Kroft to get them set up "officially" doesn't really change a whole lot, except maybe to sell the players on Ileosa being their ally, which I'm always a fan of.
Obviously I want them to experience the whole snooping detective stuff, but to write that I bump into the major problem of what it is exactly that Verik and his band are up to, such that they would be decentralized and able to be encountered in smaller groups around town.
Like, the book establishes that they're rebels and seditionists, which is fine and all, but I can't seem to discern a real goal they have. What exactly are they doing other than "spreading" the attitude that guards should leave their posts? That's what I need to fix.
Obviously, the Arkonas could be running them, that hook is already teed up, but nothing comes of it. Maybe the Arkona family has been priming this one guy Verik for a while, and with the riots decided to put him to use securing neighborhoods in the Midlands and North Point for...Arkona things? I don't really know what they Arkona family would actually want to do here. I guess they could be in the drug business, but I don't want the party to encounter drugs every single place they go, so I'd like to avoid that.
I don't know if I'd want to introduce Blackjack. I certainly may, but not this early. That's a reveal that I don't want to jump the gun on just because of the impact it could have. But I certainly may name-drop him, likely from some badguy deserter Guards, sort of like criminals talking about how they're worried Batman might show up, while another says "Yeah right, that can't happen."
As for the last question; The basic answer, I'd kinda like to do everything with it. I'd like it to be a nice little commentary on the state of affairs and mentalities in Korvosa, but also have it not just be a little one-shot in-and-out-and-forgotten deal for the players. I want to make every scene something that they could at least have a reason to remember, all building on to a larger narrative. It's a case of me seeing the written content and saying "Yeah, this is a cool scene, but it's too short, and it's length prevents it from actually developing any interesting moments" and choosing to fix it by padding it out and giving the intended vignette the framing it needs to really have the punch it should.
| Inspectre |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well then, instead of leaving it as its own stand-alone story, why not connect it with the next one in the as-written line? Have Devargo be the one actually pulling the strings (the guards can mention the "King of Spiders", name-dropping him again after you've already had the hunt for Lamm mention him).
Also, that could let you get rid of the AWFUL as-written plotline about going to Devargo to buy blackmail material that Kroft can use against the ambassador from Cheliax who is name dropped once and then never shows up or is mentioned again (despite things going completely to hell literally in Korvosa thanks to Ileosa's misrule).
Here's an idea - have the guard and Ileosa be stirred up by either a heist or kidnapping that took place during the riots. They know that some corrupt guardsmen are involved, as that's the only way the person/item in question could have been taken by an inside-job.
If it's an item, have it be something that's of historic but not necessarily intrinsic value (like the banner of Cheliax carried by Field Marshall Korvosa when he stormed the beaches, driving the barbarians back or something).
If it's a person, how about one of the nobles or a child of one of the nobles that's mentioned in the Guide but never used in the AP as-written?
They hunt down the corrupt guardsmen, learn that the item/person has already been sold to Devargo, and then they have to go to him to buy it back as the next step of the AP. There, you've connected the guardsmen a bit better to everything, and you've overwritten the awful "Captain of the City Guard is trying to blackmail the important visiting government official" plot.
| Askren |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I had actually considered exactly that while at work today, so I guess it must be a good idea, though my concern is turning Devargo into some huge criminal player that seems be the center of a whole lot. But I guess promoting him a bit up the criminal totem pole solves a few problems with the narrative.
The way I see it, there's three basic issues to work out with this course of events. First, is to determine what exactly his sway over Verik is, what he's offered the rogue Guards to keep them in line, and of course what it is that they're doing for him that would put them on the radar.
The thing is, there's a weird set-up where the major authorities (Ileosa and Kroft)send the party to stop the rogue Guards, but at the time don't make any indication that they know about or care about Devargo at that moment. So the question is, is the instigation here "Devargo is using deserting Guardsmen to do bad stuff", or is it "Deserting Guardsmen are doing bad stuff, investigate and find out who's behind it"? Personally, I think the latter is the more obvious choice, for the general investigation and all that good stuff.
So what exactly are the Rogue Guards doing? Like I said, I'd like to stay away from the drugs thing, at least for now, because I have plans for Shiver and all that in other places. I think I like the idea of a heist, the Guards using their uniforms and the fact that security is thin all over the city to steal from wealthy traders and stuff. I think this might work because it sort of fuels a little web of connections that is forming in my head; We've got the leader of the Guards, Vancaskerkin, being manipulated by the Arkona girl, and if we stack the totem-pole in the most logical way, it's most likely that Devargo too is being manipulated by more powerful Arkonas, who allow him to operate in Old Korvosa and probably help him out in exchange for...something, I haven't decided yet.
So since the Arkonas are at the top, they would have Devargo use his influence over the Rogue Guards to get them to knock over very specific locations, probably locations very particular to business rivals the Arkonas want to exploit the chaos to take out of the picture, because they're all about the business and acquiring commercial power. I figure if nothing else, this is setting the pieces up long-term for the Arkonas to hit Korvosa as a major force, taking over lots of stuff, but I haven't written that segment yet, nor know where I'd put it. This is actually detailed in the part about Verik, with the Arkonas desiring to topple the monarchy and install their own puppet government, so I'd love to do more with that.
Ok, so Rogue Guards running heists on businesses and trade warehouses, snatching valuable goods, works of art, and other things. How do we break that down into a way the players can engage with it? I think the most likely would be "Crime Scene > Investigate > Catch In The Act > Raid Home Base" in a basic structure that has the players running behind the group for a bit before finally catching up to them. And it allows me to use a smaller group of Guards, enough to have a chunk of them be captured/killed in combat before the players hit World's Meat to encounter Verik, and I don't really have to do anything special to that scene population-wise.
So the other thing to figure out is, what is Devargo's influence over them? What did he offer them as a method of keeping them in line? The book says that Vimanda contacted him and convinced him to take some followers, leave the Guard, and do the Meat thing. But since we're ratcheting up the stakes and moving them on to real, hardcore crime rather than just gouging prices on meat, they will probably need more hefty urging. I dunno, this is one issue I feel kind of stuck on.
Writing it out, I think I can place most of the major details, but I wouldn't mind hearing about anything I may have missed while spitballing all of this.
| Askren |
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So I was going to post a long write-up of my notes and the bits of writing I did to explain the flow of the events happening next, but I feel it's better to just do the session recap instead.
Session 6
The party emerged from Gaedren's warehouse relieved of the burden of their past and ready to start fresh. The first thing the players decided to do was split up, with Harrald and Finn heading north to seek out Harrald's dealer contact Sid "Swarthy" to discuss selling the drugs stolen from Devargo. They discovered Sid was holed up in a tenement building in full paranoid-mode, telling Harrald that the activity at the Docks, the Fishery, and even the Warehouse had sent waves through the criminal community, and things were about to get very unsafe, very quickly. He dropped lines about this all coming right when the streets are getting ready to erupt over the Queen, and how it wasn't safe for them out there. Eventually, Harrald promised Sid a cut of the profit if he could help them move the drugs, taking a sample and promising to try and discreetly shop it around.
While they were off doing that, the other two, Shinji and Balthur made their rest at the local tavern where Shinji has worked as a bouncer for a few years, the Deserted Bagpipe. Not a lot happened here, other than the dwarven owner, Therdrous Bonebraid giving Balthur a bit of a test in the form of a mug of Wyrm's Breath Bitter, a green and fizzy, bitter ale that causes nausea and noxious belching that can sicken and deafen people exposed to it. Luckily, Balthur has a cast iron stomach, and was able to survive the ale, though he decided against a second mug. Eventually, they were rejoined by Harrald and Finn and the group exchanged the local information they had received and planned their next move.
Their next move, it turns out, was to try and unload some of their newly acquired treasure, and hopefully make nice with the shopkeepers who will inevitably be supplying them in the future. So naturally they made their way the next morning to the Gold Market. The flea market itself held little of interest for the party, themselves not much interested in the wide array of foods for sale. But behind the temporary stalls and shops of the market square, the Gold Market is ringed by a row of permanent structures, some of which fit the bill exactly. The first place they decided to visit was Gemshare Jewelers, a high-end jewelry shop that specializes in buying and selling gemstones. After haggling away a few pieces of treasure (the crown, the scrimshaw, the Succubi figurine), Shinji brought out the Royal Brooch, which Darin Jelenko the shopkeeper recognized very quickly. He informed Shinji that the brooch was, in fact, the one stolen from the Queen's jeweler, and he had no interest in purchasing stolen goods, much less risking his shop and reputation over a 1200 gold bounty. The bounty of course got Shinji's attention, and he pried about it, learning that the brooch was reported stolen about two months ago when the jeweler tasked with repairing it was robbed. By itself, not a noteworthy story, but the public took great interest in the drama of this tale because after a month of a public reward posted and no return of the brooch, an (in)famous Investigator announced he would succeed in the task. Well known for his huge ego and braggadocio, as well as his ability to apparently solve any unsolvable case he applies himself to, this turned out to be the one that got the best of him, and he failed in the task. Apparently the shame was too much for him, and he fled the public eye shortly. As Shinji left the shop, money for the other goods in hand, he nervously informed the party that they were in deeper danger than they knew, as they had now become embroiled in royal matters.
The party did visit a few other shops, Slicing Dicers, a weapon store, Hedge Wizardry, a magic shop where Harrald ignored the warning of the owner and stepped on a pile of invisible walking sticks, but nothing came of it other than unloading some more minor items. The rest of the session consisted of Shinji and the others asking various questions around the market, gathering information about what was going on in the city. Harrald did much the same, though his information came from an old and unfortunate friend, a Watch Captain in the guard who took pity on him due to a friendship with Harrald's father in the past. Both sides pretty much managed to put together that as the news of the King's failing health raced across the city, many people were finding the implications of that to be something they were not happy with, and many were doing more than just loudly protesting in taverns, workers were taking to the streets and even visiting Domina Square to demand answers. No one quite knows what's going to happen, but Sable Company marines are already taking to the sky in case someone inevitably does something stupid.
And with that information acquired and shared, the group ended the night, deciding that trying to get to the castle to claim a bounty on jewelery is not the safest idea right now. The headed off for the night, unsure of what will happen next.
So I was going to post my notes for this session before I ran it, but work has been kicking my ass and I didn't get a chance to write up everything I wanted to write. Nonetheless, the session did stay within the bounds of my notes, which means I'm keeping the group paced as I'd like them. Basically, this session was necessary to set the atmosphere in Korvosa, to give everything that tinge of edginess. Of course, my players are one of those rare groups who, given the chance, will spend an entire session talking to shopkeepers, so once they start that I know I can keep them stationary for the time I need.
There was a bit of narrative you might not recognize, and that was me introducing Victor Saint-Demain, the antagonist from the Dungeon Magazine adventure "Chimes at Midnight" set in Eberron. Obviously I won't be using much or any of that actual adventure, but as I was flipping through issues looking for interesting things, I couldn't resist the braggert-investigator-turned-crazed-villain, and I really wanted to do something with him later. So, I threw him into the Brooch storyline simply to up the stakes a bit and set him up for my players. As it stands, he'll return at some point in the story, a criminal mastermind using his incredible skills to seek vengeance on those who wronged him. Of course, the players won't know this until they stop his plans! A shame too, because Shinji's player seemed very keen on hunting him down and having HIM be the one to return the brooch, to restore his honor and, if things go wrong, be the one taking the fall and not the party.
Of course, it all comes crashing down next week when the King officially dies and riots begin. I actually wrote an interesting little bit where the players are going to encounter Grau early on in the riots, and he's going to give them some cryptic foreshadowing clues about how he was offered work by Verik, and though he turned it down, it was part of the reason he ended up in the booze.
That's all I've got for now, I'm still more than happy to workshop riot events, future happenings, or plot connections, as I'll need to get to all of it eventually.
As always, thanks for reading and I hope you guys are enjoying the read as much as I'm enjoying running it.
| Askren |
I didn't get a chance with my work schedule to write up our last session before the most recent, so I'll get it done now. I kinda feel like I may have rushed the pace of the event here as a whole, but that may have been due to may lack of free time to do much planning thanks to work.
Session 7
The players awoke the next day to find criers in the street, bells ringing, and citizens and workers heading in the direction of Domina Square at the Castle. All taken by surprise, they asked around and discovered that the King had died sometime in the night. It was mid-morning by the time the group had collected themselves together, and looking around, they could see there was smoke rising from somewhere in the city and the military was out in force. At first, they decided to visit the Deserted Bagpipe Tavern, Shinji's only real home, and talked with the owner who had locked himself in, the party intending to wait out whatever coming storm had been unleashed. But very quickly, the group decided that they couldn't just sit around while the city raged around them, they needed information and they had friends out there that might be in trouble. So, they stepped out of the inn and onto the streets that, by this time, were in full riot mode.
Crowds of people were moving down main roads, clashing with troops of City Guard and even Hellknights here and there, beating down rowdy citizens who had broken a shop window or tried to force their way towards the Castle. On the way to the Castle, the party encountered a rowdy group of citizens in the process of assaulting a young man. Harrald had intended to do nothing, but seeing the young man about to be bludgeoned, Shinji quickly stepped in and with very clever wording and some luck, managed to convince the crowd of rough workmen that rather than smashing the skull of one young kid, they'd probably be better shoving the guards out of the way and taking their anger straight to the nobles in the Castle. Apparently, they saw sense in roughing up some more prominent figures and took off, the young man's life saved. Grateful, he left the party with a small coin pouch and then ran off to his home where it was considerably safer.
After that, the party emerged near Domina Square, where the scene was very much the Hellknights playing the roll of riot police, beating down and dispersing the waxing and waning crowd of citizens there in a full on brawl at the foot of the pyramid. Being that this was where the greatest damage and swell of citizens was, this appeared to be the epicenter of the riot. Briefly trying to wade in and crack some heads, Harrald had to be dragged away from the brawl before he got too carried away, as the group decided there was nothing there for them. They needed to stay away from the crowds if possible.
Still considering hunting for the disgraced Inquisitor, the group briefly ventured north into the more wealthy area, where further north the streets got more trashed, but also quieter as the crowds had moved on. Nothing found here except a crazy old man preaching about Groteus and the End Times.
By this time it was getting late in the day and the party wanted to make sure their friends were ok. Shinji had a friend he had not seen in some time, a gambler who tended to lose any money he had, so they visited a tavern near some of the card dens, a place he would sometimes end up after being kicked out of private games when he lost everything. No friend they found there except one haggard looking Grau Soldado drowning his depression in an otherwise empty tavern. They questioned the state he was in and how he got there, and one Restoration later Grau was awake, explaining to the players how he was just a normal guy who joined the guard to make a difference, but when talk of the queen taking the throne started circulating, some of the people in the ranks began speaking of sedition, revolutionary ideas and all that. They had even encouraged Grau to desert with them, how they could use him when the time comes to rise up and all that. Grau had apparently refused, but the offer had sent him into a spiraling depression that the riots outside only hammered home. With his mind cleared and feeling better, Grau told them he would return to the Citadel and try and make amends, hoping that he'd see the party again.
With that, it was late and the party decided the safest place to be would ironically be Harrald's crash in Old Korvosa. Even though by this time most of the streets were quiet, the military having violently stamped out most of the riots, it still wasn't safe. So the night was passed in Old Korvosa.
Come the next morning, the streets were mostly empty, with the fraction of the city's normal traffic and bustle moving somberly as an uneasy tension hung in the air. Deciding that this was as good a time as any, the players decided it was time to return the Brooch to the Castle.
After making their way there and being brought before the Watch Captain to explain their situation, the group was giving a heavily armed escort up the ramp to the Castle, where they were led inside and met Sabina Merrin, who brought them before Queen Ileosa. The queen went through her normal speech, about how thankful she was and the city needed heroes, "requesting" that they accept her escort to Citadel Volshyenek to assist the City Guard in these troubling times, and then she was gone. Sabina handed the players the silver chest full of gold ingots as their payment, and then arranged for an armed escort to the Citadel, where they would report to Field Marshal Kroft for their new jobs. Shinji was personally very interested in words with Sabina, but she did not have any interest in dignifying him with a response.
Surrounded by more nervous-looking guards, the party was brought to the Citadel, directly to the office of Marshal Kroft, who they found to be amicable and pleasant, despite her haggard state. She thanked them for agreeing to serve, discussed how the city needed strong people willing to help pull it back from the edge, and they could make that difference. The first, she told them, was with robberies that had taken place. She had been informed that some deserting Guardsmen had apparently banded together, and she had pieced together that they planned on using the riots as cover for something, but she did not know what, until now. There was a breaking at a small imports warehouse in the Northgate district, and the players were to report directly there the following day and help secure and investigate the crime scene.
The party left the Citadel with many questions buzzing around their heads, and went to their home inn hoping to wake up tomorrow with a new future in store for all of them.
| Askren |
Didn't get to write up our last session due to work, so here it is before Friday rolls around again.
Session 8
We start this excursion with the party waking up and spending some time reflecting on what's happened to them (mostly to fill in Finn's player, who was absent), but also to put everything in contrast. They have been conscripted by the guard, and want to help make their city a better place in what ways they can, and the first task they've been asked to work on is a robbery in the North Point district. Setting off towards the address they were given, they found the broken-into warehouse on St. Alika's Way, cordoned off by a few city guards, with an officer standing by waiting for them to arrive. He informed them of the situation, specifically that the warehouse had bit hit two days prior during the riots, that the primary entry seems to have been a broken window, after which the bay doors were opened from the inside, and that the only thing the thieves seemed to be after was three large barrels of alchohest, a relatively useless and mostly inert substance which is used in the binding of chemicals during alchemy. According to the warehouse owner, this particular set of barrels had arrived two days prior to the theft, and was set to be delivered to the Acadamae, as the school has a regular order for alchohest to be delivered every month for their various needs. The shipment was stalled due to the riots causing the Acadamae to shut their doors. There were other crates broken into, but all signs point to them being opened at random, with only minor trinkets of no particular note taken from some, and others left once the contents were seen to be worthless, so it seems the thieves spent a few minutes trying to pillage a handful of whatever they could while grabbing the barrels they were after.
The party asked a few questions, namely about the area around the warehouse, learning the barrels appear to have been loaded onto a cart before vanishing, and inspected the scene on their own. Finding nothing of note, they were about to leave when Shinji noticed a what appeared to be an unusual footprint-like depression next to an iron gutter-drain pipe from the roof. On a hunch, he suggested Harrald climb the pipe, which appeared to be sturdy enough, and see what he could find. Once on the roof, Harrald noticed that there were two large air vents leading into the building, but didn't climb in to investigate. On his way back from them, he spotted what seemed to be a scrap of paper stuck on a brick. When he picked it up, he found that the parchment scrap had a note scrawled on it:
"52 SAW, Weal, 3 barrel
112 1st, Fire, 2 box
Meat house, wait"
Bringing the note down to the party, they collectively realized that the note is clearly referencing days of the week, and it was presently Fireday, two days prior being Wealday. When the realization that the second robbery was happening today dawned on them, the party took off quickly, making their way as fast as they could to 1st Street in the north of the district, where they hoped to catch the criminals in time.
Arriving at the location, they found what seems to be a storefront which has had it's front window smashed in, inside most of the shelves and merchandise has been torn through or toppled over. Splitting up so Finn went to check to see if their was a back door, Shinji, Harrald, and Balthur went in the front, creeping through the dilapidated shop and finding it dark and empty. Finn found a back door hanging ajar and entered it, at the same time Harrald walking through the door leading to the back room. Inside, the party found the storage room mostly untouched, with the only thing missing seeming to be a large gap on one of the storage shelves, which from the name on the shelf section they determined to be something called Hag's Blood.
Realizing they had arrived a little too late, the party left the scene. Finding a place to discuss their next move, they stopped at a small tavern, talking with the owner about what the atmosphere has been like. The conversation drifted to food, with the bartender remarking about how hard it has been for many families and businesses with no way to get basics like meat. Shinji seemed especially interested in purchasing some for himself, though in fact it was an effort on his part to solve the note's line about a "meat house" involved in the plans, being told that most of the slaughterhouses are either shut down or have starting gouging their prices to ridiculous levels. Still, pressing, Shinji got a list of the few butchers in the area; All the World's Meat, which has been closed for a while, Hearty Pig Farms, which has been cranking up it's prices as supply dwindled, and The Chopping Block, which was attempting to function but can't keep up with demand. It was the closed All The World's Meat that the players focused on, asking around the area a bit and finding out that it had in fact been open, taken over by a group called the Cow Hammer Boys, who had taken on the task of supplying the district with free meat.
Intrigued by this concept, the players went to visit the place, seeing the line of desperate citizens waiting for a handout, while some players took the time to scout the building. Eventually when nightfall had come and the crowd had dispersed, Harrald had attempted to venture around the back, climbing the wood log fence to see inside, but only able to see animal pens. He did jump over the fence, attempting to loosen the chains locking the gate from the inside, so he could get in later if necessary, but the noise alerted someone in the building, who spooked Harrald when he yelled to see if it was someone named "Parns". Harrald jumped back over the fence and left, reporting to the group, who decided that it was time to ingress, and all followed him down the alley. When they got their, the noise of them walking down (mostly Balthur's heavy armor) caused the man on the other side of the fence to tell them to "Piss off, if they want meat they need to come back tomorrow like the rest.", but Harrald was having none of it and decided it was time to rage and smash the door down. Unfortunately, his kick was a bit misplaced and the door didn't quite smash inwards as he expected, but the act did send the man within on guard, meaning a fight was about to happen. And that's where we left off.
So like I said, I think I may have fumbled the riots, I certainly can imagine them running more gracefully, and certainly the very short 'investigation' into the Cow Hammer Boys could have been dragged out, but working 7 days a week now I don't really have much time to plan these things out, and when I run them off the cuff they tend to be more abrupt than I'd like. Either way, I think I got one good moment out of it, which was the moment the players realized that another robbery was in progress not far from where they were.
Either way, it's one session fabricated out of basically nothing, so not all bad. A few notes here being first, I don't plan on using the "human meat" thing from the books, as I really don't see a point to it. I mean, I'm all for macabre, but this is just a weird tidbit that I don't think adds anything. I'll probably excise the mercenary bit too, I think it's enough to just have them be worked over by powers they don't comprehend. I figure it's enough to have the Raktavarna be influencing Verik and giving him his orders via the Suggestion spell, itself being driven psychically by one of the Arkonas. The second thing is, I kinda don't know what to do with Verik. Like, I managed to pull Orik back in after he vanished in Runelords, but I'd like to re-task Verik later if I can. We'll have to see how combat plays out. If he dies, it might be cool to revive him as an undead or something, but if he lives then I might have it be a running theme of evil Vancaskerkins turning and helping the party later.
Other than that...really looking to do some writing for Eel's End, I should have some great setups there. But what I'm really looking forwards to is giving the players some "down time", because I have a few little side things I want to do around the city to engage the group, one of them involving a female Cleric of Gozreh, probably the only one Finn will ever meet, and she happens to be an enemy who I'm hoping he takes a shine to and converts.
Really, if anyone has any ideas for or knows any little modules that work in an urban setting or might fit, I'd love to know about them so I can pillage ideas from them.
As always, thanks for reading.
| Askren |
As our next session looms, it's time once again to recount the events as they unfold.
Session 9
After attempting to bash down the gate and alerting the man on the other side, the players jumped into combat mode. Harrald climbed the fence to unlock the gate as the man rushed inside to alert the occupants. The party followed, Harrald running after him and catching a large wooden mallet to the gut from a big man hiding in the shadow near the door. The original man hid behind a water vat, firing crossbow bolts at the entering party, before retreating unseen down the hall. The big guard with the mallet fought hard, but a viscious stab from Shinji after parrying a blow sent him to the ground to bleed out. The party pursued the rest through the butchery, with Balthur catching a surprise sword attack as he tried to chase the fleeing crossbowman. The man with the sword got the opportunity to yell up the stairs that they were being "raided by guards" before Harrald pummeled him into unconsciousness. Balthur tripped the fleeing crossbowman, mercilessly bringing his axe down on the man as he tried to crawl away.
After the violent conflict was over, Harrald still pumping with adrenaline rounded up the bodies and hung them from meathooks while Shinji and Balthur went upstairs. There, they found a locked door behind which a lone man seemed to be, and Balthur kicked it in. The man was ready with a spear, but quick talking from Shinji helped defuse what could have ended badly. Shinji and the man talked at length, learning that the man was Verik Vancaskerkin and that the men they killed were his friends, guardsmen he had taken with him in hopes of leading a revolution to make the city a better place. He seemed to have no idea about the heists at all, going as far as claiming that he didn't believe his men could be involved, which the party accepted since there was no sign of the stolen goods at the butchery. He vaguely referred to someone who had fanned his desire into a fire and encouraged him to desert, but he would not give a name. Eventually, with the party assembled, they decided that his request for freedom was worth honoring, and let him go and disappear into the city. When he left, they turned over the room, finding a stack of papers that seemed to be vague journal entries from Verik, man referring to a woman, and musing on "her plan" and how it's not really a bad plan to give out free meat to the citizens, or how he wasn't sure why she was so interested in it, as well as how he was worried the guards might come for them.
With morning coming, the party ventured back to Citadel Volshenyek to meet with Cressida Kroft, who they shared their findings and recounted how they believe that the criminals were dealt with. Marshall Kroft thanked them and brought the party to her office where she introduced them to the famous Vencarlo Orsini, and began detailing what she needs them for.
So this session was really mostly by-the-book-ish. I obviously pared away the "human meat" thing, and I did a little foreshadowing of the Arkona influence, but that will bloom later. I'm quite pleased with the way some of the stuff was improv'd, I just sort of played Verik up as having no idea about the heists because I felt like it would be interesting to make him sympathetic rather than straight criminal. Rather, he was the initial person enflamed by the Arkonas, but it was the less-scrupulous and more manipulatable thugs under him that the Arkonas, via the Raktavarna, worked over to do the heisting, all under Verik's nose. Since they let Verik go, it sets up basically exactly the same situation we ran into with Orik back in Runelords, where they let him go and he came back later as an ally. So I hope to find a good place to have him show up in the future.
Outside of that, we're moving into Eel's End, which may be tricky. I've re-written Kroft's monologue so that her reason for sending the party to Devargo is because recently Shiver has hit the streets extra hard, especially making it's way across the bridge into Korvosa proper, and while this wouldn't normally be a top priority, Kroft has reason to suspect something is driving Devargo to ramp up production and distribution, and she wants to know what. So the party will be going in essentially "undercover", meeting with Devargo personally and hopefully earning his trust enough to learn information. I have not figured out what it is yet, but somehow the Arkonas are the major source of his new expansion, attempting to establish inroads so their new super-Shiver can take hold more easily.
This is where we're opening, so hopefully something interesting can play out here.
| Askren |
Oh boy oh boy. I have obviously put off doing this for...a long time now. So I've got quite a bit of writing to do to re-cap where the group is now. So let's dive right in and get this all out of the way. I'm still going to spoiler-text some quick discussions on my thoughts on every session, especially if there's a part I want to elaborate or ask for feedback on.
Session 10
The session began with the party hearing out Cressida on what her intentions were with Devargo, detailing how he's been on her radar for a long time now as a vice-peddler who sticks to his own dark corner of the city and pays his taxes regularly, meaning he doesn't cause enough problems to justify uprooting him and spilling the criminal element he keeps contained back into the streets. However, recently he's been moving more and more of his Shiver, much more than he ever has before, and it seems his fingers are reaching farther into the city every day, moving drugs through various channels all the way down to the Midland District. Knowing he's always been content in his little hole, she wants to know why his production has ramped up so sharply, because there has to be something pushing him past the risk involved. She wants to know his motivations, and if someone is working with him, who that is and why. Her plan involves sending the party in covertly, though how they approach and gain the information is left to them, with no contact with the city guard until they're done.
Understanding their instructions, and clear on the details they need, the party departs from the Citadel, Vencarlo Orsini offering to escort them to Old Korvosa so he can get an opportunity to talk to them and learn more about who they are. The party finds Vencarlo instantly likable, with Shinji quite interested in his sword school, as well as the fact that he seems to support the old King Eodred, and disapprove of the Queen and her rule.
Eventually, after parting ways with Vencarlo, Harrald leads the party to Eel's End to see what they can find. The day seems to fly by quite quickly as the party is almost entirely taken with exploring the pier and it's various houses of vice and entertainment, and after losing some money gambling in the Twin Tiger, and losing some time pulling Harrald out of the Dragon's Breath Corridor, eventually the party spots a group of tough looking men making their way to the unlabeled boat at the end of the pier, with a silver spider painted on the cabin door. On the deck of the boat, they manage to bluff their way past the guard, convincing them that they too are hopeful candidates for Devargo's employ along with the men that just entered, and the party finds themselves being led inside. Once inside the chamber, filled with rowdy thug-types who were drinking and trying to show off with various tests of strength and gambling in front of their host. The odd scene was brought to a head when the party came face to face with Devargo Barvasi himself, the King of Spiders.
Confused at their entrance, considering only one among their number looked at all like he belonged there, Devargo spoke with the party, his intimidating presence putting all of them on edge, commenting on his amusement with their ruse to stand before him. The party told him that they're all outcasts, jobless and willing to do dirty work if it means stable coin, and they hear he's the biggest name in town. The ego-stroking seemed to amuse Devargo, as he demanded they show him just how interested they are, and forced Shinji to play a few rounds of Knivsies for his own amusement.
Thoroughly amused by the attitude of the party, and Shinji's amusing games, Devargo decided that he might actually have some work, the kind he can't just send guards or meat-headed thugs out to do. He informed them that there was a vault recently uncovered deep in the sewers, the path to it only recently opened when an Otyugh burst out of the tunnels and into the streets during the riots a few weeks back. No one has been in it yet, Devargo tells the party, and there's something he wants hidden down there. How the group gets there, and how they get the treasure out of it is entirely up to them, but they're to return what they find to him. With that, Devargo dismisses the party from his chamber, and as they're exiting Finn manages to notice the source of an odd noise he's been hearing in his ear, a small caged Pseudodragon that has been begging for help. Unable to assist at this time, Finn leaves the dragon in the chamber as the party exits.
Session 11
So with the party heading away from Eel's End and making their way almost all the way across the city to the very south of the Midland district, they managed to locate where the Otyugh had burst out of the sewers thanks mostly to the fact that large portions of the area are locked down by the Grand Lodge of the Pathfinders. More specifically, it seems like Devargo isn't the only one who heard of the secret vault, and the groups that are either staking out or making attempts at entering the sewers in order to find it. One of the captains informs them that apparently the vault belonged to a woman, a Pathfinder, who was run out of town years ago after being labeled a fugitive. The problem currently seems to be that the sewers are an ancient and winding in all directions, and no one has managed to find a clear path.
With the rest of their evening spend scouting the landscape and trying to find a nearby sewer entrance that hasn't been covered by a Pathfinder scout already, the party finds a man down one alleyway nearby who tells them he can help find what they're looking for, for a price. With a few platinum pieces changing hands, the stranger gives the party a story about an old service entrance hidden about a quarter mile north behind a shop that is far enough out of the way that it hasn't been scoped by any Pathfinders or, as they learn from the stranger, Cerulean Society expeditions hunting the vault. He hands them a short list of directions that he pulled from old contacts, a simple paper reading:
One turn north
Past the giant rat
Follow the bend
Straight ahead
When the party questions the man on how he knows all this, he simple responds "Let's just say I used to wear the color blue." After following his directions to the shop and doing their best to heed his advice to watch out for Black Oil Alligators and other strange creatures, the party descends into the dank, nasty sewers under Korvosa. Once down in the tunnels, they find a twisting maze of passages that confuse the senses, were it not for the man's guidance. On their way up the north corridor, they find a collapsed section of wall behind which a small grotto has been hollowed out, containing a rotting leather satchel full of crusty parchments, all leaflets or flyers it seems, describing some sort of pro-Taldor propaganda to do with tariffs and taxes. Past that, the party arrives at the end of a tunnel where they run into two men wearing Cerulean Society colors named Pelius and Varris, who seem amicable at first, but extremely nervous. More so when the giant rat statue at the end of the hallway begins to glow, causing the two men to agitate, believing the party has disturbed some sort of rat god. Quick thinking and sharp tongue dissolves the situation and the party talks the men down from attacking, which gets the men to tell the group that they were looking for a way around the Otyugh and got lost trying to escape, but there's a large drain pipe nearby that will take them in the direction they want to go.
After climbing through through the large drain pipe, they continued around "the bend", and found a hypnotic, glowing garden of fungus between them and the path they need to follow. Harrald unfortunately found out the hard way that fungus is often dangerous, and the party ran from the garden, down the tunnel towards their goal.
Session 12
The end of the pathway the party had been chasing turned out to be the most dangerous part, as they were exploring the tunnels, and came under fire from small, nearly invisible creatures that seemed to attack from the shadows and scurry off before they could be spotted. They hit one, and it fled into a crack in the wall, after which the party found the door to the sewer vault they had been searching for.
Inside of the vault, they walked through a corridor flanked on both sides by closed and, in some cases, locked doors to small prison-cell-like rooms that all appeared empty. The corridor let out into a much larger room that was decorated and furnished as quite an obvious torture chamber, complete with a rack, an iron maiden, and other devices. Here they found themselves engaged with another tiny creature, this one possessing magic abilities that made it more difficult to contend with. The fight was taxing, especially when the small creature called in it's pet Darkmantle to harass the party as well. Eventually, they smashed the small thing and had a minute to catch their breath.
Once they had time to look around, the party found a pile of notes on the large torture-table of the room, clearly having sat there for many years, as a good number of the pages were destroyed by dripping water. But there was enough to read that the players could glean some information that helped them put together the story they have been on the heels of this whole time. They learned that the letters were written by Fascha Antif-Arah, a renowned Pathfinder many years ago, and that the room that they stood in was the remnants of a cult of Zon-Kuthon that she had helped wipe out, and claimed their base as a place to store her treasures. She was approached by a friend years ago to investigate a break in at the Acadamae that had gone all but untouched by authorities, and in her investigation she came across one single clue, a gold amulet shaped like a three female faces looking in different directions (a Upasunda asura). When she took the amulet to investigate it's origins, she had only managed to learn that it was Vudrani in nature and powerfully magical, before she believes that the owner of the amulet had caught on to her and attempted to silence her. She was caught in between a fleeing criminal and a Hellknight, an event she believes was set up to frame her as a fugitive cleanly, and was forced to flee Korvosa, leaving her wealth and the amulet behind.
The notes conclude with a description of a loose set of floor tiles in one of the cells, behind which the party finds a stash of treasure left by the Pathfinder, which they take and start trekking their way back to the surface.
Session 13
After returning to the streets of Korvosa with a pile of riches in tow, the party spends most of their time bringing the items they recovered to various experts to examine, appraise, and sell what they can, before finally making their way to Eel's End to visit the Spider King with the recovered goods.
Once they secured an audience with him, Devargo was quick to take the amulet off the party's hands, informing them that they're welcome to play with whatever else they recover, guessing they had already pawned some of it. After bagging the amulet and having it taken away by one of his guards, Devargo begins outlining the business he needs them focusing on for the next few days.
Devargo informs the party that he has a shipment that needs to make it's way safely into Korvosa, across the bridge from Old Korvosa which is heavily guarded and traffic scrutinized, and they'll have two days to prepare. They return to their current "home base" at The Sticky Mermaid tavern, and spend the evening planning multiple ways to accomplish the job, including buying ale to hide the Shiver barrels among as they transport them by cart, floating the barrels downstream on a boat, or bribing the guards to let them cross unscrutinized.
Session 14
With the time ticking away until they have to pick up the Shiver they are contracted to move, the party buys a few mostly-full ale kegs from some friends and a tavern or two in the area. Once the day arrives, they meet Devargo's crew at one empty dockside alleyway, where they are given a large wagon with two horses, and a few barrels and boxes in the back, along with parchment directing them to a place called "14 Round Sink Rd, South Wall, Northpoint", which they assume is the address. Once the deliverers leave, the party starts loading the cart with their ale kegs, burying the illicit materials as far back as they can, and set off for the bridge.
When they finally arrive at the bridge, they cross about halfway before being stopped by a group of Marines blocking the road, who are trying to hold a perimeter as something is clearly happening at the other end. When the party catches a glimpse of a large fight, overturned wagons, and clouds of dust on the other side of the bridge, they pull the cart to the side and race across to help. What they emerge onto is the scene of a large battle taking place in the middle of major streets, with several overturned heavily-reinforced prison wagons and a host of goblins attacking the Marines, while two Hellknights grapple with a large Ettin, trying to subdue it with spears. The party dives into the fight helping cut down the raging Ettin and many of the Goblins.
However, when the battle is over, they are detained by the Marines who have had backup swoop in,and questioned extensively by the Captain, though they manage to talk themselves through having most of their cargo checked out. They learn from the Captain that the wagons were prisoner transports, on their way to the custody of the Hellknights for imprisonment, when the convoy was attacked by the Ettin and goblins, though the prisoners themselves all escaped in the confusion. They learn the descriptions of various criminals to watch out for; An Ivory-colored Gargoyle, a large Bugbear barbarian, a large male covered in fur who looks like an animal, a Rogue with one eye, and a Hobgoblin with metal studs in his head.
Once the party is released from the custody of their Marines, the players are able to cross into the city and drop their cargo at the listed address, where they are jeered at by some unsavory men who take their cargo delivery and move it somewhere else. The party ends by returning to the nearest inn, one Marshall Kroft has provided funds at, and rests.
Session 15
When the party returns to Old Korvosa the next morning, Harrald is given a message by his friend, the barmaid, that was left for him. The note reads:
"What are you doing Madarius? Whatever it is, it can't be good if you're back in the city. Not sure who these allies of yours are, but we should get together again. The usual place."
They are told the letter was left by a short man, with thinning blonde hair, pale skin, and who coughed into a handkerchief. Not sure what the message means, the party leaves and makes their way towards Eel's End, but along the way they encounter two large, thuggish-looking men who seem to be looking for them, and insist very strongly the party come with them. The two men escort the party off their route and towards an abandoned shop well away from where they're traveling, and tell them someone asked for them inside.
Inside the empty shop building, the party sees Devargo, who seems to be just finishing with the process of "interrogating" someone who two men of his held the victim. The person was small, Halfling-sized, and as Devargo began addressing the party, the person was being dragged out the back exit to "the boat", and Harrald immediately recognized the victim's clothing as belonging to his friend Sid "Swarthy" Swarthins.
The party tried to keep their cool, which was difficult for Harrald as he seethed with rage, but they didn't blow their cover as Devargo congratulated them on their success and informed them that he had an immediate job for them. According to him, the Korvosan Guard had recently taken to occupying large portions of the Midland Docks, as they seemed to investigating something there, and Devargo needs those guards gone so he can use the piers himself without being caught. The party was, therefore, to find a way of clearing out the guards, how they did it is up to them. Once his instructions were delivered, Devargo had the party escorted out.
So without wasting much time, the party traveled down to the Midlands where they need only ask locals for the situation to have it clarified that there have been two incidents in the last week of ships being damaged as they attempted to make berth, seemingly by a sudden up-swell of waves and some claims of a whirlpool, and the Guard is on the docks to find the culprit and arrest them, which they did by locking down the whole area.
As they investigate the area, they learn that the only relatively new thing is a shrine to Gozreh someone has collected donations for and constructed on the end of a pier. When they ask about the shrine, they learn no one knows really when it went up, it but it was a few weeks ago, with some reports of a small, cloaked woman who came at night to attach pieces to it, within the last two weeks.
During their investigation, the party is led by a man into an alleyway on pretense of being one of the captains of the damaged ships, but instead turns into an ambush, where they are attacked by thugs. Among the attackers is a Half-Orc who is called Krell, and seems to think one among them is someone named "Madarius". During the fight, Krell is injured and manages to flee, but the party holds one of the conscious thugs for questioning. From him, they learn that Madarius is somehow connected to someone named Gregor, who they had an address for across the district, and Krell was hired to capture Madarius. The party followed the address to the house, where they found an empty building with no furnishings save a desk, a chair, and a bed. On the chair was a note addressed to Madarius saying
"Blue Ox, back alley, sunset, leave friends behind"
With this information in hand, Harrald reluctantly decided to stay and go to the Blue Ox alone to meet with the person who left the note, who seems to think he is Madarius. The rest of the party decides to wait at the docks by the Shrine to Gozreh, and as they hoped, the cloaked woman has arrived to come tend to the shrine. However, the woman spots the party as she's making her way up the pier and instantly turns and runs, and the party scramble to give chase. At the same time, across town, four men who entered the bar and waited together very quietly make their way out the door after a younger, slender man, which Harrald took as a queue and followed the group out, turning down the first alleyway only to find himself surrounded by thugs as he faced the young man in simple robes waiting for him.
There's more coming, of course. We've played up to session 22, so there's a lot more story to read through!
| Askren |
Session 16
Immediately picking up in the middle of the action, the players are both embroiled in their own conflicts. At the docks, Shinji and Finn take off running after the woman who has fled into the city, bounding after her into the alleys and streets of Korvosa's Midland district. Shinji seeks the high ground by using his athletic ability to leap up onto a merchant's wagon and pull himself up onto a nearby rooftop, running across it an making leaps to adjacent buildings, with his vantage point allowing him to keep a visual on the fleeing woman as she turned down a side street. On the ground, Finn had an easier time running, but was unable to keep sight on the woman when she disappeared behind a group of traders and ran down a street. Shinji attempted to keep the tail going by making a running leap from the roof of the building right into the crossroads, landing hard, but managing to roll a bit and keep running, yelling for Finn to follow.
The chase continues on foot for a few more blocks, before the woman turns down an alleyway, seeming to have vanished by the time Finn arrives, noticing that the alley is a dead end splitting multiple ways. He takes the closest path, and Shinji arrives shortly after, taking up position at the intersection of the paths so no one can get out. Finn proceeds down the cramped alleyway, calling out to the woman his peaceful intentions, but his calls are stopped when he finds himself in a zone of silence. As he takes a second to realize what's going on, they alleyway suddenly fills up with thick, heavy fog, obscuring Finn's view of anything around him, and cutting off Shinji's ability to see anything going on. Reacting as quickly as he can, Finn tries charging forwards to tackle as soon as he sees any movement in the mist, knowing the woman will try and pass him, but he trips badly, and his efforts land him sprawled out on his back, helpless. Shinji is uncomfortable and draws his sword to block the alleyway, but a wall of gale winds whips up in front of him, filling the entrance and keeping him from helping Finn. As Finn tries to get up, the woman appears above him, looking down. He holds up his hands and pleads for peace, saying they don't want to hurt her, but she responds by conjuring a crackling trident made of energy and slamming it into the ground next to Finn's head saying "Stop following me. Stay away." before vanishing into the obscuring fog. As the wall of wind dies away, Shinji rushes in to help Finn, cursing themselves that they let the woman escape. However, despite Shinji scouring the area for clues, Finn finds himself stunned and greatly intrigued by this woman who bears the same holy power as him.
Across the district, it's obvious to Harrald that whoever requested the meeting is prepared to take him in violently, but instead Harrald demands an explanation, explaining that he's not Madarius and he has no idea what this meeting expects from him. The man seems to weigh Harrald's words carefully, instead offering to escort him to a meeting with Gregor, the man who's house the players raided earlier. The man and his hired muscle lead Harrald through some unfamiliar streets towards a rather unimpressive district of apartments where he apparently owned a room within one of the boarding houses. Once led in, Harrald is brought into a two-room apartment, the study of which is lined with books and dim candle lights. There is also a man in his early 30s, a little more than five feet tall, with thinning blonde hair, and a face covered with red blotches. His hands tremble as is continually wracked by a loud, hacking cough. He exclaims happily to the man Harrald met, who he refers to as Pharandale, though his glee turns to displeasure when he steps closer to Harrald and realizes he is not, in fact, Madarius, but someone who looks enough like him that it a mistaken identity caused Gregor to reach out.
Harrald pressed Gregor why he paid the half-Orc Krell to attack him and bring him in, if apparently the two were friends, though the attack seems to be news to Gregor, making him even more visibly worried. He explains that he and Madarius were partners, thieves that specialized in difficult-to-obtain items, and that they were hired by a woman named Cassatta to steal an artifact from some wizard outside of the city, and they broke in and retrieved it, but Madarius never returned with the artifact. Gregor had assumed he had simply kept it for himself and taken off, but was stunned to see him back in the city, though that turns out to have been Harrald instead. He mentioned that the artifact was some horn inlaid with metal, he didn't know what it was for. He also spent quite a bit of time elaborating on how much of a devil the woman Cassatta was, telling Harrald how his current condition was caused by her placing a curse on him when he didn't have the artifact. He claimed that this Orc named Krell was not in his employ, but if the Orc thought Harrald was Madarius, he had to have been hired by Cassatta.
With the mistaken identities cleared up for the time being, and the fleeing woman having escaped, the party reconvened at the Sticky Mermaid, where they exchange information and start plotting their next move. About to settle in for a night of drinking and collect themselves to take care of things tomorrow, the party is interrupted by the slamming of the tavern doors and the bellowing growl of the Half-Orc Krell as he grins and exclaims "Well well, I'm glad I've found you. Again."
| Askren |
Session 17
As Krell stormed into the bar, the few patrons there during the day either fled out the door or upstairs, away from the clear danger. The Half-Orc gripped the haft of his heavy greatsword, he bellowed his challenge to the party "I won't be caught unprepared this time, I'll carry each of your heads back as my trophies." he laughed, a new scar clearly visible across his face and his green skin tight against rippling muscles, a thin film of sweat covering his bare arms. The tavern keeper begged the group to take their fight outside and not destroy his bar, so the party agreed to face Krell out on the street.
As the party gathered in the alleyway nearby, Krell and Harrald squared off, with Harrald's heavy pick clashing against Krell's armor. The party was ready to let Harrald handle the fight on his own, until a powerful sword swing left him with a nasty wound. Eventually the rest of the party jumped in, with Balthor flanking him from behind and Shinji making slicing and stabbing cuts from the outside. Krell was tough, and even significant wounds didn't seem to slow him down, even being disarmed by Balthor didn't stop his rage, as he kept swinging just as fiercely with his gauntleted fists. Even flanked and outnumbered, Krell focussed most of his attention on Harrald, who himself was quickly succumbing to his own raging fury, so much so that when Krell was disarmed and kept striking with his fists, Harrald threw down his own pick and met him blow for blow with his own, roaring in anger the whole time. However, even Krell's growing rage was not enough to sustain him as Balthor struck hard, burying his double-axe into the Half-Orc's back and felling him like a great tree, sending him crashing to the ground, while Harrald kept hammering the body with his fists until his own rage subsided.
Once the Half-Orc had been defeated, the party scoured his corpse for anything that might solve the question of why he hunted them so fervently, which was answered with the discovery of a note, seemingly scrawled in the Half-Orc's own writing, as it was too sloppy to be anything else.
The note read:
Boarded house, 14th Dockstreet. Get horn, if G + M run, she pays when i get the thieves back to her.
Followed by another line scrawled at the bottom later
M flipped, I get the horn from him, I get their money. Win-win.
After taking the note, as well as the greatsword off Krell, the party dragged his body back behind a nearby alley, and returned to the tavern. However, on their way into the tavern they noticed something that was not there before, a piece of parchment stuck to the wall next to the door, covered in strange symbols none of them had ever seen. Shinji tried to interpret them, but couldn't figure out their meaning, though he couldn't shake the feeling that he kept experiencing a sort of tugging on his mind, trying to direct his attention somewhere. He didn't notice at the time that he had at some point taken Zellara's Harrow Deck out of it's box and began shuffling the cards idly. The symbols, they concluded, didn't look like any language they were familiar with, and their designs seemed to be very old, not language per-say, maybe symbols for something?
On their way out of the tavern and back into Korvosa proper, the party noticed that quite a lot of commotion filled many streets they passed. Here and there they spotted small numbers of Hellknights on patrol, more than they've seen since the riots, and even more streets were occupied by groups of protestors, drunken rabble rousers, and citizen's unrest, most all of which seemed to be directed at the Queen, if the slurs and cries were anything to go by. The atmosphere did not bode well to the party.
Shinji decided that the paper and symbols were pressing too heavily on his mind. What were they and why were they put there? Clearly it was for them to find, but what did they mean? His answer was to seek out a fortune-teller shop he remembered passing by in the Gold Market, a place called Doom and Gloom. Inside, he met an old woman named Maya who he persuaded to inspect the piece of paper and see if she could shed any light n the subject. Seeming to posess some passing knowledge on the subject, the Varisian woman informed him that the symbols were, in fact, ancient cyphers still used in many "forgotten arts", those who speak to spirits, dabble in ancient alchemy, or some darker magics that exist outside the modern schools of the arcane. While she hadn't the skills to translate them exactly, she knew one symbol represented something about "water", and the three at the bottom of the page indicated "danger, doom, and tragedy". Her conclusion was that someone, whoever wrote this page, wished harm and doom upon the group, likely that the party will meet a terrible fate at sea.
Satisfied with the answer, Shinji indulged the old woman by asking her to perform a Harrow reading for him, which she did. ((I have a write-up of the reading itself, but I will not include it here, as it's a bit long)) After which, he returned to the tavern the group has designated as their current temporary base of operations, letting Balthur and Finn follow up on the lead to go speak with the woman who they now know as Cassatta, who's address they got from Krell's note.
Balthur and Finn made their way to the address, a mostly-abandoned apartment building buried in the cheaper, slums district of the Midlands, where they cautiously made their way through the dark corridors to find the room they were looking for; An abandoned apartment, furnished with collected junk and lit with a few candles, it's ceiling almost entirely covered by hanging mobiles of dead seagulls, bones, fish remains, driftwood carvings, shells, and other ocean-based symbols. However, far from finding the prepared, criminal mastermind they had expected, they instead found a young girl cowering in the closet with a small knife, a girl Finn recognized almost instantly as the one he chased into the alleyway. While the two got their bearings, Finn engaged Cassatta, encouraging her that they weren't there to kill her, and that he was incredibly interested in her worship, as he'd not met another faithful of Gozreh since he returned to Korvosa, and he was fascinated by how complex her rituals and decorations were. Questioning her, they learned that she was, in fact, the one who had damaged the ships in the port, the whole situation being a failed, and misguided attempt to reinstate Gozreh into the minds of the local sailors and traders, who's worship has spent decades falling off to nothing. She explains that she was simply hoping to cause some commotion with the intention of local sailors turning their attention to her visible shrine on their way in and out of the port, but when she ended up accidentally punching a hole in one boat, and causing another to veer off course and hit a pier. She concluded that if she were to acquire an artifact that increased her power over the waves, she could solve everything, so she hired Gregor and Madarius to steal the Horn of the Tides for her. But more talk would have to wait, as they insisted to Cassatta that Gregor had turned on her, and Krell was dead, and she was misguided, but also unsafe. But most importantly, she was the key to solving the problem they needed to solve for Devargo. So they took her from her house and brought her back to the tavern to explain the story to the rest of the party, assuage anyone's fears about her intentions and the situation, and then brainstorm a way to solve the problem that didn't involve turning her into the guards, as Finn had become quite insistant that she be protected.
The ultimate solution came in the form of Shinji making his way through the streets late at night, and posing an anonymous tip with a guardsman among the number guarding and searching the docks, that the culprit they're looking for had been spotted returning to his apartment, to which he provided the address where Gregor had been residing.
In the morning, the guards must have made an arrest, as they were almost completely absent from the docks, and things looked like they were potentially back to normal. So with problem seemingly solved, the party resolved to collect themselves and head straight for Devargo's ship, hopefully to press for the information he has been stringing them along for. However, they were interrupted on their way out the door by yet another paper covered in more strange, occult glyphs, this time on the inside of the door to the tavern on their way out. Terrified that someone is following them and threatening them, the party hurried towards Devargo's ship, but they were stopped on the road by a stranger; A thin, pale Half-Elf with stringy grey hair and a face shadowed by a large, floppy sun-hat, with relatively poorly cared-for clothing. The man urged the party to stop, questioning why they had ignored his warnings of danger, and were still on their way to their deaths. While the party was obviously confused, the stranger told them that while he had no idea who any of them were, he has been tormented by visions and dreams of their faces, and that in a recurring dream he sees them shrouded in shadow, entering "the mouth of the great eel", and then falling to their death, a death he has seen over and over for them. He insists that this vision is granted to him by his patron Pharasma, and that it can only mean wherever they are headed, it's certainly a trap, and they will most certainly die. He encourages them to turn back, and return when they are significantly more prepared, so that his visions can not come true, and he can stop seeing them in his dreams. This, he believes, Pharasma demands of him, to help save their lives.
And that is how Aiden Whispercil, the Occultist, joined the party.
Yeah, tons of liberal expansion on Dagger's At Midnight here, hopefully I didn't lose anyone in the story. It's like, 4 small pages of plot (maybe 2 pages typed), stretched over a few sessions. I had intended Cassatta to be a big interest point for Finn, hoping he would get excited by and engaged with another worshipper of Gozreh in the city, which it seems he is. She even planted the idea in his head that they should form a real church, which he's considering. Yeah, I know, I'm pushing the true neutral nature of Gozreh a bit, but I think I sold it.
Last note: The very odd hints and ending were sort of a last-minute addition. The reason we started Curse of the Crimson Throne was because one of our players, a long-time friend and player of mine, had to excuse himself from our Rise of the Runelords game and we collectively decided that we didn't want to continue that campaign without him. So when he came to me mid-week while planning this game and told me he's back, his personal issues are sorted out, and he's eager to play, we created a character and I wrote him into the story in the most subtle and interesting way we could come up with. We played a bit of a prank on the other players, as he was actually in the Skype call with us for the entire session, but under a fake name, so the players had no idea he had returned and was going to play until right at the end when he turned on his mic spoke to them in-character. It was a pretty big surprise for the whole group, and I think everyone got a kick out of it.
Anyway, more long-winded rambling coming soon!
| Askren |
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It absolutely did. I've been...incredibly busy, to say the least. I had a second campaign that's being livestreamed start up, and promoting it, finding guests for my weekly DM show, and writing plot for both games has killed my free time.
So, let's type up another session! I'm going to pair the next two sessions into one, because they were functionally the same, just a long series of fights spanning the two.
Session 18 & 19
Newly acquainted with someone who seems to know something of their future, and claiming it was his mission to keep them alive, the players took Aiden into their group and spent the first part of the morning preparing for what would obviously be their assault on Devargo's boat complex. Knowing his reputation as the King of Spiders, the group figured their best bet would be to browse local merchants in Old Korvosa and see if anyone knew any antidotes for poisons. Their searching didn't turn up much, other than that one local alchemist offered to sell them something called "mugwort", a dry root that he claimed they could chew to stave off the effects of poison sickness. Figuring that this would be their only cost-effective option outside of visiting the Church of Abadar to pay money they didn't have for healing spells and potions, the group took the mugwort.
During their shopping excursion, the group was pulled aside by Grau Soldado, their old friend who they had helped get sober and back into the City Guard during the riots. He was doing better, and took the opportunity to liason with the party and make sure they were on the road to accomplishing their task, as they had been out of contact for a while. They used their discussion with him as an opportunity to review their goals and focus, making the decision that they didn't care about using subterfuge to work their way into Devargo's good graces, he had one of their friends prisoner, likely being tortured, and they needed to get him out, and stop Devargo if possible. So with the group setting off towards Eel's End, they ready themselves for a fight, and a possible ambush.
When the group arrived at Eel's End, it was less crowded, owing to the early afternoon hour, and the party made a straight line for Devargo's ship. After exchanging a few lines of banter with with two thugs standing guard at the doors, and being informed that they wouldn't be let in to see the King of Spiders, Harrald decided not to play coy anymore and punched one thug in the face, immediately causing the other to cry out in alert to the other off-duty guards stationed around the boat. The fight on the deck of the Eel's End was rough, with some guards dying, some being injured and fleeing, and the party barging through the big, spider-painted doors into Devargo's chamber with one badly-injured thug in tow, who they "asked nicely" about where to find Devargo. After searching the throne room, and almost dropping Harrald and Aiden down a trap door via pressing the unknown trigger switch on Devargo's throne, the group busts down the locked door leading down below decks.
Itching for a fight, Harrald charges straight through the first door he sees, completely unprepared for coming face to face with Devargo himself in a small room, where the two square off, though it is a fight none in the group are particularly prepared for, as Devargo is apparently a much more skilled fighter than they expected him to be, commanding a variety of stances and maneuvers in combat that led to Harrald's being knocked unconscious. Shinji stepped in and backed Devargo into a corner next to his fireplace, where he was able to knock the crime lord unconscious and subdue him, though not without sustaining painful injuries himself. Aiden and Balthur decided not to venture into the cramped space, instead taking on the rest of the crew of thugs that were guarding their friend Swarthy. Eventually taking out all the thugs, the party took a minute to catch their breath as they were left seemingly at peace for a few seconds, with Devargo unconscious and the boat in their control. If you're wondering where Finn was...he stayed on the deck above with the prisoner.
However, that peace was not to last, as Harrald was brought back to consciousness, and when Shinji went off to investigate the rest of the boat, the barbarian took out his rage on Devargo's body, beheading it angrily. The party secured Swarthy from his prison, and though he was beaten up badly, and had sustained extensive injuries, he insisted that he never told them anything about where the drugs came from, that he never gave up the group. Insisting that they would discuss the situation once they're safe, the party made their back up to the upper deck with Swarthy in to, prepared to leave Eel's End. What they were not aware of is the face that one of them had dropped a torch down into the dark hole that was the trapdoor in the Throne Room Finn had stayed in, and though he had used Create Water to douse the torch once it fell, the smell of burning was filling the boat.
As the party made their retreat, Harrald emerged into the Throne Room first, catching a full view of a long, thin arm ending in a spindly three-claw'd hand reach up out of the trap-door hole and grasp Finn by the leg, before yanking him off his feet and down into the hole.
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As soon as Harrald saw Finn be pulled down below, he shouted for his party and dove right into the dark hole after him, his fall actually slamming into whatever creature had grabbed Finn and sending them both crashing through layers of webs into the ground. Shinji, Aiden, and Balthur followed the smell of burning and smoke to the locked door in Devargo's antechamber below deck, and made their way into the Spider Lair on the ground, though their passage was slow and difficult, as they battled against the giant Ettercap, while Harrald attempted to rip through the webs and beat down the Ogre Spider on the other side of the room. Finn, unfortunately, spent a large portion of the fight trapped in Webs, but eventually cut himself free and managed to keep the party alive with heals.
Chittersnap fought aggressively, and his small spiders kept the party on their toes, but eventually they saw the spiders, large and small, defeated. Balthur took one of Chittersnap's mandibles as a trophy, and the group gathered themselves to breathe and search the ship before making their departure. Touring Devargo's personal chambers, the party discovered his chest of valuables, most of which were small art objects and cash, along with one interesting jasper-studded amulet. Aiden attempted to Object Read the amulet, and saw a vision of a brutal assault where a young boy was struck down by an unseen assailant.
As the party made their way out of Eel's End, licking their wounds and counting their spoils, they set their sights on Citadel Volsheynek to report to Marshal Kroft that the thorn in her side that was Devargo is no more.