After the group arrived in Pashin, they explored a little of the city, went to the Bazaar to haggle for wears and sell off some of the gear and loot they gathered from the Sunless Citadel mini adventure. Going back to town, they heard the rumors of the Herald's arrival, and of course, followed the crowd, and sat down for story time. After the requisite riot broke out, the group shielded the Herald and took him down a side street to get him away from the ruckus, which was to their benefit since shortly afterward, a few patrols of Dark Knights came around and broke up the mess, and 'escorted' away the really disorderly people. The Herald told them of his vision and their destiny. By now, evening was rolling around, and since they were already near the Wounded Crow, the decided to stay the night there, and opted for the cheapest rooms.
They awoke to find they were robbed. I hadn't quite counted on how vindictive my group could be. They questioned poor Stewart for awhile, but he is a simple man in our campaign, and didn't want to endanger himself or his family by speaking ill of Blackbird, so the group demanded a meeting with Blackbird. Now picture something akin to the Godfather. Blackbird seated behind a desk, with thugs looking on the proceedings. Enter our fiesty little group. Fortunately, they were respectful to him, and made some very good diplomacy checks, and were able to find out about Derg, and even were able to get their money refunded for their losses (the cost of the rooms only).
After visiting the bazaar and buying back some of their equipment and weapons (a good way to reduce the amount of money they were carrying around, which I was afraid was a little much at the time), they decided to find out about Derg (and Pegrin to a much lesser extent) On their way to meet up with Kelwick (calling in the favor, after helping him out) they ran into Dove. Blackbird's enforcers came around to collect, and after some back and forth, the group knew they could pay the enforcers the 25 stl to get them away from Dove, but they figured that it was only a stop gap solution for this week only, and decided not to get involved. Dove was dragged back to the Wounded Crow by the enforcers. They met Kelwick from there, and sent him out to scout the camp.
Long story short (too late), they found the camp (using Kelwick's notes on tent locations, approximate head count, and sentry locations) and managed to kill off the thugs (after falling into 2 of the 3 pit traps, they had their head fighter run around with a lead tied around his waist, so they could pull him back in case he fell into another trap.) I played Cole off as a frightened teenager to save his own skin since he saw how poorly things went for his "friends". The group tied up Derg and Pegrin, then healed them back to consciousness and questioned them.
Now is where things got funny. They gathered the bodies of the thugs, and their gear and tents and what not, and set on fire to get rid of them (they are only a couple miles from Pashin at the most) They take Cole with them, as his kind of Penance until they can take him home (from where he ran away from). As for Derg and Pegrin, they decided to strip them down to their 'birthday suits', tied them to trees along the path into Pashin (about a mile outside town) with signs around their necks saying "we are thieves". Things might have gone somewhat smoothly from here if the group decided to leave things where they were. unfortunately, they knew Pegrin and Derg were derelict Dark Knights, so when the group got back to town, they decided to inform the Dark Knights of the 2 strange naked men outside town.
This is more than a little odd, and since the Dark Knights are already fighting resistance cells in the town, they decide to take the group to the garrison for some questioning (they agree to it) The dark knights bring the naked perps back in, and the questioning begins.
I take each of the players into a seperate room, and question them. Did they know of the resistance leaders? Have they seen any elves in town? Who is the halfelf in their group (the NPC)? (bad tidings, kind of error #1, since it's suspicious) What were you doing outside of town? This last question was interesting since each person gave a slightly different answer. Error #2. During questioning, a soldier comes in, reporting a gruesome scene where a bunch of people and thier campsite were burned (smoke trails gave away the location). Strangely enough, this location corroborates with the story of the naked perps, so the group is caught in a lie. error #3. The group is now awaiting a final decision from General Dogah when he returns. (the Commander has been handling things up till now) Pegrin and Derg will be hung for dereliction of duty, banditry, loitering, etc etc. (makes a good example to keep the other knights in line.) The group will get to witness this, so they know they are in trouble. Can't wait to see what next week's session will yield...
:D
Stumbling upon his lair to Hurim should be interesting, what with the labyrinth as part of a Copper Dragon's lair...
Is it okay if I do that, then? Because honestly, I'd love to. :D
Originally posted by Ashaman Nash
I was going to start a Journal-like thread detailing my players' traipses through the KoD, but thought there might be copyright issues.
Is it okay if I do that, then? Because honestly, I'd love to. :D
Honestly, that isn't something I'd given much thought to, but I'm not sure how it would be, provided you don't give away everything that happens in the adventure, and that there is a spoiler warning on the thread as well.
Besides which, alot of people at some point or other have given some interesting recounts of what happened in their gaming sessions.
I just wanted to share the story of how a lust for revenge against a robbery got my group into trouble, but inevitably worked out GREAT for me. Pegrin was an afterthought. They all had a serious mad-on for Derg though, and throughout the session, they kept saying how they were going to take the cost of buying their gear back out of Derg's hide. If only they hadn't mouthed off to the Knights of Neraka, they might have gotten away with their revenge, but they had to take it too far, and they got burned for it. :D
Originally posted by frostdawn
I guess no one wants to share any of their stories?
I will, when I can write more of it down.
Last session my players finally made it across the Bay of Balifor to Port Balifor, but they had to fight their way past an amphi dragon (which was very tough), a dozen lacedon ghouls, and a yrasda cleric of Zeboim. Not easy by any stretch, but now they're in the Port and can start looking for the Dark Knights that kidnapped Zoe Left-Hand from Ak-Khurman...
Cheers,
Cam
The party's White Robe wizard cast fireball into the engine after the cleric cast resist energy on the engine's outer surface. That kicked it into action, and it immediately began sucking the water in from the inside of the ship (which was up to everybody's waists) and forcefully expelling it out of the ship as superheated steam thrust. The Perinchief took off, rocketing across the high choppy waves and into the air. It then ran out of internal water and shut down, which led to a lot of grabbing onto nearby handholds and a loud splash. They soon found a way to switch to an external intake, and used the ensuing rocket-propelled motion to clear the thunderstorm and get into calmer waters.
I highly recommend tossing in this extra stuff, especially if you have players who like to take risks with mad science.
Cheers,
Cam
Not to nitpick your game but I'm pretty sure that Resist Energy can only be cast on something alive. I think it says like creature touched or something as its target. But hey..your the DM. Fun things happen heh.
Originally posted by True_Blue
Cam,
Not to nitpick your game but I'm pretty sure that Resist Energy can only be cast on something alive. I think it says like creature touched or something as its target. But hey..your the DM. Fun things happen heh.
It's true that the spell can only target creatures, but the gnomish engine was something of an animated object, and thus a creature of the construct type. Of course, that's something of an explanation in retrospect - at the time, it was a cool idea from the player of the cleric, so I ran with it.
Also, I misremembered - the spell is protection from energy, as it's the one which has a reservoir of points that can be dealt to the target by the specified energy type before it exhausts the spell. That's more or less what happened - it kept the engine from overheating until the ship escaped the storm.
Cheers,
Cam
Ahh, suspense is a wonderful thing.
They lucked out more or less in the sewers. They went right by the marked doors, and became somewhat methodical in searching the sewers. They went around the edges, establishing the perimeter of the sewer, and that of course brought them to the Ghast and his little buddies. The cleric of the group managed to turn one of the ghouls, so they chased each other around one of the artesian wells, while one of the fighters and the wizard were both frozen after taking hits from the ghast. Good times.
The group ended the session after finding the elves and speaking with Shaylin.
Nothing too inspiring this session, however, next session will start fairly early with some personalized goodies for the group. Loving this adventure though.
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My FIRST big cameo appearance is going to be involving the NPC Dove. Now everyone here knows that Dove is one of Blackbird's courtesans. Howevere for anyone that has READ the module you will know that in the encounter where the PCs meet Dove she is in danger from a few of his, "goons" because she has not been able to make enough money to pay Blackbird.
WELL since I NEVER ran my initial group through THAT encounter I decided to make a sideplot out of it for my cameo appearance players. Basically Dove is AVOIDING Blackbird since she does not have all of his cheddar not to mention she has grown tired of her current lifestyle and thus has made the decision to LEAVE Pashin. There is only ONE problem, Blackbird has connections and if she attempts to leave unprotected she probably will not make it far HENCE she hires a group of PCs in town to get her to the next best, and safest, town namely Ak Khurman.
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That brings up another interesting question, how do different DMs handle it when players can't make certain sessions? The way we handle it, we don't end a session in the middle of a fight, or right before, that way, in the event someone can't make the next session, we're stuck with the dilemma of how to handle their character. In any other case, we write it off as the character has a bad case of temporary ibs (irritable bowel syndrome) and can't participate, so either they are constantly running off into the bushes, or staying in bed if in town.
This decision was reached in the event that if a person couldn't play, they wouldn't feel cheated or denied the chance to actually play their character for the last time, if they truly were meant to die.
Two good examples of this are Elistan and some of the other characters in the Chronicles that Margaret would occasionally forget about (understandably, given the huge group of characters), and the guy from the short D&D parody film The Gamers whose player is rarely there, and when he's not you just see him standing in the background looking stalwart. Hilarious, if a little frightening to watch.
Cheers,
Cam
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