Dale's Campaign - Session #12
Another fun and interesting session this one was.
And thankfully this session was a bit different and more on the intriguing side.
First off, everyone was at this session, and we stopped the game a little early thanks to a good stopping point at about the right time.
Dale will not be around next week thanks to some lame fantasy football NFL draft. But since I’ve cancelled at least one game in the past few years to go play poker, I guess I can’t really complain, even though fantasy football blows and poker rules.
Aaron could have run a one-shot game, but he opted not to because he believes, correctly, that most one-shots can not really be done in one session unless a good chunk of the game is removed in some way. So unless we have two weeks in a row where Dale can’t run, Aaron will not run anytime time soon.
While waiting for everyone to show up, we had our usual “guys who talk about political issues” half-hour.
We discussed things like, the Burger King commercials.
Dale loves them.
Aaron thinks they’re creepy.
I have my own political point of view.
Sean: “Put me in charge. I’ll fix all of the world’s problems and then replace them with a whole batch of new ones.”
When the last of us showed, we got down to business.
Dale, in the interest of speeding up the game, let us breeze past a few inconsequential things that probably would have just taken up time.
Things like, finding the dragon hoard. Aaron realized that although the momma dragon made her save versus Speak with Dead, the juvenile Growlgretch we had not tried the spell on. So a natural 1 later, and we found the dragon hoard (it involved going into an underwater cave).
And before you knew it we were 15,000gp richer (items and money).
Then we returned to town and found a big Mardi gras type of festival going on. It was called Swampfest and everyone seemed to be having a good time.
That seemed odd to us since they were 2 weeks away from having to sacrifice one of their own.
But as we left our boat, we had some problems of our own. The two prominently displayed dragon heads seemed to act like a beacon for pick-pockets rather than as a badge of respect. A few not-so-idle threats and some weapons in hand made us a safe pathway through to our home.
After we stored our newfound gains, we decided to join in the good times of the festival while trying to gain information.
The first and worst thing we found out; no one in town knew a thing about the impending sacrifice.
As we rewound all of the happenings we’ve seen and interacted with in this town, we realized (in a Sixth Sense kind of way) that we had never bothered to ask anyone of the main populace about the whole thing.
So we had to add this new information to what we already knew. The only thing that changed for Kal was that he didn’t blame the whole populace of the town; but he was still very sure that the town leaders were in on it.
But on a role-playing level, Kal taught a local yokel how to properly cook crawfish. Now he’ll earn nearly 1000gp a month from his Bubba-Vesh craw-fishing company. This assumes that Kal lives to see that money.
But hey, he’s got that going for him.
Beyond that, we pretty much missed a lot of information in the town that now we need to get catch up on.
Culan & Mark visited your stereotype gypsy fortune-teller.
We figured that if she was legitimate, her head would explode.
But she gave them some standard hullabaloo that really didn’t tell us anything, it just gave the game some atmosphere.
Otherwise, we all used our own ways to find out as much information as we could.
What we found:
The town mayor’s name is Herkey.
His closest confidant’s name is Javier.
A young girl named Glenda went missing a few days ago, just at the start of the celebration.
It was obvious to us that this celebration was created simply to mask the actions of the hags while they grab the unlucky girl.
Kal, still firmly believing that the town leaders were involved, felt that a coup would fix the problem. But that wouldn’t get the current girl out of it alive, and the town would be thrown into upheaval, and the hags would then just grab the girls even more quietly – if we’re lucky.
Information gathered, we returned home and began planning.
First off, Kineo went to the town hall and tried to speak directly with the mayor. But his days and nights were all booked up until after Swampfest was over.
So Kineo asked to speak with Javier. But this just caused the clerk to turn to become agitated and he asked Kineo where he had heard that name
End result; Kineo left of his free will before anything bad might happen.
So Culan and Mark entered the town hall, but this time with Culan having cast Detect Thoughts & zone of Truth and Mark constantly using his Detect Evil ability.
They told the clerk that they were there to report the disappearance of a girl named Glenda. The clerk responded that they were already aware of the girl’s disappearance. The spells confirmed the statement.
Having not gotten the response they were hoping for, they asked to see the mayor directly. That was denied.
So they asked about Javier, which set off alarms in the clerk’s head.
He was thinking that there were an awful lot of people asking about Javier today, and the mayor wants any further inquiries about this kind of thing to be taken into custody for “questioning”.
End result: The clerk calls for the guards while the thoughts of torture run through his head. So Mark and Culan leave. But not before scanning the area of the mayor’s office and getting a definite point of evil.
The party informed Kal of this all, and then they all went to talk to Ian de Magi to discuss the information and form a plan.
The plan was simple; we would knock out the wall nearest the mayor’s office, immobilize the mayor, grab the mayor, flee to Ian’s tower, and then we would interrogate the mayor.
(Note to self: I need to annunciate my words better when I say that my summoned critters are going to poison him and suck his Dex out of him.)
We might have over planned this whole raid, but that’s ok.
To immobilize the mayor we had several options, all of with we prepared to use. There was dexterity poison from summoned creatures mixed with the Contagion spell, the Hold Person spell, spells that cause fatigue and subdual damage, and simple grappling.
So plan in hand we moved to the town hall/keep in full battle ready regalia. But since we did it at the prime hour for the evening celebrations of Swampfest, we didn’t look all that interesting.
Kineo followed about 50’ behind us while invisible.
Culan, when we were close enough cast Clairvoyance into the mayor’s office had no interesting surprises. (He was alone and doing paperwork.)
And on our cue, the entertainment began with a nice bright diversion.
Ian made a gold and silver dragon while Lindepohl thought he had to compete with this. So Lindepohl made a dark purple dragon to fight Ian’s.
Yes, Lindepohl had been suckered into helping us by providing even more cover.
This all happened simultaneously with Kal’s summoning of earth elementals.
Culan saw, through his Clairvoyance spell, that the mayor was getting up to get away.
So we went on initiative.
The moment the elementals had the wall knocked down, spells flew like wildfire.
Jaxil cast Silence on the door, preventing the mayor from yelling for help.
The mayor was able to get to the door and get on the other side of it, and closed it.
Mark ran towards the front of the building to make sure no one could escape out that way.
Kal’s elementals charged through the wooden walls, all but surrounding the poor mayor.
Kal then began summoning some fiendish huge monstrous centipedes (they deal 1d6 dexterity poison).
Culan cast a successful Hold Person at the mayor.
By the end of it all, we had successfully captured us a mayor with a -30 dexterity score.
We showed the true meaning of Shock and Awe.
Brian: “We went from subdual to sadism.”
In fact, since the mayor was just a low level expert, any real damage would have killed him. Luckily we intentionally pulled our punches.
We quickly ransacked the office for information and searched the mayor for anything of interest. On him was a nice magical cloak, and a ring with a disembodied eye on it that disappeared after we noticed it.
That ring is dust and shrapnel now and Mark now has a nice magical cloak.
After ransacking, Kineo turned everyone invisible, and then we ran off.
Kineo stayed a little while to search more, but found little more of information.
Information we found:
The maiden is taken a week in advance, selected by the council, and is then taken to a safe house.
Swampfest was a simple idea by the hags to create a Mardi gras type of festival that masked the kidnapping.
When we get the mayor to start talking (using the ravage called Golden Ice that Ian supplied), the information he gives us repeats what we know already.
The process for picking the girl is by council choice, Javier then picks 10-12 of his men, 1 of which is chosen by hidden lot to grab the girl and take her away to a safe house, where the hags grab her.
Ian then summoned a celestial creature which took the mayor away to a new place in the heavens for him to be reformed.
Our next step is to search the deep swamp for the hags, and according to Dale, the fight of our lives.
Since we may break our tile to summon the aid of the Brothers Grimm, we decided to warn them. And since Dale wants us to control then during the fight, he handed their character sheets to us to aid us in planning.
After that we called it a night.
Now we have two weeks (real time) to prepare our group for a big fight against a horde of hags, hill giants, and possibly grey renders.
And thankfully this session was a bit different and more on the intriguing side.
First off, everyone was at this session, and we stopped the game a little early thanks to a good stopping point at about the right time.
Dale will not be around next week thanks to some lame fantasy football NFL draft. But since I’ve cancelled at least one game in the past few years to go play poker, I guess I can’t really complain, even though fantasy football blows and poker rules.
Aaron could have run a one-shot game, but he opted not to because he believes, correctly, that most one-shots can not really be done in one session unless a good chunk of the game is removed in some way. So unless we have two weeks in a row where Dale can’t run, Aaron will not run anytime time soon.
While waiting for everyone to show up, we had our usual “guys who talk about political issues” half-hour.
We discussed things like, the Burger King commercials.
Dale loves them.
Aaron thinks they’re creepy.
I have my own political point of view.
Sean: “Put me in charge. I’ll fix all of the world’s problems and then replace them with a whole batch of new ones.”
When the last of us showed, we got down to business.
Dale, in the interest of speeding up the game, let us breeze past a few inconsequential things that probably would have just taken up time.
Things like, finding the dragon hoard. Aaron realized that although the momma dragon made her save versus Speak with Dead, the juvenile Growlgretch we had not tried the spell on. So a natural 1 later, and we found the dragon hoard (it involved going into an underwater cave).
And before you knew it we were 15,000gp richer (items and money).
Then we returned to town and found a big Mardi gras type of festival going on. It was called Swampfest and everyone seemed to be having a good time.
That seemed odd to us since they were 2 weeks away from having to sacrifice one of their own.
But as we left our boat, we had some problems of our own. The two prominently displayed dragon heads seemed to act like a beacon for pick-pockets rather than as a badge of respect. A few not-so-idle threats and some weapons in hand made us a safe pathway through to our home.
After we stored our newfound gains, we decided to join in the good times of the festival while trying to gain information.
The first and worst thing we found out; no one in town knew a thing about the impending sacrifice.
As we rewound all of the happenings we’ve seen and interacted with in this town, we realized (in a Sixth Sense kind of way) that we had never bothered to ask anyone of the main populace about the whole thing.
So we had to add this new information to what we already knew. The only thing that changed for Kal was that he didn’t blame the whole populace of the town; but he was still very sure that the town leaders were in on it.
But on a role-playing level, Kal taught a local yokel how to properly cook crawfish. Now he’ll earn nearly 1000gp a month from his Bubba-Vesh craw-fishing company. This assumes that Kal lives to see that money.
But hey, he’s got that going for him.
Beyond that, we pretty much missed a lot of information in the town that now we need to get catch up on.
Culan & Mark visited your stereotype gypsy fortune-teller.
We figured that if she was legitimate, her head would explode.
But she gave them some standard hullabaloo that really didn’t tell us anything, it just gave the game some atmosphere.
Otherwise, we all used our own ways to find out as much information as we could.
What we found:
The town mayor’s name is Herkey.
His closest confidant’s name is Javier.
A young girl named Glenda went missing a few days ago, just at the start of the celebration.
It was obvious to us that this celebration was created simply to mask the actions of the hags while they grab the unlucky girl.
Kal, still firmly believing that the town leaders were involved, felt that a coup would fix the problem. But that wouldn’t get the current girl out of it alive, and the town would be thrown into upheaval, and the hags would then just grab the girls even more quietly – if we’re lucky.
Information gathered, we returned home and began planning.
First off, Kineo went to the town hall and tried to speak directly with the mayor. But his days and nights were all booked up until after Swampfest was over.
So Kineo asked to speak with Javier. But this just caused the clerk to turn to become agitated and he asked Kineo where he had heard that name
End result; Kineo left of his free will before anything bad might happen.
So Culan and Mark entered the town hall, but this time with Culan having cast Detect Thoughts & zone of Truth and Mark constantly using his Detect Evil ability.
They told the clerk that they were there to report the disappearance of a girl named Glenda. The clerk responded that they were already aware of the girl’s disappearance. The spells confirmed the statement.
Having not gotten the response they were hoping for, they asked to see the mayor directly. That was denied.
So they asked about Javier, which set off alarms in the clerk’s head.
He was thinking that there were an awful lot of people asking about Javier today, and the mayor wants any further inquiries about this kind of thing to be taken into custody for “questioning”.
End result: The clerk calls for the guards while the thoughts of torture run through his head. So Mark and Culan leave. But not before scanning the area of the mayor’s office and getting a definite point of evil.
The party informed Kal of this all, and then they all went to talk to Ian de Magi to discuss the information and form a plan.
The plan was simple; we would knock out the wall nearest the mayor’s office, immobilize the mayor, grab the mayor, flee to Ian’s tower, and then we would interrogate the mayor.
(Note to self: I need to annunciate my words better when I say that my summoned critters are going to poison him and suck his Dex out of him.)
We might have over planned this whole raid, but that’s ok.
To immobilize the mayor we had several options, all of with we prepared to use. There was dexterity poison from summoned creatures mixed with the Contagion spell, the Hold Person spell, spells that cause fatigue and subdual damage, and simple grappling.
So plan in hand we moved to the town hall/keep in full battle ready regalia. But since we did it at the prime hour for the evening celebrations of Swampfest, we didn’t look all that interesting.
Kineo followed about 50’ behind us while invisible.
Culan, when we were close enough cast Clairvoyance into the mayor’s office had no interesting surprises. (He was alone and doing paperwork.)
And on our cue, the entertainment began with a nice bright diversion.
Ian made a gold and silver dragon while Lindepohl thought he had to compete with this. So Lindepohl made a dark purple dragon to fight Ian’s.
Yes, Lindepohl had been suckered into helping us by providing even more cover.
This all happened simultaneously with Kal’s summoning of earth elementals.
Culan saw, through his Clairvoyance spell, that the mayor was getting up to get away.
So we went on initiative.
The moment the elementals had the wall knocked down, spells flew like wildfire.
Jaxil cast Silence on the door, preventing the mayor from yelling for help.
The mayor was able to get to the door and get on the other side of it, and closed it.
Mark ran towards the front of the building to make sure no one could escape out that way.
Kal’s elementals charged through the wooden walls, all but surrounding the poor mayor.
Kal then began summoning some fiendish huge monstrous centipedes (they deal 1d6 dexterity poison).
Culan cast a successful Hold Person at the mayor.
By the end of it all, we had successfully captured us a mayor with a -30 dexterity score.
We showed the true meaning of Shock and Awe.
Brian: “We went from subdual to sadism.”
In fact, since the mayor was just a low level expert, any real damage would have killed him. Luckily we intentionally pulled our punches.
We quickly ransacked the office for information and searched the mayor for anything of interest. On him was a nice magical cloak, and a ring with a disembodied eye on it that disappeared after we noticed it.
That ring is dust and shrapnel now and Mark now has a nice magical cloak.
After ransacking, Kineo turned everyone invisible, and then we ran off.
Kineo stayed a little while to search more, but found little more of information.
Information we found:
The maiden is taken a week in advance, selected by the council, and is then taken to a safe house.
Swampfest was a simple idea by the hags to create a Mardi gras type of festival that masked the kidnapping.
When we get the mayor to start talking (using the ravage called Golden Ice that Ian supplied), the information he gives us repeats what we know already.
The process for picking the girl is by council choice, Javier then picks 10-12 of his men, 1 of which is chosen by hidden lot to grab the girl and take her away to a safe house, where the hags grab her.
Ian then summoned a celestial creature which took the mayor away to a new place in the heavens for him to be reformed.
Our next step is to search the deep swamp for the hags, and according to Dale, the fight of our lives.
Since we may break our tile to summon the aid of the Brothers Grimm, we decided to warn them. And since Dale wants us to control then during the fight, he handed their character sheets to us to aid us in planning.
After that we called it a night.
Now we have two weeks (real time) to prepare our group for a big fight against a horde of hags, hill giants, and possibly grey renders.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 3:40 PM
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