Sean's Campaign - Session #9

Sorry for the long delay. I had a busy weekend, and I paid a lot of attention to the election this past week. Without breaking my “no politics on the blog” rule, I felt that an on time blog entry was trumped by the election process. Hopefully it won’t happen again for say, two years.

Ok, this session was quite a bit better than last one.

Allen liked session #8. He’s a hack-and-slash kind of guy, so it was right up his alley.
(And no, I never docked him any XP for bringing an Eberron book into my house. Though he wasn’t sure if I was kidding or not.)

The main reason last session wasn’t so good in my opinion is that I had a lot of things planned all of which involved Ari, Artemis, or Zelast; and the player of each of those PCs was going to miss. So I had to make a non-consequential side-quest to work into the storyline.

I’m one of those DMs who prefers that everything to have a reason for being in a game world. Why would a wizard place a hedge maze there? Does he like mazes? Does he just have an odd sense of humor? The reason must be something more than “A maze would be cool here”. And I prefer it that way even if the players never find out the exact reason.

That makes it a bit hard for me to work in something new when I already have solid plans. So I just threw together a half-assed storyline about an elf boy noble who ran off when the kythons came. The story line works just fine, but I did a very poor job of executing it.

My strengths as a DM are interesting storylines, preparedness, and math. But among my biggest weaknesses is thinking on my feet. The reason I am prepared is because I need to be prepared. I need to be ready for when the players do something unexpected. Figuring out what to do usually isn’t that hard, but executing it without looking like a bumbling idiot can be a small challenge. Being prepared is the solution to having to think on your feet.

So you mix the irritation of three players whose PCs are crucial to the story at that point with the DM’s preparedness cut short by a busy week at work (mindless work aids the imagination) and you have a recipe for bad night for the DM.

(Another weakness is being too mean to players. But who gives a rat’s ass about that?)

This session suffered from no such problems. Yes Brian was still out, Justin cancelled on us to work, and Allen had to leave early, but it was all ok. We finally knew enough about Brian’s duskblade to be able to run him sufficiently, Justin’s rogue/scout is easy enough to run, and we understand how to run Allen’s monk the way Allen wants him to be run (run being the operative word there).

We stopped the previous session with most of the party returning the body of the young elf noble to his mentor .

The old elf told the party how they came to be in Krendalar.

The elven nation of Maratheelia survived the attacks that hit on the first night, but only barely. The royal house had fallen and several of the remaining noble houses each reached for power instead of choosing the wisest of kings. The noble houses had become as corrupt as the human feudal lords.

The noble houses reached an agreement to form a council until a new elven king could be named. This new council was able to provide protection, but at a high cost to the non-noble elves. The truly corrupt nobles began abusing their powers. Chief among these was House , a house that Zelast, Ysilia, and Artemis had issues with before in the shape of an elf name Jothillian.

Most of the elves remain in Maratheelia, hoping that time, hard work, and good-will can return what once was. But many elves saw this as nothing more than empty hopes and that the heart of Maratheelia had died.

So a little over a month ago over one hundred elves fled from Maratheelia. Most of them were not skilled in combat or magic, but a few combat-worthy types were around…for a while. The hungry creatures roaming the lands descended on the large and mostly untrained group of elves.

By the time they had reached kingdom of Ponalim, there was no one left to protect them, and only one person remaining from house .

Ponalim opened up their doors with open arms, and its king gladly offered the skilled elves a place in his city, all he wanted was a guarantee that his expenses would be worth it. He believed that 100 years of service from the long-lived elves would be fair enough. The elves did not agree. They saw it for what it was; slavery.

The elves declined, and the king of Ponalim let them leave, fairly sure that they would die or be back soon begging for his help.

Once again, the elves headed back out into the wild, still without anyone strong to protect them beyond the boy-noble. This time they followed the road to the trading city of Krendalar.

Reaching Krendalar was their biggest mistake yet. With no one to protect them the elves were easily captured by the kythons and were put to use in the kythons’ “machine”.

Now only 40 elves remain, and they begged the party to escort them to Endrin.

Ysilia & Zelast remained distantly quiet, but would help.

Artemis is sad that his old school could not protect Maratheelia any better, and is now under the control of the nobles. He offered his aid.

The way the king of Ponalim had treated the elves was one of the reasons Sorra had left Ponalim. She would help.

Ari and Trebor, although uninvolved, would help.

Lindo didn’t care, not exactly sticking to his lawful-good alignment too well. (Allen wanted to just go kill something and take its treasure.)

So after a week of regaining their strength, the elves and the party were ready to begin the month long journey to Endrin.

The travel setup was with the party mostly in the front, the elf group in the center, and Sorra with her horse in the rear.

And of course, they were attacked – multiple times.

The first was a couple of ambush drakes (Monster Manual III). No one was lost. The elves ran from combat the first moment they could, a recurring theme for the night.

The second attack was a trio of boneclaws (also Monster Manual III). Instead of attacking the flanks of the group like the ambush drakes did, the boneclaws appeared before the party at a distance of 200’. Since the party did not yet know what these things were, the boneclaws had a nasty advantage. Alone, the charismatic Artemis walked forward to speak with them, not knowing that they were simple killing machines. Artemis almost dropped from the surprise round, but did drop from the attacks of opportunity from running away. It was a long and difficult fight but the party won, and at the cost of Zelast’s life plus a bit of fun trying to get Artemis healed up while avoiding the 20’ reach of the boneclaws.

It’s good to see the party use teamwork. Too bad someone in the party has to die for it to happen. Next time the group might not run up to the creatures like in a bad kung-fu movie. All ninjas must move in at once to attack Bruce Lee, not one at a time like usual.

The next couple of fights were much less of an issue for the party.

One fight had some ravager trolls (from Kalamar’s Dangerous Denizens), but the party uses so much fire and acid damage that their regeneration of 8 was barely even put to use.

The other fight featured a black and red, huge ankheg. The fight itself was really one sided in the party’s favor, but what made this fight interesting was the party’s reaction to another huge ankheg and the alignment warning I had to toss at Allen.

The last time the party met huge ankhegs, they lost 2 PCs and two horses. So they fully expected something similar to happen once the ankheg grabbed someone. But this ankheg was in fact a fiendish variety of ankheg, and like a cat he wanted to play with his food. Once the party realized this, Mr. Fiendish Ankheg was turned into Mr. Squished Cockroach.

Then there was the warning on Allen for not living up to the required good alignment. I gave him a reminder that this is a good-aligned campaign, and all PCs should fit in with that. Of course he thought I was being a little harsh. This group will break him of his munchkinism yet! Or would that be Munchkinitis?

Next on the combat menu, a fight with a group of what Brian would call the Anti-PCs.

Once again they were mercenaries out to get the 250,000gp bounty put on Ari for her safe return to her father.

The DM put some thought into making a challenging but not overpowering combat. There were 8 total attackers of varied classes and options, all level 5 or 6, and hiding behind an illusion created by one of their wizards. To balance it out, the PCs were given a warning in the shape of a burning arrow shot into the sky, so no side had total surprise.

Additionally, since Ari had to be taken alive, she inadvertently protected the group of elves long enough to get away as the opponent casters had limited locations where they could place their Fireball spells.

The highlights of the combat:
Ysilia could not heal others because a dwarven cleric of war and death kept on her. He’d smack her with his spells and weapon, and then she’d respond by healing herself by about the same amount.

Ari was able to easily get out of melee combat and cast spells from safety. At the time she had no idea why.

Artemis had a rough time the entire fight. He was the unfortunate target of a Baleful Transposition spell which caused him to switch places with the dwarf cleric (which then beat on Ysilia). Artemis was now flanked by a halfling rogue and a half-elf ranger. Before they ripped him a new one, he was able to follow Ari’s Fireball at the opposing casters with a Hail of Stone. He eventually had to save himself with an Invisibility spell.

Lindo did even worse than Artemis. He failed his saves versus just about every damage spell thrown at him. Then the opposing monk jumped in an out of combat (Spring Attack) to smack him a time or two. Because Ysilia was busy with the dwarf cleric, she couldn’t get to him to heal him. So when he was down to 5 hit points, he ran out of combat and began taking shots with his large crossbow. But when Artemis turned himself invisible, the ranger picked a new target and got a lucky shot on Lindo, putting him exactly at -10.

(Aaron then complained that the shot was illogical. I disagreed but couldn’t fully disclose why at the time. This was a kidnapping, Lindo was more or less protecting Ari and he was still taking actions in combat, and the only other viable target was Sorra whose armor class was required a roll of 18 or better to hit. And top of all that, it’s not like the players never go after any opponent on the battlefield, even if the target is not all that dangerous at the time. At some point he might become dangerous.)

Sorra spent most of the combat trying to distract the NPC group so that the PCs could take them out. First she mopped up the opposing casters once Ari and Artemis softened them up. Then she used her knight abilities to force the halfling rogue and the NPC leader to focus on her, which then allowed Artemis to get out of combat and resume his nuking.

Artemis then focused his spells on the dwarf cleric, giving Ysilia a chance to heal Artemis.

In the meantime Sorra charged down the archer-ranger and put an end to him.

At that point the dwarf cleric and the monk ran off. But both were picked off by the spellcasters.

The leader of the NPCs, a fighter named Dexter, surrendered to the knight.

They questioned Dexter, finding out that he was simply trying to get the 250,000gp reward on Ari’s head, and then took him to Endrin to be jailed.

Endrin at this time was less than a week away.

The city had expanded its control twice as far as they had 9 weeks ago, when the party last left Endrin, so there are little to no random encounters. This is due to the vigilance of the guards and the aid of groups like Caspar’s Brightblades (this group).

The city had changed a slight bit in the 9 weeks as well. There was now an arena near the castle for entertainment, mostly in the shape of non-lethal combat.

Terrason, the royal wizard who had previously talked with the party informed them that he and others were going to be like the party, adventurers that is. There is a place not far to the south that may hold some information about the prophecy of the coming darkness.

Artemis talked with a representative of the Talonar arms trading company, and filled them in on the status of the elven nation. Although disappointed, the representative gave his sympathy and informed Artemis that if the situation changed, the Talonar would be happy to offer aid.

The elf refugees were not talked about much. The party was given their reward for 40 elves returned and the elf-boy is reported to have been raised. But not much more information has been told.

And of course they spent a little time at the Roaring Bull Inn.

It was late, so any other role-playing had to be cut short.

The party has a lot of loot to sell and then can be used to buy (as part of their deal) or create some magic items on their own. They also had been given a small list of scrolls they can buy (mostly non-combat spells).

This means that the party will be spending a lot of time in Endrin.

And the campaign is at a kind of crossroads.
The party has several options from here.

Do they return up north to deal with the issues of the elves and make a side trip to inform Caspar’s mother of his fate?

Do they travel west to the kingdom of Siglund and try to remove the bounty that Ari’s father has placed on her?

Do they travel east across the bridge to the unknown region that they lost both Caspar and Ian before?

Well no need to wait. This DM needed to know that as well so he could plan everything.
By a vote of 4, to 2, to 0, the party is heading to Maratheelia to save the elves.

And who know what other side-treks might pop up?