[PF] GM Campaign Journal: Eisinar Mercenaries

[Sillycomic]

So, here I am again writing a journal for myself in the new campaign. I'm doing this for the same reasons as I was before. I want a journal to keep track of things, and to have any sort of advice or criticism come my away about the game or what I am doing.

So, let us start from the beginning.

The Concept:
A few months ago a previous campaign ended. You can read it here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=189659

It was an evil campaign that was a lot of fun. However, one TPK resulted in the group wanting to go a different direction. They weren't so much interested in being evil anymore. They liked the campaign and the setting, they simply wanted something more neutral.

So, after a good long discussion about what they wanted in a new campaign, they finally agreed on a mercenary campaign centered around a civil war taking place. They didn't care much about the war itself, they were more interested in profiteering because of the war.

They also wanted the plot to feature pirates and have a lot of adventures centered around naval travel. I thought that could be fun. As a GM, I haven't ever done anything like that before, so it would stretch me as a GM as much as them as players.

So, I went home and began creating a campaign world to fit this new direction.

Here is what I came up with.

Background:
Around 200 years ago there was a great man by the name of Gollaron who took up an army and united the country of Eisinar under one banner. There are many legends of Gollaron and his noble deeds, fighting dragons and ancient monsters, bringing peace and prosperity to the people.

Gollaron was a wartime king though who went on many adventures. And as fellow adventurers you know that this usually leads to fraternizing with the locals. So, when Gollaron passed away there were a dozen or so heirs who felt they should be next in line to lead the country.

Most of Gollaron’s knights and armies recognized Cavina, his first daughter through his second wife, as next in line for the throne. She took the crown and her lineage held reign over this country for the next 200 years. The others heirs were not happy with this, but they remained loyal.

That is until about 20 years ago. The last of Cavina’s line (King Farradin, Queen Amille, prince Xan and princess Marista) were brutally murdered in their sleep by a group of mercenary assassins. This led to utter chaos in the country with no direct lineage to hold onto the throne.

No one has taken credit for this assassination and the investigation is still open as to who is responsible.

Two figures emerged to try and take over. The first is a half elf by the name of Corillaer. He lives in the northern part of the country. Claiming to be a direct descendant with papers to prove it, he has lots of backing for this claim from many royal houses of humans and elves as well as a vast amount of resources through deep mines with the dwarves and great forests.

In the south there is a steward half-orc known as Torre. He too claims to be a direct descendant. Torre has decreed that any creature who fights in his name and shows honor under his banner will be an equal citizen in his lands. This has caused a lot of the savage races to team up with Torre including: goblinoids, giants, gnolls and the like.

This has turned into the biggest and bloodiest battle that Eisinar has ever seen in its creation. In the past 20 years there have been numerous casualties on both sides resulting in little more than a stalemate between the two.

There are two fronts which the war holds. The first is the Hasasha Sea, riddled with islands large and small. It divides the hearts of the two empires vying for supremacy in this land. This has forced both countries to take to naval challenges, hoping that if they are able to conquer the sea battle it will help greatly in moving their forces to the enemy’s strongholds.

The second front is the great neutral territory, named because neither country can claim it for itself. It is separated by 2 vast mountain ranges on either side, a literal line drawn in the sand to keep these countries from sweeping down into the neutral territory. Armies, battalions and the like come to this area when they can, taking over some of the numerous City-States that occupy this land (there is no unified country or government) only to be taken out by armies from the other side.

So, this neutral area is in constant flux and uncertainty. Most people see this as a dark time, but some look at this chaos and see opportunity. For a person with the right skills and loose moral background the war could be very profitable indeed.

In the east there is a country known as Hadell. It is a quiet country that is mostly isolated due to the mountains and other terrain. Hadell wants no part in this war, and is perfectly willing to sit out and wait until a victor is declared. It is a peaceful country filled with mostly elves and Halflings.

The group decided to be part of a mercenary group known as the Unwavering Talons.

The Talons were formed a while back as a profit mercenary group. Ex fighters, paladins and the like decided to form this group around 60 years ago. They advertised themselves as problem solvers with various skill to get almost any job done. They have been fairly profitable through the years and recruited nearly a hundred members to this day.

I also came up with the same ground rules as last time:
1. Kid and wife appropriate. While the game itself is played with a bunch of 20 and 30 something males, we play it in a player’s house with his wife and kids in ear shot. So they can usually hear what’s going on in our game (and on occasion the kids will join in when we’re destroying a dragon or something like that) So it is important that no one make an evil character with the concept of rape or child murder or something like that in mind.

2. No Chaotic Stupid characters

3. PVP. We all talked about this and agreed that at some point characters might have to fight and kill each other. People agreed to this so long as their characters had a good reason in the game to do so. No killing the barbarian because he got a shiny sword.

Expectations of the game
This will be a sandbox style game. I’ll throw some plot hooks at them for the game’s sake, but most of the choices in the game will be theirs to make.

Once again I won’t be handing out experience points. You’ll get XP as we go along at a steady rate and level up about when you should level up for a campaign. Since you guys are opportunistic mercenaries, your personal XP will be in lewts and gold. The more ambitious you are the more rewards you will get, just be sure not to bite off more than you can chew. There will be level inappropriate fights in this campaign. It’s your job to keep your character alive, not mine.

Also downtime will be the same as in the other campaign, it is completely up to you. If you wish to take a month off to do personal quests or research or crafting, then that can happen. Since there’s a war going on there will be some time sensitive events, so be wary of that.

So with all of this in mind, I asked them to come up with 5th level characters to be a part of the campaign. This is what they came up with.

Dramatis Personae:

Horril
Horril is a half-orc sorcerer. He grew up very frail and weak due to an illness his mother contracted at birth. She died, but fortunately the baby survived the sickness. Marko, his father, seemed to put the blame of his mother’s death squarely on him.

Horril was far weaker than the other half orcs growing up in the clan and was constantly teased and bullied. He could not fight the other children, but instead found he was great at charismatically getting out of several beatings.

When he was seven his father took him into a large city of Ka’Ro’Ba, and made him live with his mother’s family. In this big city a sorcerer named Tarl witnessed Horril’s creative ways to get out of being picked on by other kids and decided to teach the young lad.

Horril became an apprentice for the sorcerer and quickly grew in power. He was recruited into the Unwavering Talons thanks to Tarl’s contacts.

Corella
Corella, half-orc rogue. She was born to loving parents in a travelling circus, but they perished due to a monster attack and Corella got lost in a large town of Riverhaven. She used her talents to make her own way, learning skills and tricks as she grew up.

She met an elf named Rose Walker who seemed to be better at her than most anything. Rose and Corella had a rivalry that lasted well into adulthood. When the war broke out opportunities dried up in Riverhaven, so Rose and Corella sought out Mercenary work for the Talons.

Rose works for the Talons in another group, currently on a mission in the Southern desert.

Tamerrak
Tamerrak is an elven wizard specializing in elemental magic. His mother died when he was very young from an unknown cause. His father took another wife and had two more children.

As he grew up, arcane magic interested Tamerrack, but most importantly elemental magic. His father tried to encourage a more recognized school, but it did not work. The elves of Riverglen did not accept his school of magic and thus banished him from their lands. His family was devastated because of this banishment.

Banished, Tamerrak traveled in search of his elemental magic and eventually came across a djinni who made him an apprentice. He travelled far and wide with this djinn, even to the elemental plane of air for over a hundred years, learning everything he could about elemental magic.

He returned to the material plane to study more when he fell in love with a riverboat captain named Ashena. Now he hopes to get as much money as he can so that Ashena and him and live in a fortress on the elemental plane of air.

Dimitri
Dimitrios Karalis was born from a noble family in the land of Golgi. He was recruited at a young age into the army ranks and grew in both strength and stature there. He served in 3 wars by the age of twenty. Then an unfortunate orc ambush caused heavy losses of his men. Ashamed he left his family and homelands, wandering with no real purpose or cause.

Eventually he came upon a beautiful sorceress who captained a pirate vessel, he quickly joined her crew and sailed the seas on many random adventures.

Unfortunately he found out too late that this beautiful sorceress was actually a half nymph enchantress and her father was a pirate king! So, with heavy heart he wrote the enchantress a Dear John letter and continued on his wandering adventures.

Dimitri joined the Talons because they offer adventure and money, something he needs right now. Because of his numerous losses Dimitri is a heavy drinker, talks very little and keeps mostly to himself.

So, our first session was last Monday. I need to edit the session down and then I will post it sometime tomorrow for you guys.

I welcome any concerns, criticism or praise for the campaign that you may have.

[Savannah]

Who was who in the last campaign? (I'm assuming it's all the same players.)

[Dragon Elite]

Your last campaign was amazing, I'm hyped for this one!

[Eldest]

Looking forward to as much fun reading this one as last one.
Also, are there less people this time around? It seems that way...

[Sillycomic]

Yeah, thank you very much guys.

Compared to our last campaign:

The Mole/Dexter/Nephew is now playing Horril, the illusionist sorcerer. This is a rare character for him, he usually plays tanks or glass cannons so I'm very happy he is rolling out with this.

The Witch/Rascal is now playing Corella, the half-elf rogue. He said he took most of the design from the Rascal in the last campaign and turned it into Corella. Same sneaking rogue concept.

Faust/Harvester is now playing Dimitri, a human barbarian fighter. He's definitely a damage dealing tank, but does little more. However he did come up with an interesting character concept. I do find it a little sketchy that he wrote into his back story that he's an alcoholic and he spent absolutely no time in my Beer Gardens.

Chemist/Snitch is now playing Tamerrak, the elemental wizard. He's got a very good wizard build, mostly utility and damage spells.

Eldest, you are right. The guy playing the Rat from last campaign had to excuse himself from the game. We had to switch playing to a different night and it just didn't fit with his schedule. We're hoping he can jump in from time to time as a guest star.

Anyway, onto our first session!

Little bit of Backstory

So, we start our adventure in the town of Springbrook. Our adventurers haven’t had many jobs lately and they were told by several reputable sources that Springbrook would be the perfect place to find something. Springbrook is having a Year-End Festival to highlight a great harvest and get ready for the coming winter, which means lots of lords, ladies, businessmen and other contacts will be there.

Springbrook is a large city in the Northern part of the Neutral Territory of Eisinar. It is located right next to Azu’s pass, a famous pass over the Northern mountains that connects the Neutral territory to the Northern part of the country. The pass closes each winter, so this is the last few days one can use this pass to travel.

There is at the moment a General Lamore from Corillaer's army stationed here at Springbrook. He has an army of about 1,000 men. Because of coming winter he will soon need to bring his troops back over the pass, meaning that Springbrook will be free. That is another reason why the townsfolk are celebrating.

Once more splitting up
So, with all of this information rumbling around in the adventurer’s heads, they come upon the town of Springbrook. Tamerrak and Dimitri start off by going to find an inn. Numerous inns are full because of the upcoming festival, but they do bribe their way into a lavish 2 bed suite that only costing them 40 gold for two nights. Since they could find no other rooms, they took it eagerly.

Corella begins to look around for work. She wants to talk with this General Lamore, and easily spots a few of his men at the festival. She goes up to him and begins asking about Lamore and any work they might know about. The grunts however don’t really know much, but they do ask Corella if she wants to sign up for the army.

They get a small bonus for “recruiting” new members, and so they are excited. Corella isn’t really interested in joining an army, so instead leaves them to their festivities.

Horril tries a similar approach. He goes to find the event coordinator of the festival, looking for work. Eventually he finds a very tired and busy half elf who is running around everywhere. Horril says he is looking for a job for him and his mates. The event coordinator says that he needs lots of help at the moment: cleaning up the animal pens, getting barrels of ale to the beer gardens, random guard duty and whatnot.

Horril tries to explain that his friends are looking for something that is a bit more of a challenge, but the event coordinator reassures him that guard duty for a festival is pretty responsible. He hands Horril a paper badge and 5 silver.

Horril leaves, passing the badge off to some random drunk.


Rivalry
Back from acquiring their room, Dimitri finds out the festival has a jousting tournament. He is eager to sign up. Tamerrak follows him. At the event there are a few lords and nobles who are enjoying themselves. I mention to them that there is a rival mercenary talking with a particular Lord.

Droger is a member of a merc group known as the Medusa Locas. He happily comes over to talk with Dimitri and Tamerrak. He explains that he’s here looking for work as well and has just signed up for the jousting tournament as well. He says he has a lead on some treasure map here in town, and with any luck he should be very rich by the end of the month.

I mentioned a treasure map, but neither of the players seemed all that interested. They were more curious about the jousting tournament than a treasure map. Well, ok then.

Corella meanwhile finds an archery contest and signs up for that. She meets a couple of well-to-do archers who look interesting but she doesn’t make much conversation with them. She is mostly silent and keeping her eyes open.

Following leads
Horril heads over to the beer gardens. He heard a rumor that there is a beer contest and General Lamore has entered a beer. Horril signs up to be one of the judges in the contest. He sees a few of Lamore’s men and starts asking about the General. It is pretty plain that the men he is talking to are wasted. They are excited about the general and persuade Horril to come over and try some of his beer.

So, Horril tries very unsuccessfully to leave his new found “friends” as they lead him around the beer gardens sampling all the different beers in the contest.

Dimitri finds out about the archery contest and decides to head over there. Tamerak follows, but along the way she sees a strange half orc dressed in desert clothing. The nearest desert from Springbrook is weeks and weeks journey to the south, so thinking there might be a story here she starts asking questions.

The half orc is named Kera. She is the leader of a small village in the desert lands. Torre’s armies have “recruited” almost all of the men and boys from her village leaving only women, elderly and the children to fend for themselves. Kera wants to move her people deep into the desert to a well known safe haven of theirs, but needs some bodyguards to make sure they get through the desert safely.

Tamerrak asks about payment. Unfortunately Kera’s village doesn’t have a lot of money, but they have some magical items and a detailed desert map that they could offer. Tamerak said he will talk with his friends about said mission.

Dimitri meets up with Corella, and signs up for the archery contest. The contest consists of 3 rounds of archery. Each round they are allowed 3 shots to hit the bullseye, and are awarded points based on how close they get. Corella hit the bullseye the first round. Dimitri didn't.

The pits
Horril is finally able to flee from the drunken guards. He begins searching around once more for this General Lamore character. He happens to find him at the Gladiator pits. Lamore has a bit of an entourage around him though, so Horril is only able to talk to a lowly grunt.

He tries to explain his situation with the grunt, who only shrugs his shoulders. Then one of the General’s lieutenants comes over and asks what is going on. Horril once more explains he’s part of a mercenary guild and wants to find work.

The lieutenant is intrigued and asks if Horril is a warrior. Horril, being a sorcerer specializing in illusions and whatnot says that he works with powerful warriors. So the lieutenant tells him to go away if he is not a powerful warrior. Horril finally says that he is a warrior and a good fighter. The lieutenant smiles and then points to the gladiator pits, “Prove it, sign yourself up for a fight.”

Horril is terrified, but reluctantly agrees. It’s the only way to show the general he has the skills needed to be hired. He goes to the Gladiator pits and signs up to fight an owlbear, one of the lower level monsters on par in the pits. There were others, including a will’o’wisp and a T-Rex, but Horril didn’t think that would be much of a fight.

Gladiator pit fights are pretty simple. You go in with one weapon, one piece of armor and one other item of your choice. At any time you can raise your hand and the fight will stop. If you win you get a bunch of money, in the case of the owlbear, 1000 gold.

The fight goes really well actually. Horril has a bunch of tricks up his sleeve. He uses some invisibility spells and silent image spells to distract the owlbear. He has a cool fire breath spell to cause the owlbear lots of damage, and an obscuring mist from a wand. The poor owlbear is running around trying to tear the sorcerer’s eyes out, but it’s like nailing Jello to the wall. Horril dodges and weaves his way all around the gladiator field.

Unfortunately in the end the owlbear still has about 10 HP left as he does a full attack and Horril is left with no more options. He raises his hand to give up and some wranglers come out to stop the owlbear from tearing him to bits. He lost, but a lot of people were cheering him on and clapping. He may have lost, but he showed very good use of spell selection and tactics to survive the situation. I called it a technical victory.

The lieutenant was impressed enough that he told Horril the General might indeed have some work for them. It would be just some guard duty, but it might lead to other work.

Seeing how much fun that was, Tamerrak and Dimitri head over to the gladiator pits for some fun. They ask nicely if they can tag team the T-Rex. I am ok with it, but unfortunately Dimitri is just a little shy about the whole thing. So instead they each take on a lesser creature. Dimitri fights a minotaur and Tamerrak takes on a troll.

That's a shame, the T-rex had a 10,000 gold bounty on his head. Well, I suppose even my players realize I won't be pulling punches during a fight... even a first session gladiator fight.

Dimitri’s fight is pretty standard. They wail on each other, but Dimitri’s amazing AC is hard to bust through, so he takes down the minotaur in a matter of 4 or 5 rounds.

Tamerrak’s fight is a little tougher. He is able to fly away from the troll and throw a few damaging spells down on him, but it isn’t much of a fight. The random audience is booing Tamerrak. They came here for blood and battle and not some uppity wizard raining down spells from high. So Tamerrak changes his strategy, comes down and uses a couple of touch spells to end the fight.

The crowd enjoys that and cheers for the victory.

A bit of plot
Corella has decided to wander the festival and try all of the little carnival games. She plays ring toss and throws the ball at the dunk tank and in the end has a very large teddy bear to show for her winnings. She also meets a person of great interest.

Her name is Sedana, and she is a warlord in the Neutral territory. Corella has heard of her before, apparently she works both sides for the most profit. She’s mean, but not ruthless. She is simply a businesswoman making a name for herself. She is curious to see that one of the Talons here though.

Corella explains that she is here looking for work. Sedana laughs at that, “So you didn’t hear the rumor.” Corella apparently didn’t, but wants to know. Sedana tells her. Rumor has it that General Lamore and his men aren’t leaving after the Year’s End Festival. They will be staying here in the Neutral territory for the winter.

This is… potentially bad news. During the winter months both the North and South armies pull back from the Neutral territory because the passes through the mountains close down. So the winter months the neutral territories are left alone. If someone did stay behind, like a General with a 1,000 person army, he could easily take over the entire Neutral Territory and potentially win the war.

Corella wants to find out more, but Sedana doesn’t know. She just knows that if this is true she’s here to sell a bunch of her armor and weapons to the General for a very good price. Sedana does mention that the Lady Elias, a noble of Springbrook might know more, but no one has seen her at the festival at all. Apparently she has a servant Momo who has been running around. If they could find him, they might know more.

Corella is interested in that.

Sedana also tells Corella if they are looking for work she lost a couple of cannons in a swamp east of here. She’ll pay them handsomely to have them find and retrieve the cannons for her.

Festivities
Dimitri heads over to his jousting tournament. He is up against Droger, his rival, but he makes short work of Droger. They joust with horses and Dimitri is built for jousting. It only takes a few rounds before Droger yields.

Dimitri and Corella go for their second round of Archery and both do pretty well. It looks like they will be in the finals.

Everyone decides to meet back up and share all that they have learned. They are interested in pretty much all of the missions they have gathered so far. The only thing they don’t like is the desert mission once they realize that including travel time the mission will probably take 2 or 3 months to complete.

They like going to get the cannons, but they are scared of the swamp. I am not sure why, but they feel like anything able to take down a small group transporting the cannons might be able to take them out as well.

The really want to find out what’s going on with General Lamore and feel like talking to the Lady Elias might be something to work towards.

That is all they talk about at the moment. There are more festivities so they once more split up.

One final round of Archery for the day shows that Dimitri and Corella are in the finals with 2 other people: a halfling who sings as she shoots and an elven ranger with an eye patch.

Dimitri also wins his second bout of jousting against a well known Lord Rowin. Rowin applauds the young boy and his fine jousting skills and shows much respect for the fighter.

During this time Tamerrak actually finds another elf wizard. She introduces herself as the head of a Mage School nearby and was impressed by Tamerrak’s skill in the Gladiator pits. She explains that her mage school could use some help like that for some experiments they have been doing lately. Tamerrak is intrigued.

She explains that her advanced students are experimenting with some new types of plane shifting spells which seems to bring about crazy random monsters at times. She describes the monsters but Tamerrak is unable to identify them properly, the best she can get is that she has never heard of them before. So, this plane shifting business must be going somewhere really strange.

She offers them a good price to come and make sure her students aren’t hurt by their own experiments. She also says they could pay in magical items, so Tamerrak is very interested in going.

Their first client
By this time it is late in the day. The group is deciding on what to do for the evening when they get word that apparently someone did sign up to fight the T-Rex at the Gladiator Pits. Excited, the group heads over there to see that.

It was actually a summoner who signed up. It is an epic fight, with the summoner spamming summoned monsters to go up against the T-rex. The T-rex rips most of them to shreds, but eventually succumbs to the Summoner’s monsters. When the large beast finally falls to the ground there is thunderous applause and cheering from the crowd.

It is here that a young figure asks Horril to come follow him. Horril does so. This figure identifies himself as Momo. He watched Horril’s fight earlier today and is interested in hiring him and his friends for a job. Horril agrees. Momo tells him to come later to the Lady Elias’ manor in the city, they can discuss more there.

So, Horril goes back to explain what is going on. Corella likes this because she can now get to the bottom of General Lamore and all of these random rumors going on. The group agrees and heads over to the Lady Elias’ house. They are led in the back way and are brought up to the Lady in her throne room. She is wearing all black and has a veil over her head.

Elias explains that her brother has been kidnapped. He was supposed to come back from a diplomatic mission to the East, but never returned home. She received word that General Lamore had her brother, and was threatening to kill him unless the Lady provided him and his men with enough money and support to survive the winter here in the Neutral Territory.

The Lady Elias loves her brother, but she doesn’t want to betray her people so she needs their help to get her brother back.

it didn't take that long... moar planning!
The group decides they need to go talk. They excuse themselves and Momo brings them into a private study. After a quick search to determine no one is scrying on them, they begin to discuss things.

They definitely don’t like the idea of General Lamore hanging around in the Neutral Territory. If they get the brother back to Lady Elias, Lamore will have no choice but to leave. This is time sensitive so they need to do this right away.

The rest of their discussions is mostly about price. It isn’t an evil campaign, but some of their conversations makes me glad that the poor Lady Elias wasn’t scrying in on them. They were trying to see how much money they could squeeze out of her, essentially how much her brother was worth to her. I imagine General Lamore and his men had a similar conversation.

Unfortunately I know Elias will give them whatever they wish, so when they came back and said an outrageous 6,000 per person for this mission, she just said yes. They were surprised, thinking there would be some negotiating. But, if you were a Lady with vast riches, wouldn’t you pay an outrageous price to get your brother back?

Scouting and sleeping
So, anyway the group decided to rest for the night and start up early in the morning with this whole kidnapping thing.

Corella, instead of resting, disguises herself as one of the grunts and goes to scout Lamore’s camp. North of town there is a well walked path that leads to a large field. It is a large camp with a vast array of tents and bonfires.

It looks like a lot of people are coming back from the festival, most of them drunk. Corella easily sneaks in with this group so she can get a better look around.

She notices it is very easy to get into the camp itself. There are guards who ride horses around the perimeter every once in a while, but they don't do a very good job. She even spots one half drunk.

At the center of camp is a large Pavilion and a makeshift log cabin. This is being guarded very well, nearly a dozen people on the look out. There is a large space between all the other tents and this central area. It looks really hard to sneak up on.

Corella makes a few notes about guards, animals and whatnot before heading back to the others. She says that the pavilion or the log cabin are probably where the brother is being held right now.

This is where we end the first session.

Notes
They haven’t decided on a plan of attack just yet, but they said they will email each other over the next week to find out what to do. I’m not sure myself. It seems like a good challenge for the group. One wrong move and an entire army will be after their butts.

The good news is, I plan on having a bunch of people know that they went to talk with the Lady Elias. So, Droger will be interested, as well as Seldana. I don't know why but I really enjoy the idea of random rumors spreading like wildfire.

Well come on... I’m the GM, I got to have some fun in this whole thing, don’t I?

There is an archery contest and a Jousting contest to deal with next time.

Oh, also the group never went to get their fortunes told. That is kind of sad. I was up late on some random Tarot reading website making up fortunes for them. Oh well. I can save it for next time.

And, there is still a kobold at the festival wanting to show off his amazing trapmaking skills. He will put a demonstration up for anyone interested in trying to defeat his “dungeon.” I’m hoping Corella wants to try that, it should be fun. Plus, it will mean more contacts if they can prove they are capable of dungeon diving.

This is a fun campaign to design. I planned this whole session in about 2 hours, mostly just writing up flavor text for the kinds of beers in the beer gardens or the types of monsters in the Gladiator pits. I’m really kind of excited to see how they are going to infiltrate Lamore’s camp and get out alive.

Also, I’m pretty sure Momo is going to get mad that they asked for so much from the Lady. He will probably give them some sort of stern talking too if they make it back alive.

I guess we'll see next time.

[jguy]

What is everyone's starting level? Also, I am glad to see this campaign up and running. Love your guys style.

[Sillycomic]

Everyone is starting at 5th level. We are playing full Pathfinder. Standard wealth, 2 traits, PHB only races but any pathfinder class was allowed.

Yes, I am enjoying this style as well. I never thought making something so open ended would actually be more fun as a GM. To me, I always wanted to be in control of the situation and plan for everything...

But, it is becoming very clear that the less control I have in the game, the more fun it is.

[Sillycomic]

Another week and another session! How goes it everyone? Hope you are ready for more mercenary fun.

Email Planning
My group did a little emailing about their current situation (grabbing a kidnapped elf from inside a camp of 1,000 or so soldiers) and these are the options they came up with.

1. Sneak in, rescue the prince and sneak out.

2. Sneak in, kill the elf and sneak out.

3. Send a forged document to the camp from the General explaining that the kidnapped prince needs to be moved to a new location, and then set up an attack on that location.

I am just the GM, so I don’t really participate in my group’s discussions about plans. If you’ve read my work you would know that this is usually the most boring time for me as the GM. I simply sit there, answer any relevant questions they may want to know, and listen to them go over and over about some random plan they make up.

So, when someone suggested killing the elf I was dumbfounded. I didn’t understand. I mean, they were getting paid to… essentially keep the prince alive and safe. I’m not sure how they would have expected to deliver a dead brother to the Lady Elias and get paid. Mostly likely they would anger the General and have him after their butts and then Lady Elias would want her brother’s murderers held accountable as well. My group seems to excel at making enemies wherever they go, so I suppose this is only fitting.

Well, in any case that option was thankfully shot down. Everyone liked the third option mostly, so they decided to put that into place. So, after a little more planning the session begins with each member off in a different direction to help with the plan.

Splitting up to gather supplies
First Corella goes out to the outskirts of town to look for a good location to “move” the kidnapped elf, Juriel. She finally sees a nice cottage that is halfway between the town and the General’s camp. There are no other houses around, so she thinks this is perfect.

She sees there are some people inside, so she goes around town asking who lives there. She meets an old woman selling flowers who happily tells her a trapper lives there with his family. For a moment I get a dreaded feeling that she may just go slaughter this family to make way for their plans, but no… she just assumes that the family will be headed off to the festival soon and they should have a relatively nice place to set up their attack.

Horril is off to go get two scrolls of Sculpt Corpse. Apparently some part of this plan involved them killing someone else and making him look like Juriel, which may distract people long enough so that they can escape. I wasn’t exactly sure on the why of this, but I didn’t question. I let Horril go off and find some scrolls. Unfortunately it was very early in the morning and none of the shops were really open yet.

So Horril goes wandering through the festival, asking around for magical items. He is told to go to the Wanderer’s (gypsies) tents set up at the far end the festival. Horril does so and meets a very nice elderly man by the name of Bolson. Bolson is outside of a carriage that boasts magical effects, potions, fortunes told and palm readings.

Horril asks for the scrolls and Bolson is very interested in why someone would want such a thing. Horril makes up a pretty convincing lie right on the spot, which I was impressed with. Bolson asks him to come inside.

Bolson sits down opposite of him on a small table and pulls out a crystal ball, where he begins to talk to the spirits. The spirits tell him that what Horril said is not quite the truth. So, now Bolson is very intrigued. Horril, to his credit, says that he’ll pay more for the scrolls simply because he doesn’t want to answer such questions.

Bolson compromises by saying if he’s allowed to do a reading on Horril, he will give him the scrolls for regular price. Horril agrees. So, I pull out some cards and give him a tarot reading. I don’t pull out real tarot cards, that would have been awesome. But, earlier I did go online and did one of those free tarot readings, so I had notes on it. Bolson described each card that he put down and what it meant.

It was a pretty cool reading, and very apt for what was going on. He said there was some conflict that dealt with nobility. Horril was very talented and proud of his talents, but these would fail him and he would have a great fight. There would be some sort of betrayal before the resolution took place, but Bolson couldn’t see the outcome very well. It was still up in the air with the spirits.

After that Bolson was satisfied and handed over one of the scrolls. He said he would work on the second one and have it for him by the afternoon. Horril was happy with that and left.

I did have tarot readings for all of the other adventurers, but none of them were really interested in that. Ahh well, saved for next time.

Dimitri went horse and carriage shopping. He was given 500 gold and told to get 2 strong horses and a carriage. I’m again not sure why these were essential to the plan, but apparently they were. Ok then. Dimitri buys a couple of horses and then a very nice looking black carriage.

Tamarrek doesn’t really do anything. He wants to forge the letter to send to the camp, but without any writing or formal background in military at all his attempt at a forged letter will be pretty pathetic. He decides someone needs to go out and get General Lamore’s handwriting.

Rumors running around Town
Meanwhile Corella bumps into Seldana on his way back to the Inn. If you don’t remember, Seldana is a warlord arms dealer here because she is about to make a big sale with General Lamore. She’s not on Lamore’s side, but more of an opportunist that cares more about money than anything else. She’s not exactly a friend of theirs, but far from a foe.

Seldana invites Corella out to breakfast saying that she is buying. Corella likes that, so they make their way out to the delicious food carts at the festival.

Seldana is curious about what happened with Lady Elias last night. Corella at first plays dumb, but Seldana reveals the rumors are everywhere. Last night they were seen hanging out with Momo and going to Lady Elias’ manor. Also, it is well known that the group of Talons here at the Festival have been trying DESPERATELY to get a job, even going so far as to ask the Event Coordinator if they could shovel T-Rex dung in the gladiator pits.

Corella doesn’t like this at all. She says she did speak with Lady Elias and went so far as to link that it has something to do with General Lamore and the young Elf Juriel, but didn’t say much else. Corella said that they should wait until tomorrow, she would have much more to tell then. Seldana, eager for gossip, reluctantly agrees. They set up a meeting for another breakfast tomorrow.

So, the group gets back together. No one likes that there are rumors floating around, they think this will come back to bite them in the butt. Of course it will! There’s nothing much they can do about it though, except continue with the plan. Tamarrek says that he needs a sample of the General’s writing before he can make the forgery, so that is their next plan.

Jousting Finals
Dimitri has his Jousting finals, so he heads off. Tamarrek follows. Corella goes off to search for Momo, thinking he might have a copy of the General’s writing. Horril runs around searching for more scrolls.

The Jousting arena is a bustle of people. Many showed up to see this finale. The challenger, a man by the name of Lemonar, is one of the Captains for General Lamore’s army. And, it just so happens that Lamore is here in the audience waiting for the event to begin.

Also in the audience, right next to General Lamore everyone is surprised to see Momo. This brings up some questions, but since they can’t talk to Momo about it they don’t really get any answers.

Lord Rowin, who was bested by Dimitri yesterday in the jousting, is there once more and eager to speak with Dimitri. He explains that the challenger today is very strong and it will be a tough fight. Dimitri doesn’t seem to be bothered with that though.

Rowin asks about Dimitri’s past. Rowin looked into Dimitri a bit and realized that he had a promising military career at one time. Dimitri explains his past, promising career fell short by a surprise ambush, but he found his way into a mercenary group and things seem to be going well now.

It should be noted that Dimitri spent most of the morning “pre-gaming” for his jousting tournament and so he reeked of alcohol. The good Lord decided not to mention it. Instead he asked if he could try and help Dimitri. He understood that Dimitri and his group of merc’s were looking for work around town. Being a lord he knows a great many people and can speak on behalf of them, so they do not need to blindly go ask anyone and everyone they can find for a job.

Dimitri is very appreciative of that and says he must talk with his friends before any decisions are made. Well, at least this way they won’t be asking event coordinators of harvest festivals for jobs anymore. I kind of like the idea of a “handler” for these people. We’ll see what happens with this.

So, let the jousting begin!

After the first round it is clear that Lemonar was built for jousting. He is one of those brave confident types. Lemonar and Dimitri trade blows back and again, and to his credit Dimitri does a lot more damage than I thought he would. Eventually though Dimitri is knocked off his horse and Lemonar is revealed as the winner.

Lemonar is a decent winner and goes to shake Dimitri’s hand at least. He says that Dimitri is a fine fighter, and if he ever wants to join the ranks of an army, there will be an opening for him with General Lamore. Lamore comes down from his seat, congratulating both of them.

Dimitri shakes Lamore’s hand and asks very politely for an autograph. He explains his wife is a big fan of his. Lamore smiles at that and says, “Well, I’m a big fan of yours wife as well.” And of course everyone laughs at that. Lamore takes a small parchment and writes a simple note for Dimitr’s pretend wife and signs it with some X’s and O’s. So, Dimitri got the handwriting!

Then the whole group heads off for festivities and such. Momo goes with them, but not before he mouths a simple, “Help Juriel,” before he goes.

The next plan, Forgery
With this Dimitri and Tamerrak go to forge the letter. With Dimitri’s military background and Tamerrak’s forging skills they think they can come up with a letter they feel happy about. Considering as the GM, I make the forgery role then they will never really know for sure. I very much enjoy this.

Horril finds a couple of places claiming to sell scrolls and other magical effects. He finds one very nice plump halfling who has a few scrolls on hand. He inquires about a Burning Hands scroll and the halfling asks what he would use that for. He explains he has lots of rats and wants to kill them. The halfling doesn’t like that at all, and offers several other potions and scrolls which may help him get rid of the rats in a more humane way. Horril says he wants to watch them suffer. The nice halfling is rather bothered by that statement and asks if he would kindly leave. He does so.

Horril eventually makes his way back to Bolson and the Wanderer’s area. Horril asks if there are more scrolls for sale. Bolson asks him what he wants. Horril says he wants a fireball scroll, but he can’t really cast one of those yet, so he would rather have-

Bolson interrupts him though, saying that he might be able to get a scroll of fireball which Horril could cast. Horril is excited about that. Bolson says it will cost 500 gold. Horril doesn’t have that kind of money, but once he does he will come back for it.

So Bolson and Horril talk back and forth for a bit. Eventually Bolson asks Horril to come join him and his family for dinner. He explains that his group is going to be leaving once the festival is over and would enjoy an escort to their next destination, knowing that Horril and his friends need jobs at the moment it might be a nice way to make some money. Horril says he will take this information back to this friends and try to make the dinner later this evening.
Bolson hands Horril the second Sculpt Corpse scroll and Horril heads back to the others.

Now the letter is forged. It is getting close to noon in the day and the Finals for the Archery contest is about to begin. Corella and Dimitri are in the finals so they begin to make their way over. Just as they make it to the archery field they meet up with yet another friend of theirs, Droger.

Moar rumors
You may recall, Droger is from a rival merc group known as the Medusa Loca. And the local rumor is that his group is looking for a treasure map. He was bested yesterday by Dimitri at the jousting tournament.

Droger goes up to the group to ask them what’s going on. He heard most of the rumors running around town and really wants to find out about Lady Elias and everything. At first the group wants nothing to do with him and give him nonsense answers that mostly involve elephant dung, but eventually Dimitri sees an opportunity and asks to talk with Droger separately.

Everyone is a little shocked at this, including me… but I agree. We head away from the rest of the group and have a conversation.

Dimitri explains the kidnapping and everything. Droger is more than a little surprised by the whole thing. He asks if his guys can get in on this action for a share of the profit. Dimitri agrees, explaining they need a good ambush place for the fight. Droger nods and says he’ll go work on finding one and meet back up later on.

Coming back to the table, Dimitri explains that he is now using Droger and his merc’s to set up a second ambush. Tamarrek doesn’t like that at all, especially after they already wrote the letter using the old cottage as the ambush spot. Tamarrek and Dimitri argue back and forth about revealing information and changing the plan, but since the archery match is about to begin they really can’t finish such a fight.

Sending the letter
Corella unfortunately has to disqualify herself from the match. She instead decides to wander off and set their plan into action. She goes to find General Lamore and his entourage. He is easy to find because the finale for the Beer Gardens challenge is about to be awarded. Lots of the General’s men are here, and most of them pretty drunk. Corella uses her hat of disguise to pretend to be one of the General’s lackies and grabs a half drunk soldier.

She explains that the forged letter needs to be taken to camp with extreme urgency. There is a carriage and horses waiting for him. He must go right away. The young soldier agrees and heads off with the carriage towards the camp.

Corella follows him to make sure everything goes as planned. She hides herself safely away from the road and watches. After a few minutes the carriage rushes from the camp along with a bunch of people following it. And a few minutes after that a group riding horses follow them.

She sneaks down the road to the cottage and sees that the carriage did indeed stop there. The group on horses aren’t here, but there are a dozen or so people setting things up at the cottage. Corella assumes the other group headed towards town to actually contact the General. She heads back to town to get the others.

Tying up loose ends
Back at the archery contest Dimitri once more gets second place. He only lost to an elven sharpshooter and a very lucky roll on my part. He still gets second place money, which is 200 gold. So he’s happy.

They head back to the Golden Cup to wait for Corella to come back. Here Droger approaches Dimitri once more to explain his people found a nice ambush spot and they can be there within ten minutes to assist everyone. Dimitri is very thankful for this. He tells Droger to wait at the bar, once he figures things out with his friends then they’ll plan the attack.

Corella returns and explains that the plan went… mostly well. Their only little problem is that the general is probably being told about everything as they speak. The group decides they have no time to wait and need to attack the cottage now.

Outside the Cottage, Attack
This is the only part of the plan I don’t like. Everything else, in my opinion was pretty brilliant. Getting the General’s handwriting, forging the letter to move the elf, deciding where they want to have the fight, it is all pretty good planning on my group’s part. But, if the whole point was to set up an ambush, why didn’t they have something set up? They could have easily hid around the cottage and popped out when they thought the time was just right, or even hidden inside of the cottage itself.

Meh, either way… I’m just the GM. It’s their plan, and so far it has worked.
So, they head to the cottage. They go around trying to sneak up behind the cottage, throwing buff spells on themselves as they go. While Corella and Tamarrek are fairly stealthy, Dimitri is not. The archer guards hiding up in the trees see him pretty easily as they approach.

Corella uses her disguise to pretend to be one of the Captain’s. She is too far to say anything though, so she just motions a “quiet” sign. The archer doesn’t know what to do, so he instead just runs down and shouts to get the Captain. Oh good. Initiative time!

Corella still tries to convince people she is a captain, but it doesn’t go very well. The archers are raining down arrows from the sky as Tamarrek and Horril begin casting spells. From the front of the cottage come a bunch of fighters and a cleric leading them on. Dimitri rages and enlarges and begins to wail on them.

Corella, seeing her disguise as useless drops it and sneak attacks where she can on the battlefield. Tamarrek casts a fireball in the middle of the fight hurting a lot of bad guys. Horril casts an obscure mist right next to another archer, so he is stuck up in a tree and can’t see anything, effectively putting him out of the fight. Good job, Horril. There is one archer left alive who stubbornly keeps pelting arrows from above.

Between Corella and Dimitri they take down the fighters pretty easily. The cleric is hurt but far from dead. This is when the ground rumbles and a large monsterous cry reveals a half-orc barbarian leading a leashed ogre. Both of them look angry and deadly as they run towards the battle.

Between a well placed lightning bolt from Tamarrek and Dimitri’s awesomeness the ogre falls before he can do much, but the half orc is unfortunately buffed by the cleric and so when he wails on Dimitri everyone feels it. Painful!

Trading blows between Dimitri and the half orc isn’t going so well for either of them until Tamarrek casts a Hold Person. Poor Half orc doesn’t make a will save and stands still as Dimitri coup de graced him. Ahh well.

Corella tries to climb the tree to take down the last archer, but he is waiting for her. They trade some blows until Corella realizes this might not be a wise decision for her. She tries to retreat but an attack of opportunity leaves her dying on the ground. She stabilizes though, so no worries.

The rest of the group concentrates on this last archer and he dies as well. Unfortunately, Dimitri’s rage has ended for the day and those temporary hit points were the only thing keeping him alive. He falls to the ground and begins dying as well.

Ahh, and this is where the group realizes they don’t have any sort of healer at all. Luckily Tamarrek has a couple of potions and is able to bring Dimitri back. Corella takes a potion but it still leaves her at -1 HP though, so she is out of the fight until the group can find more healing.

Pressing on
The group decides to press forward to the cottage. They cautiously go around it. Horril casts a detect thoughts to see that there are four people inside and one of them is indeed the young elf, Juriel. Tamarrek uses a spell to open the front door of the cottage, revealing a single archer, a bard, a witch and the young elf.

Horril used an invisibility spell on himself so while he was right next to the door no one could see him. The archer clearly sees Tamarrek though and fires.

Horril responds with a fire breath spell, dealing damage to the archer and the bard. His attack reveals his presence though and the witch responds with a lightning bolt! The archer runs outside to attack more people while the ones inside close the door.

Dimitri makes short work of the last archer. Tamarrek tries once more to open the door but this time his magic doesn’t work. So, they try for a new strategy. Dimitri climbs to the roof and starts stabbing into it. He makes a decent whole, but inside the bard and witch target him with spells. He gets a ray of enfeeblement on him. At that point he ducks away from the hole.

Ok, time for a new NEW strategy. Burn the house down. Dimitri begins to light the thatched roof on fire.

Tamarrek and Horril exchange spells with the witch inside from the hole in the roof as the cottage begins going up in flames (so many prepositions in that sentence). The door opens and the witch runs out, trying to fly away. Luckily though Horril had cast a charm person on him, and asked him nicely to surrender. He did so.

The group sees that the cabin is now empty, without an elf boy or the bard. They ask where Juriel is and the witch says they are on their way back to the camp. They are running through the woods and should be there in just a few minutes. All of this was for nothing.

So, Dimitri kills the witch.

And… that is where the session ends for the night.

Notes
So, now it’s a race against time! The bard has a headstart, but he is carrying the elf so that’s a distinct disadvantage. Luckily he still has a few more spells. Oh, and the poor archer who was caught up in an obscuring mist will have gotten down to join him. So, it’s a wounded bard and archer running desperately back towards the General’s camp.

This is very exciting. I have never had a chase before in any of my Pathfinder games. I am going to like this a lot. I also enjoy ending it on a cliffhanger. We had to stop because of time reasons, it was very late into the night… but it was a perfect time to end things.

If the bard gets to the camp with Juriel in tow all then the bad guys win! but if the group can track him down in time then they will have had a pretty decent victory. It all comes down to a few short minutes.

Very cool.

I do feel sorry for the poor Trapper family. Their simple cottage in the woods was used for a pretty brutal massacre. They are going to come home to dead bodies and a burned down house.

And the General! He will be pretty pissed off when he finds out. I wonder what he will do. I suppose it all depends on how things turn out, but either way at the moment he will be furious and have his men combing the area.

I am pretty sure this will mark a premature ending for the Festival.
Droger and his men aren’t aware of anything yet. I suppose since the plan already triggered they won’t be needed anymore. But, they were promised some gold from Dimitri, so that might need to be dealt with next time.
So yeah, lots to deal with next time. That is all I have. Questions and comments are welcome and appreciated.

[Zeikstraal]

What about this campaign? I realy enjoiyed it. And it shot back to my mind again, but it hasn't gotten any further?

You guys stopped??:smalleek:

[Sillycomic]

Well, we did have a short hiatus. I got a letter in the mail explaining that my apartment complex was being foreclosed and the company that bought it up offered me an incredible amount of money to leave by the end of the month. So, I had like 3 weeks to pack up my entire life and find a new place.

It all worked out wonderfully though. My new apartment is bigger than my older one, nicer and I’m paying cheaper rent for it. Honestly I was casually looking for a new place to live before this whole thing happened, so it was the kick in my butt that I needed.

The best part is I finally have enough room in my apartment for a gaming area! I have never had that in my entire life, so it is a wonderful experience for me. I will be very happy to finally have people over and be able to play all sorts of games.

I just started back playing with the group again about 2 weeks ago. I can get you guys caught up once more, if people are still interested in reading it.

Dimitri’s player wasn’t able to make it. Since his character was exhausted from fighting I just assumed he hid somewhere safe and waited things out. He was near unconscious at the end of the fight and not really helpful without some healing (of which this group has none... yeah don't get me started on that).

Let’s see. Where did we leave off?

When last we left our adventurers
The group had finally burst open the doors to the cottage only to reveal it empty. There was supposed to be a wounded bard along with an elf prince inside, but they were gone now.

The sound of horses could be heard coming from the road. Apparently the General had caught wind of the conspiracy and was bringing his men full force to the safe cottage. The group ran off into the forest before they could be discovered, leaving behind the expensive carriage and nice horses.

Oh well. Money well spent for such a disguise that they made. Honestly I have never played with a group that went into such detail over the deception of the bad guys. Or maybe I have never played in a game where this was a possibility. I have never been able to give a letter to the Big Bad before, tricking him into meeting my group somewhere. So, apparently we are venturing into new role playing territory! What fun.

They go into the forest thinking that they need to catch up to the bard. I explain to them that the General’s camp is about a mile from here, North into the woods. There is a small creek dwindling its way through the trees but not much else as far as landscape.


Split up and find that Bard
Corella begins her tracking, Tamerrick decides to follow the river for tracks and Horril rushes towards the camp, intending to park himself just outside of the camp and catch anyone before they reach the campsite.

Corella does indeed find some tracks. They begin as two sets heading North, but then split up. This confuses Corella, because she thinks one of the footprints belonged to the Elf Prince. One keeps going North and the other East. She follows the tracks going east.

Horril does see someone emerge from his vantage point, one of the elf rangers that they fought in the woods that didn’t die in battle because of a lucky Obscuring Mist spell. Horril doesn’t see the elf prince with him so he lets the ranger go.

I don't know why he let the ranger go. He said he didn't want to blow his cover. Well, I guess that's true, but still... letting the enemy go? Oh well, I'm just the GM.

Tamerrick finds some footprints just as Corella emerges from the woods following the same set. They both see that the footprints go into the creek, but then get lost due to the water and rocks and everything. Since the creek goes North (in a general meandering way) they head North looking for more tracks.

Meanwhile Horril sneaks towards the road to see what is going on there. Lots of horses. It looks like the entire camp is being deployed. The ranger he just let in the camp is telling his story and because of this people are gathering up arms and equipment. The General is preparing for war.

Horril doesn’t like being so close and goes back to find his allies.

They follow the creek North for a bit, but don’t find any tracks. This seems to be the end. They are close enough to the camp to start hearing what’s going on there. So the group thinks if the bard did make it this far, then all was for nothing and they still lost. Nothing left to do but run away.

The group flees south, following the creek once more. They run away with their tails hidden between their legs, having been bested by myself and a simple but clever bard! Ha ha, I win!


Apparently I didn't win
Oh… but then something unexpected happens.

Corella, with her smart brain and all of that, does a simple search of the creek SOUTH of where she saw footsteps leading up to it. I grumble something about evil plans and then tell her that yes, indeed, she sees footprints heading south.

Curses! I almost got away with it, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids.

So Corella follows the now easy trail with everyone in tow and they eventually reach a small cave next to the creek. It is just big enough for a small bear or perhaps a really large badger. Tamerrick yells inside for the bard that if he comes out right now he won’t be killed. The bard, realizing his trick is up does surrender and exit the cave.

Inside they find an unconscious but alive elf prince. The group ties up the bard and throws him back in the cave as they hear the sound of horses and men coming through the forest. Tamerrick uses the last of his spells for the day, plus some scrolls to cast fly on everyone and they all head South.

They go passed the town, which now looks occupied with the General’s men. They keep going South, as far as they can until the spell duration ends, and they land on a nice hillside.

Mission accomplished right? They got the prince and they escaped the General!

Right?

Not out of the woods yet
Oh wait. I look at them all with a big evil grin that GM’s are known for and say, “So what do you do now?”

The group has no clue. The General’s army knows what is up and they will have the town surrounded, as well as the princess' mansion. Worse news? They still have a deadline. If they don’t hand over the prince by sunset today, the princess will still go through with the deal and General Lamore will have won. The entire excursion would have been for nothing. I find that particularly funny.

So, the group first tries to just head back to town first and think of a plan after. They start walking back but realize all too soon that there are already some of the General’s men patrolling the area. They try hiding and sneaking through random fields, but the closer they get to town the harder that is.

Horril suggests disguises for everyone. Corella’s hat of disguise, Horril’s disguise spells and a decent disguise skill from him means the group almost nearly looks like they aren’t fugitives running from the law. They come up with a decent pretend story and are able to bluff their way into town.

The mansion is crawling with guards though, and Tamerrick picks up that they obviously have mages in their mix, casting detect magic on anyone getting close. They need to come up with yet another plan.

Can I just take some time to mention that as they are making plans up on the spot so am I? I knew what the bard was going to do before hand, but I was making up the whole General and army movement off the top of my head. It is so much fun to do this as a GM. I understand it’s not for everyone, but for me it is a complete blast. I highly suggest you try it.

They won?
So, the new plan is to find a place around the mansion that isn’t being actively patrolled, levitate over the high walls and make a mad dash inside. Once the princess has her brother their part in the deed is done and they can get their reward and go home.

Horril makes a distraction at the main gate while Corella and Tamerrick rush to one of the sides. As Tamerrick levitates up with the elf child one of the patrolmen notices all of the magic and points it out. The group goes crazy and rushes after them. Horril runs away, unable to do anything effective.

Corella tries to run, but is pelted with arrows. She is unconscious but stable.

Tamerrick makes a mad dash inside of the compound, trying to reach the front door. The guards are trying to open the gates in order to get inside, arrows being pelted from the fences. Tamerrick falls in combat just as poor little Juriel rushes into the arms of his big sister.

How dramatic. Adventurers dropping like flies desperate and just as the last of their plans is finished the good guys prevail? This is a sandbox kind of game, so there was no ultimate railroad or plan of action for the end scene, but I couldn't have picked a better climactic finish if I had tried, to be honest.

Hooray!

They did it.

All is well.

Umm. Well, not exactly. You see, the General lost. His kidnapping scheme was completely destroyed by the bumbling of this rag tag group. Horril, unable to effectively fight off such forces ran away and the only two members left just fell in combat.

So, what to do as a GM?

Hmmm. I am thinking… BONFIRE!

Some men just want to watch the PC's burn.
So Tamerrick and Corella awake to find themselves tied up and gagged in a tent with General Lamore. He does not look happy. He begins by torturing them a bit, just for fun and then removes their gags to try and get some answers from them. Being the die hard mercs that they are, they simply laugh at him and spit in his face.

Lamore thought as much. He exits the tent. Outside both Tamerrick and Corella see that there is a lot of firewood being built up around two very large posts in the ground.

So yeah…

That’s the end of that chapter. Time to roll up new characters.

Or is it?

Horril, the bumbling illusionist sorcerer is back at the inn unsure what to do when Momo shows up. Momo says that he thanks the group for their services and has payment waiting for them in a trunk upstairs. Horril explains what happens and tries to get Momo to help, but Momo says that his mistress is leaving this evening and he has to go with her. He is sorry he can’t do more.

So, Horril goes upstairs to find a chest filled with payment. 24,000 gold. Yes, that is the correct number. They negotiated for 6,000 gold a person, so the chest has 24,000 gold. Horril is the only one who has it, the only one with access.

I honestly thought he was just going to take the gold and run. Who wouldn’t? When else in any character’s life (5th level character, mind you) does anyone come across this kind of money? Who would blame you if you didn’t just take it and find a new life for yourself? If that had happened then we would have had to scrap this campaign and play something else… perhaps a parallel world with twin versions of all the characters.

But, no. Do you know what Horril did?

Horril buys an army
Yep. He went out and bought an army.

Droger’s men were still hanging around the bar, hoping to be part of the cottage raid that happened earlier today. He found them and explained what happened. For a price they said they would totally help him. They couldn’t take on the army, but they could get a raiding party in to rescue Horril’s friends easily enough.

They just needed a distraction.

Luckily Droger knew a dwarven fire mage who was more than happy to supply one. So, for 8,000 gold Horril bought himself an army for one day.

Since most of the army stuff was my one NPC army fighting the other NPC army I just hand waved it with some grandiose flavor text. As the afternoon began to turn to evening there was a series of explosions at the North end of the camp. People gathered arms and tried to rally, but fireballs and other enflamed projectiles seemed to come from all sides. The madness, the chaos!

Anyway, amidst this chaotic flavor text Horril went with Droger’s men sneaky rogue style. They find where the PC's are being held and kill the guards in a brutal but quiet way.

Once inside Droger and his men begin searching around for something. Droger comes up with a treasure map... the very one he was looking for earlier if you remember. Happy, Droger and his men leave.

I thought the PC's might want to have a confrontation because of that, but apparently they were too busy trying to save their own butts. They grabbed their stuff and ran out of there.

In the end everyone got what they wanted. There are days when I absolutely love being a GM...


Rest up and do it all over again!
So everyone goes back to the in for rest and relaxation. Whew! What an adventure. We end the session there, with me asking the simple but important question of what they want to do next?

The group decided that they wanted to go to the Mage School and get paid handsomely to help some students with an experimental plane shifting spell! Well, I thought that was an interesting choice, but totally feel up to the task of throwing that at them. So, next time we find out just what Camon and the Wizard’s Tower have been meddling with.

[Eldest]

IT LIVES!!! :biggrin:

[Savannah]

YAY! :biggrin:

[Sillycomic]

Yeah! After a long hiatus we are indeed back. We took a break just after the last session and been away from this game for about 2 months. It was a wonderful place to stop honestly, just at the end of a very hard mission for my merc group.

Because of what happened last time I let Horril level his character. I had to. I have honestly never seen anyone give up so much money in order to save his friends. It was to be commendable. I'm not sure anyone else in the group would have made the same decision.

Sheesh, I don't even think I would have done it. Maybe. Depends on what character I was playing at the time.

New mission
In any case, we arrive back at the end of the festival in Springbrook. Most of the festivites and whatnot are being put away and people are slowly leaving back to their own towns or wandering off down the road.

Horril said a goodbye to Bolson and the Wanderer's he has met. Bolson offers him a lucrative job helping to escort him and his people to Edrigar where another festival will take place.

Horril refuses, saying his group is actually going to be taking another job with some wizards. He bids them goodbye. Oh well, I tried. I suppose I will have the Wanderer's show up somewhere on their adventures.

Dimitri gets a chance to say goodbye to Lord Rowin, a noble who lost to him in a jousting fight earlier. Lord Rowin has taken great interest in Dimitri and his cause. When they speak Lord Rowin explains that while Dimitri and his friends seem to be good at their job of being mercenaries, they are actually pretty bad at getting these jobs.

Everyone agreed that was true. Lord Rowin offered himself as a kind of front person for the group, asking all of his high profile friends what sort of dirty jobs they need done? Dimitri is very happy about that and accepts the deal.

Rowin immediately hands Dimitri a list of leads that he has already found, and some prices. It had a couple of fun ideas, like taking out a Night Hag in a swamp or a group offering large rewards for dinosaurs captured alive. So, now the group has a few choices on where to go next.

The group has already decided on a quest to go to a Wizarding Academy set in the mountains. Camon, the lead wizard has offered them a nice reward plus magical items if they will help him with a mysterious artifact.

So, cue 2 weeks of downtime as the group treks East to the mountains where the wizarding academy awaits them. On this journey they learn a bit of backstory about what has happened.

Debriefing
Camon explains that about 6 months ago a gnome by the name of Salladone came to the school with a rare magical artifact. Salladone had been part of an archeological dig set up by Corillaer. Rumor was Corillaer had found some map or ancient piece of information that might have helped in finding Gorillon's lost castle.

They wandered deep into the North Mountains, but it soon became clear they were either lost or had been given false information. The expedition went nowhere until they found a random cave system far into the side of a cliff base. One of the first things found in the cave was a very old powerful amulet broken in half. Salladone stole it and ran for the safety of the neutral valley, bargaining his way into the Academy in return for the artifact.

Walter, the conjuration specialist in the at the academy, began researching the amulet. After about 3 months he thought he had figured out enough to use the amulet.

The amulet does two things:

1. It acts as a power source. It sucks in magical power and stores it until it is used. This is good because whatever it is doing requires massive amount of magic and no one could ever do it without this storage. This is also bad because if it has no power and you touch it, you lose all of your magical abilities for the day.

2. It seems to simultaneously cast 2 spells at once. There is a plane shift spell going on and then some other type of movement spell (either dimension door or teleportation)

When activated the amulet opens a portal. Walter tried opening it several times but each time random monsters came out and began to attack him and students. The creatures that he describes are like nothing the adventurers had ever heard of before. But, there does seem to be a pattern in the kind of creature. All of the creatures seem to have alien features; extra limbs, lots of eyes, several mouths.

Since creatures kept coming through Walter stopped the experiments. He wanted to wait for some bodyguards/hired help before he started experimenting once more. Now that the group has decided to take this job he is very excited to get the experiments up and running again.

First Contact
So with back story out of the way the group is very curious on what is going on. They start by inspecting the bodies or the monsters that came through the portal. Unfortunately there isn't much left of the bodies. There is only a gray goo where bone and muscle tissue used to be. Not much help there.

They try to get better descriptions of the monsters, but apart from what I told them there isn't much else to go on. Tamerrick tries for knowledge planes checks every chance he gets, but despite his good rolls there's just nothing to tell him. I say at best it is some sort of abyssal type of creature, but nothing more specific can be determined.

Next they want to talk with the gnome Salladone to try and find out more about the amulet. Camon only allows this with his supervision, as the gnome is under protection.

They ask him a few questions about the amulet and where it was found, but he doesn't tell them anything new. He just explains where he found it and that he ran as soon as he could.

Sense motives reveal that he is holding something back, but Camon cuts the interview short before anything else can be asked. The group doesn't like it, but they move on.

After that my players get down to planning out how the attack of the monsters will go. Argh, more planning. But, I suppose this time it's actually needed. I am giving them a challenge with a puzzle that seems to also spit out monsters. It's a role players dream, solving a puzzle through hack'n'slash.

They set up a room with only one exit, so they can control what happens. Walter and the graduate students (which Salladone is one) are set up behind some tower shields, somewhat protected. Everyone else is situated around the portal to attack it when things come out.

Tamerrick makes sure to cast see invisibility on himself. After a few more buff spells, the group gives Walter the ok and he opens the portal. For a few rounds nothing, just a swirling portal of grays and whites that appear to go to some strange dimension.

Soon monsters start pouring out though. I send the monsters in waves every few rounds. Some small Chokers, then some chokers with Gibbering mouthers, then some chokers with a Chuul, then another gibbering mouther. It was just random abyssal monsters, nothing all that exciting.

The group enjoyed just pounding away at these things. After an hour or so I think they realized there was no higher plan here, just dumb monsters coming through from another plane.

Corella finally slips through the portal to see what is on the other side.

I describe a very gray featureless plane of existence. The plane is gray and the sky is nearly the same shade of gray, so it is almost impossible to tell where the horizon is. The portal opening was on a small island surrounded by a lake, and the monsters were emerging from the water to go into the portal.

There really wasn't anything else to describe. Some cliffs far to the north, but that's about it.

Corella jumped back through the portal and had Walter shut the amulet off. The group took some time to heal up and talk about what happened. Corella explained to everyone else what the other plane looked like and then the group got to planning.

Through the Portal!
So after some more planning and two days or rest to recoup hitpoints, they are ready to go again. Their plan is to set up a perimeter just on the other side of the portal and let Walter and his students come through. This way the wizards will have some time to do experiments, take samples and get some idea of just where this portal is opening up. The group plans on keeping this perimeter up until they can no longer hold back the monsters and then file back through the portal.

Simple and effective. Sounds like a good plan, right?

Right?

I don't know, I'm just the GM.

So, they take two days of downtime to heal before they set this new plan into motion. In those two days Corella decides to buy all the alchemist fire she can get a hold of. She crudely tries to bind a few of them together to make "bombs." I tell her they look unstable, but could be useful. Players love having these kinds of things around, and GM's love having unstable explosives on the battlfield, so it's a win win!

No one else buys anything so we fast forward two days later. Walter once more concentrates on the amulet and opens the portal. Once more pre-buffs go up and as soon as the creatures start coming through the open portal the group is hitting them hard with spells and swords.

After a huge fireball from Tamerrick the group heads through the portal to the other side. They emerge just as Corella did last time, on a small island surrounded by yellow water. There are dark shapes swirling in the water and from those shapes comes more of the gray abyssal monsters.

Corella throws her bombs around for somewhat effective damage, Dimitri runs right towards the island's shore and starts whalloping on monsters. Tamerrick flies up and blasts down rays and missiles. This leaves Horril to throw down spells and take small shots from a distance.

Perimeter established. All is going according to plan! Ooh, a plan that might work? This must be a D&D first!

The wizards then come through the portal. One round they are huddled together, watching the devastation of the abyssal monsters. They begin taking samples.

And then... everything goes horribly wrong.
You see, Walter just stepped through the portal. So, the amulet is now on the other side of the portal. Why is this significant? Because the group of invisible demons who have been waiting for this amulet to come through the portal now get to strike.

Salladone the gnome quickly throws aside his illusion and becomes a Quasit demon, grabbing onto Walter and casting Dimension door. They appear over a hundred feet above the ground.

At the same time a succubus demon appears riding a Nightmare a hundred feet over this island, looking right at Walter. The succubus casts dominate person and Walter unfortunately becomes dominated by the demon.

My group is listening to me describe this in absolute horror as I tell them the portal to the material plane snaps shut.

There is another round of fighting. Unfortunately my group can't really do anything about the fighting above their heads simply because there are large dangerous abyssal monsters on the ground that need taking care of. Everyone except Tamerrick keeps fighting the creatures. Tamerrick casts a ray at the Quasit demon for a small amount of damage.

One of the young wizard students runs away screaming for her life.

And then all of a sudden hound archons swoop down from the sky and begin to attack the demons flying overhead. My group watches in utter amazement as there is now some sort of holy war being fought above their heads.

The hound archons grab for Walter while the succubus grabs for the amulet. The chain on the amulet breaks. The Nightmare casts a teleport spell as well as both of the archons holding Walter (who is still under the dominate spell)

The other two archons wail on the quasit demon enough that he falls unconcious back down to the island below. Seeing as there is nothing else to do the hound archons fly south.


There was a plan, right?
My group isn't sure what to do now, but they are still in the middle of combat. So, it's probably for the best that they had something to wail on for the moment. Thanks for an enlarged person spell on Dimitri, he once again goes around thumping everyone else until there is nothing left moving.

He takes a bunch of damage in the mean time, as well as everyone else. Except for Tamerrick. He has levitate on most of the time, so it is hard to hit him.

The good news is no more abyssal creatures appear coming out of the water. They seemed to have been attracted to the portal opening. For the moment things seem to finally calm down.

Mattos, the half orc apprentice is the only NPC still with them.

There is some good news though. The Quasit who fell down is stable but unconscious. My group likes that the idea that they can now torture and try to get some information about what is going on around here.


So, that is where our group ended for the night. Next time they get to figure out what is going on. Then I imagine they will try to use that information to make as much profit as possible. Sigh, adventurers.

Notes
I did let everyone level up (except for Horril, who leveled last time). So now I have a group of level 7 adventurers to deal with. I honestly thought mid level adventuring would be frustrating for me. Usually I like to keep my campaigns fairly low, 3rd or 4th level seem to be my strong point. So, I imagined after a while the whole campaign might just have collapsed when I kept throwing too easy or impossibly difficult encounters at my group.

But, I think I found a good medium by throwing groups of mixed high and low encounter monsters at my group. I am going to keep doing this, and see if it is particularly effective or not. So far it seems to be working great. If I don't wipe the party in the next few sessions I will consider it a moderate success.

I pride myself on making organic plot lines that don't follow any sort of railroad. But I realized as I was making this adventure into the Abyssal plane that I needed to have the demons take the amulet and the archons take Walter during the fight. It is... essential for everything else about to take place here.

So, I was terrified of this session because I thought things could honestly blow up in my face. If the group did soemthing I hadn't thought of to save Walter or get the amulet, then my whole plot would have been for nothing.

Apart from hoping everything didn't blow up though, I didn't do anything to change it. I wanted it to be an organic experience, and if that meant the whole thing collapsed and the group was able to save everything, then so be it.

I refuse to railroad the game.

Luckily I just planned everything well and it went exactly how I saw it in my head. Two rounds, demons showing up and archons fighting a holy war in the air, and then they both disappear with the only two things that the group needs to go home.

I'm not sure if that makes me lucky or good. I'll just assume I am lucky, because the alternative means I have started to figure out this whole GM thing.

[Sillycomic]

So we are back and back again! Hi and welcome to the adventure. After our brief hiatus we finally got into the swing of being mercenaries once more. I don't really have any other news or notes for the moment, so let's dig right into our new session.

Recap
My group has just taken a job following a wizard into an unknown portal being activated by some ancient artifact… and were betrayed and somehow got involved in a civil war between archons and demons on a random plane.

How fun right? My poor players are trapped and at the moment have no idea what’s going on. They just finished defeating a bunch of random abyssal monsters and are now on a small island surrounded by a somewhat acidic lake.

Also there is still one of the young conjuration wizards who came through the portal from the academy. He is a half orc named Mattos. Mattos is scared out of his mind and doesn’t say much, just following the group around and hoping that something big doesn’t eat him.

So, we start with the group tending to wounds the best they can. Corella has some ranks in her heal skill, so she does her best. There is only one healing potion between the lot of them, and they aren’t really sure what to do with it. Corella is hurt and Dimitri is hurt very badly. Tamerrick and Horril got away from things relatively unscathed, but they’re nearly done with spells for the day.

They need to rest up and find some healing.

Yeah, good luck with that! Ha ha.

The good news is, just as everything was dying down they spot an unconscious but stable Quasit demon.

They tie up the demon and when he awakes they have lots of questions for him. The demon explains that the Succubus is his mistress and he was only doing what he was told. His mistress has been trapped on this plane for a long long time. Apparently around 4,000 years ago the succubus had found some “weapon” and was trying to bring it back to her home plane when she was attacked by archons.

The fight was big and deadly and after a while the archons knew they were going to lose, so instead of giving up or retreating the archons sealed this sub-plane, making it impossible for anyone to enter or exit. Since then, the succubus has been trying desperately to find a way to escape. Now that she has the amulet she only needs Walter in order to activate the amulet and get out of here.

Of course the succubus could always try to figure out how the amulet works herself, but that would take time.

The Quasit then explains that if the mercenaries help his mistress, they will be greatly rewarded for their efforts. Vast gold and magic items.

Dimitri seems very interested when it comes to gold and magical items. He asks the quasit more questions about such things while the rest of the group wanders off to discuss details.

My group decides fate on a coin flip
With the plane sealed, the only way to get back home is with the amulet. So, that means either working with the succubus or defeating her and taking it for themselves. So, basically my group boils it down to one of two choices. They either help the archons or they help the demons.

After much deliberation, as well as more random questions being answered from the quasit (what kind of treasure, when will we get it) the group comes to a general consensus…

They’ll flip a coin. Heads they help the archons, tails they help the demons.

Corella feels like they should help the demons only long enough to double cross them, but Tamerrick feels like there’s no way for them to trust the demons at all. Indeed a few sense motives show that they aren’t even sure if the quasit is telling the truth.

So, back to the coin flip.

As the Gm, I thought this was interesting. I imagined there would be this kind of debate when I set the adventure up. The group has a choice of helping the good guys in order to get off the plane or helping the bad guys… but I honestly thought the decision would either be based on how much profit they would get or which one they felt was the RIGHT THING TO DO!!!

I never thought it would be boiled down to random chance.

Well, ok then. I’m just the GM. Flip away!

And it comes up heads. So the group decides to help out the archons! Now they simply need to find the archons. That should be simple, right?

Morning Breakfast
Dimitri kills the quasit demon and the group gets some rest for the night. The gray featureless plane doesn’t have a night time exactly, what they have is a general twilight time. During the “day” the plane looks like a cloudy foggy day. The night time looks like that same day just as the sun is about the go down; clouds get a little darker and visibility becomes a little harder, but that’s about it.

Thanks to Corella’s heal checks everyone gets back some of the damage from the previous battle.

So morning comes. The dark gray clouds turn to a lighter gray. This brings the monsters from the lake. Horril, who is on morning watch sees them first. They appear to come out of the water and wander the shore looking for food. They don’t look like they’re trying to attack the adventurers, just out to find some breakfast.

Of course, a few of the larger creatures which look like walking lobsters do spot the adventurers and start heading over for a delicious meal.

Horril quickly wakes everyone up and they begin to fight. Dimitri gets right in the thick of the lobster things and begins wailing on them. He does decent enough damage but the monsters stay standing. Corella shoots at them from afar. Tamerrick flies up and throws down some simple damage spell and Horril enlarges Dimitri.

The two lobstrosities wail on Dimitri and he winces as I tell him the damage he has taken. He is not down, but certain feels it. Without any healing, he only gained a few hitpoints last night and apparently those just went away.

Nevertheless he uses the next round to rage and continues to pound these things into the ground. Corella charges into the fight and takes down one of the lobstrosities with some decent sneak attack damage.

The next round sees two other lobstrosities come out of the water, aiming right for the fight.

Horril summons a riding dog to try and help, but it gets destroyed after one hit. Poor thing.

Dimitri takes down the other lobstrosity and moves to the second wave to begin the whole process once more. Tamerrick keeps shooting his little damaging spells from up high, but Corella and Horril realize this is pointless and retreat.

Horril searches through his scrolls and wands and finds out that he has a wand of Floating Disk.He wants to use these to get off the island and away from these water monsters.

The lobstrosities aren’t interested in Dimitri though, they walk onto the shore and begin to eat the dead lobstrosities. They take the kills back into the ocean to finish in peace.

The group decides it is time to get off the island fast.

Everyone can get on a disk and ride it over to the lakeshore except for Dimitri, who is just too big and his stuff weighs far too much. So Tamerrick casts a swim spell on him and he jumps into the water to make a swim for it. Apart from feeling a tentacle slip around his ankle he makes it to the far bank easy enough.

Home sweet boulder
With everyone off the island, they quickly run away from the shore. They find a large enough boulder and make a temporary camp, digging into the sand and hiding as best they can. Corella once more uses her heal check to help everyone. It is the closest thing to healing they have, so it is now vital for their own survival.

I honestly didn’t think this would be that big of a problem. The group understandably didn’t have a healer of any sort, but they had plenty of time and opportunity to get healing. In either case, they are now in desperate need to do something.

Tamerrick levitates up and looks around, to see if there are any features on this… featureless plane. I explain to him that he can see the lake fairly well. It’s a pretty big lake. To the south of the lake looks like salt flats. To the North of the lake is a big desert area and eventually cliffs. There are large boulders here and there, but that’s it. Nothing of importance to the East or the West.

The group decides to wait a couple of days in their hole alongside the boulder, and maybe with a little luck they’ll be rested up and able to do something. Their best plan right now is to go South. When the archons left the battle they flew South, so that’s their best lead.

After a day Corella and Tamerrick spot a group of demons flying overhead. The entire group panics and tries to hide in their hole as best as possible. There is a Nabasu demon with a bunch of dretch demons flying over to the island where the “incident” happened.

Luckily the lobstrosities had eaten the quasit demon, so there was little left on the island as far as evidence.

A couple of the dretch demons spotted the tracks on the shore and began wandering over towards the boulder and the group. Corella’s amazing hiding skills and Horril’s invisibility spells were very helpful here. Despite the dretch coming right up to the hole, he doesn’t see anything.

Eventually the demons leave, flying off into the east. Tamerrick makes a note that the dretch demons don’t normally fly, so they must have some sort of spell attached to them.

The rest of the day is uneventful. No more demons or random monsters. After one more day of careful rest with an amazing heal check the group is now healed enough to move out. Mattos casts his mount spell several times and everyone has a magical horse. The group now heads South.

During the day they cross several tracks of monsters. Most of these are strange, extra limbs or some large slithering creature the size of a small house. They encounter no monsters though, only tracks.

I'm so Dizzy, my head is spinnin'
Near the end of the day though, they come up to a large hole in the ground. Out of it pops a human sized insect that flies straight towards them. The group is weary, but Tamerrick recognizes the creature as a D’Ziriak. These are creatures from the plane of shadow that aren’t normally hostile.

So, Tamerrick holds up his hands and says they do not wish to fight.

Dizzy asks them what they are doing here. It is odd to see such strange creatures out here this far. Horril starts to explain that they are being chased by the demons, but Corella shuts him up with that. They make up some excuse about wandering and looking for work.

Dizzy asks if they are interested in trade. When they say yes he gets all excited. Two more D’Ziriaks fly up from out of the hole and bring with them a bunch of stuff. Apparently these guys are always ready for a trade. How cool is that? (and convenient... but hush up about that! It's my game and I can GM however I want)

So, the group gets some water and food, a few wands and potions of healing (thank goodness!) and Corella has a very spiffy new handaxe that looks to be of a very odd and alien design but works very well. They trade out a bunch of gold and Tamerrick even gives up one of his amazing metamagic rods. That is sad, but important to keep the rest of the party alive.

They also get a cool map of the area out of the trade. The map tells them that this place is huge, and also far from featureless. There are actual cities here, as well as a palace which is where all of the demons live. The palace is on the Cliffs. The map also shows that to the East there is a spot marked, “WEAPON.” Dizzy says this is a bad place and protected by lots of monsters and magic, they should never go there.

Yeah… how long do you think that will last?

Apart from all of this Dizzy explains to them a bit about what is going on here. He says that the demons run everything, they have taken over. When the group asks about the archons, Dizzy says that no one has seen them for a few hundred years. Rumor was they had gone into hiding or been killed by the demons long ago. Everyone has been stuck since the the plane was sealed, trying to survive here.

The group asks about getting more magical items, but Dizzy says his people aren’t known much for that. He points to the map and says there is a town called Karlton and a man named Ludes with a shop that deals exclusively with magical items. They can go there for more information.

Dizzy asks them about what they are doing way out here. Dimitri says they just arrived, and of course the D’s laugh at this. Just arriving at a plane that has been sealed for thousands of years. That’s funny.

A new job?
Then the group does something I didn’t expect, they explain to Dizzy that they are mercenaries looking for work. I am taken back a little bit by this as the GM, but I roll with it. If the group doesn’t want to get off this plane and would rather run around doing more mercenary stuff… then so be it.

The D’z explain that some of the lakes have vast gold and other valuables at the bottom. They need someone to clear one of the lakes of all the monster things. The group, having fought monster things before, thinks that might be profitable for them.

So Dizzy points out one of the smaller lakes to the West. The D’s need some time to prepare, but in a week they’ll be at this lake. The group can then take out all the monsters so that the D’Ziriaks can go in and mine the area of all the valuables. With this good news the D’s take all of their good trade good and fly North.

Now my group is left all alone, and they come up with a plan.

Why wait a week? Why not just go to this lake themselves, clear it out and then take all of the valuables before the D’s ever get there?

Yep, this is their brilliant plan. Sometimes I am glad I'm not a player in this group. As fun as they are to GM for, they certainly make some silly decisions. If I were a player I would probably go off on a huge rant about how stupid this is, but as the GM I just smile and roll the dice.

To get to the other side
So, my group sets up a simple camp for the night and gets some rest. They take turns with a watch but the night is uneventful. In the morning Mattos casts some more mounts and they are off.

After a day’s journey the map says that there is a road coming up ahead. The group spots it, as well as a couple of hellcats on the road. One of the hellcats stops in his tracks, spotting the riding adventurers from afar.

Tamaerrick recognizes them as hellcats. He also recognizes that hellcats are lawful creatures that usually follow devils not demons. He doesn’t like this at all, surely something is going on here.

My group sits and waits for a bit here, hoping the hellcats will continue along the road. After ten minutes it’s apparent that they are not. One hellcat just stares at them and the other wanders back and forth along the road.

Instead the group travels south for a bit, hoping to go around them. However just 50 feet or so down they spot another pair of hellcats on the road, watching them and waiting. My group spends some more time watching and waiting but these things all stay where they are. They don’t come any closer, staying on the road, but they don’t wander away either.

Tamerrick once more levitates up to see what’s going on, and finds a bunch of hellcats perched along the roadside here, up and down as far as he can see.They are all spaced about 50 feet apart in groups of 2 or 3.

So, my group has to deal with hellcats if they want to cross the road.

Unfortunately this is the point where we had to end for the evening. So, next time we can figure out just what the hellcats are doing, and an even more curious question… just what in the world are my adventurers doing?

Notes
Seriously, does anyone know? I don’t get why they are thinking this is a good plan at all. My group is basically going to go mining for minerals and whatnot in the middle of a locked demi-plane. I am trying to accommodate them as much as I want. This is a free form game after all. If I present them with a plot and all sorts of plot hooks and they just wander off to go mining, I suppose that’s their business.

At least everyone is having fun right?

I don’t know what to do about the mining though. I spent most of last week preparing what they would do if they went into a town on a locked abyssal plane, or if they went off to search for the lost archons, or if they wanted to go confront the succubus. Sheesh, that shows you what I get for preparing in advance.

Seriously! I spent over an hour just scouring over bestiary books to pick out cool outsider races to put all living together in a town. Mercanes and D'Ziriaks and Axiomites! And my group decides mining for gold is more important? Bleck.

I suppose I need to figure out what’s at the bottom of the lake. As far as I know my group has no way of getting to the bottom of this lake, though. Tamerrick has a spell to give someone a swim speed, but it won’t help the breathing situation at all. I think my group will soon realize this problem.

Aside from that, if the lobstrosities are the things coming out of the lake, what sorts of things are lurking within the lake? I guess I get to go find some more fun monsters in the Bestiary.

We’ll see what happens next time.