RHoD Journal- Probably Help Needed.

[Phaederkiel]

Red Hand of Doom

this is about the Sessions I play /Prepare at the moment. I will try to make a Log about the earlier Sessions, but for now I will make this.

Preparation for Session 20.

The Party is in Bryndol, the Red Hand is about 9 Days away.
A big Gathering of the Town Concil is imminent, and the Party is training some of Ulwerts Expendables.

This Session should be heavy on the RP-Encounters, but I am still lacking some Ideas.

First thing first What I changed about the Campaign / about Bryndol:


Since the Party was Lvl 9 when they started (and is now lvl 13), Bryndols scale got bigger. Bryndol is a Important capital, a economic Focus of the Region. It is a great Starfort built where a river meets the sea.

The Scale of the Attack is bigger, too. The Hobbos are mainly unchanged (exept in CR), but they have allies in an Human Army and in the Lich Keraptis.

There are some Factions more in Bryndol than in the Original book.

King Kerden Jarmath became an Elf, a Rogue Kiri Tikor, but remained otherwise unchanged.

Trevora Goldenbrow is not as beautiful as in the original, but remained otherwise unchanged.

Lady Kaal remained unchanged. I still need some Ideas for this one.

Ismael Lars Ulwerth got a Name added, but remained unchanged.

[B] Borlack Hagezorn [B] is new. He is the Proprietor of a Big Local Casino.
He is a half-Giant in disguise and Lucas Zitouraen uses this Fact to try to get the Party to kill him. The Party loves him, though.

[B] Lucas Zitouraen [B]is new. Seemingly a well-loved Diplomat, but in truth a Traitor in the Pay of the Humans attacking Bryndol. Probably a disciple of mammon. He tries to destabilize the City by manipulating the Party into killing other "traitors".

[B] Bertram "the sour" Klein [B]is new. An upshot newlyrich. Noone likes him, not even the Nobles that gather behind him and his cries for surrendering the City. Little do they know that he plans to get all the nobles behind him and then change course completely. He will try to save Hagezorn from the Party, although he'd rather like them to "thwart" his plans in council




The Party:

Fahwool, the charging Centaur Priest.
Centaur 4 / Cleric 5 / sovereign Speaker 4. The groups main Spellcaster, even if his most powerful tactic stays spirited charge.
Has Wave, the Powerful Trident (usable as a lance) from White plume mountain.

Jhoira, the indestructible Knight.
Knight 5 / fighter 2 / Crusader 4 /warblade 1. Mineral Warrior Template.
Karmic Strike / Robilars Gambit / Shock Trooper. Damage-wise nearly as bad as the centaur. The groups Tank.

Reif, the Factotum
Changeling Rogue 3 / Factotum 9/ Swordsage 1.
Likes to drop 15d6 Sneak attacks on unsuspecting enemies, or 27+1d20 Insightful strikes on suspecting ones. Thanks to the ToB maneuvers, his saves are Incredible. The groups Face.
Has Blackrazor, the owner-eating dagger from White plume mountain.





Plot for today:

Some Sessions ago, the Party defeated the fighting-pit Champions of Hagezorn's Casino. Since they did bet all their Money on themselves, they made big cash in return. They order some pretty pricey Stuff (mainly a Prismatic Burst for the Knights keen Falchion )and now wait while it gets added to their equipment. Zitouraen sees a chance and Bribes someone involved in making the Sword into botching the Job. When the Sword first confirms a critical, the Burst will not hit the Enemy, but Jhoira herself.

The Party has little chance to know that, though a spellcraft check of 40 would reveal it. Blackrazor will laugh manically when he sees the falchion, but i assume that the players will think it does that because of the Falchion's rainbow-colored blade.

(zitouraen figures that a prismatic burst will either kill one of those pesky hereos, or will set them against Hagezorn, which faciliated the enhancing of the sword)

What I need now is a reason for her to use the Sword.


There are the following Known enemies in the city:

Skather, the Blackspawn assasin. needed for the Battle soon to come

Jugat, a very dangerous single opponent. Master of nine who trained all the Initiators the party met in the campaign. He has bought some adamantine Swords to counter Jhoiras dmg reduction, and bold as brass, did so in Bryndol. The party is commanded to find out who bought these. I need a good Idea as an conclusion for this Sidequest. It would be best, if the coffin shop would come to a conclusion as an afterthought.

Miha Serani, the arachnea sorceress. Her, I think, will I use to stir up trouble. She will walk around the poor people (far away from the true seeing guards of the rich) and spread disseases. This binds the clerics which cannot produce as much magical food as the city needs at the moment.
does this sound like a good plan? She will need some magical protection. Thus, I ask you: what are the worst / most probable spells the Party will use to find her? and how does she protect herself against them? And, given that they find her, how does she fight? she Knows pretty well she is far outmatched. (perhaps some of those summoning figurines...)


Perhaps any of you kind gentlemen has some Ideas for me. I will post in some days how the session went...

[Phaederkiel]

Red Hand of Doom

Session 20.
In which we see the birth of a new group of heroes and our old group of heroes does do battle a against an old admirer.


The Session started with everybody leveling up from 12 to 13.

Reif chose to go with Factotum 9, Fahwool with another Sovereign Speaker, Jhoira was not sure if she should stay with crusader or go Warblade 1.

While still pondering this conundrum, they went to Borlack and gave him their Items to get them enchanted (nice and naive as they are :belkar:) and, in the period without their items (they gave away an already highly enchanted amulet for another 2 to wisdom and 2 to nat armor; and Jhoiras trusty falchion),

they went to Ismael Lars Ulwerth to help him train his unloved five.

I gave them a Statblock and a race for each of the five, and each was fighter 3, close to lvl 4. Their Mission was to train them, choose their Feat and their last level.

They ended up with 2 reach trippers (one hellebarde, one guisarme) with straight fighter 4 (imp trip, knockdown, combat reflexes ...);

one bowman with one lvl marshal for inspire dexterity and knowledge devotion, foe hunter: goblinoid, rapid shot)

The Dwarf got one lvl Crusader and learned to shield her allies (shieldmate, imp shieldmate, combat expertise and allied defense);

the halfling took the fighter alternate class feature that gives sneak attack instead of feat, took the last level in rogue and learned to crossbow snipe (able sniper, WF:light crossbow, crossbow sniper)

I helped them some with the building, but not too much.


While training the troops, Ulwerth showed Jhoira some tricks he learned in his long career as a fighter 4, Warblade 5. This gave her player enough role playing incentive as to decide, Jhoira took the mechanically much better level in warblade.:cool:


5 days till the red hand attacks

The party gets briefed

Suddenly, a messenger arrives: they shall go to debora goldenbrow, and post-haste at that. There they find not only the high priestess of pelor but also King Jarmath. He urges the Party on to find Jugat, to find out how, where and why he could walk into a shop and buy adamantine weaponry, something the trade of should be in official hands. Debora gives him a box full with potions of lesser Restoration. He chugs one down, and takes his exit.

Debora Goldenbrows News are far more dire than expected: Someone spreads sicknesses in Bryndol. The first cases were watchmen, but some days since, parts of the civilian population began to sicken.

The Priestess is very much sure, that the sicknesses are of magical origin, and she tells the party that there are some irregularities in the power of the spell (different caster level used to cast). She is not sure if this is caused by someone using a wand, or more than one caster, or simply by the time that elapses in between the casting and the patient lying on her table.

The clergy of pelor can quite easily heal most of the sick, but the diseases are spreading and keeping the lid on the rumors proves more difficult by the day. Furthermore, healing all these people seriously drains her resources in summoning food, which means that the nonmagical reserves diminish.

She wants the party to do something about that, and do it NOW.

Watson, the hunt begins...

The party thinks. They know about 3 enemies in Bryndol. Jugat, who is a very clever fighter; Miha serani, who is some kind of spider-woman and a deft infiltrator (albeit earlier she did frown when she found out that someone sold the party poisoned potions of clw) and skather, of whom they know nothing.

They decide to go on the High Market, and make a bunch of Gather Information checks. They bring their new cohort of lvl 4 guys.
They find out about Shivs shanks, a specialist for any kind of weaponry, and they learn that the well in the middle of the market had been poisoned.

They ask Ulwerth. Where could one buy adamantine weaponry? He immediately gives them shivs shanks, but tells them about axenhaft securities, too. He tells them that Shiv used to be a crook until he, ulwert himself, had caught him in the act and sent him to prison. No hard feelings, though. He buys there regularly and, a propos adamantine, he once bought a adamantine kitchen knife there for the woman. She has since cut through a good deal of kitchen items, but is not entirely unsatisfied.

They ask him where these annoying true-seeing statues (that they constantly had to avoid until the king had them relocated lately) are now positioned. They get a map.

To Shiv they go. One-eyed, one eared Shiv, the excrook. He greets them friendly. Ulwerth send ya? That old toughster, look at me eye, look at me ear! Broke his arm, though. But no hard feelings, he brought me where i am now.
Invited me to his wedding, even, he did. Did wed in a fullplate, blackened for him, White for his woman. She was dignified and all until he wanted her to wield a halberd when cutting the cake... Adamantine you say?
Even I cannot get any, and I work for Holds his palm up unil coin is put into Borlack Hagezorn, the man himself!

They Bribe him into telling them about Sintak Gruba, seemingly a lowly fish merchant, but if you buy a fish pricey enough, chances be that there is a dagger hidden in it.

Sintak Gruba greets them not quite as friendly, especially when he learns that they do not want to buy anything. They try to bribe him, but roll short on diplomacy. They up the ante, but then Jhoira rolls a one. I ask her to please role play a result that devastating (a 4, alltogether). She decides on a crude flirting gesture, Jhoira leans upon the table (which creaks) and fumbles with her platemail (which scrapes over her stony hide...). Sintak is unnerved by the attempt, says that he doesn't want to talk to anyone, why do they not ask klein, or kaal, they control most of the merchants. He goes behind a curtain and cuddles with a beautiful young man...

On their way out, the party discovers that he sells poison, and not only he, some spells later they know that half the fish market sells some. Part of the fish included. They decide to send their underlings to do a razzia come morning.



Next part of the session after my hand recovers :)

[Phaederkiel]

double post?

[Phaederkiel]

The hunt for jugat




the party goes to "sour" Bertram Klein. They find him amidst his noble friends, clamoring about the fate of the nation. By playing to his ego ("we thought you knew everything about the market, but if you don't...") they are able to convince him to talk. He tells them about Shuck Reftat, an arms dealer working for lady Kaal. He also tells them that now they owe him one.

They go to lady Kaal. She demands absolute openess and honesty, but after she is given such, she arranges the party to meet with Shuck in a posh restaurant, the craven raven, just the place where he ever wanted to go but was never let in. She also reminds them that they now owe her one.

The Party washes (!) and dresses up. At the Raven, they meet a man named Rillnor Paln. He wears not-quite-posh clothes, but everyone from the bouncer of the raven to the nobles inside treat him with great (and a bit fearful) respect. He tells them that Shuck Reftat works indeed for him and that he will come soon enough.

Indeed, he comes. Rilllnor leaves the Table, but stays in eavesdropping distance. Oysters are served, together with very complex looking cutlery.
A spot by reif reveals another Table where oysters are eaten, and he uses his newfound knowledge of weird manners to gain a substantial Diplomacy bonus with Shuck. Shuck tells them, that he was approached by a man who wanted to buy two adamantine sabers, and shuck does himself not know how the man ever found him. The man was nondescript, paid in cash and more than was asked for. Alas yesterday, he came again and gave him a scrollcase to give the party.

Ooooh, a message. The party gets instantly suspicious...and right they are.
They do not touch it until all the oysters are eaten and they do not wear any pricey clothes, then they make Jhoira open it.

insde, they find this letter ( full text is german)
Ich hatte schon gehofft, daß das Ausbleiben weiterer Briefe voller hoffnungsloser Versuche mich zu verführen auf euren Sieg zurückzuführen ist. Aber kurz darauf erhalte ich einen weiteren zuckerübergossenen Wisch... und dann stellt sich heraus, daß Ihr, geehrte Gegner, nach adamantinen Waffen forscht...Ihr werdet mich so nicht finden. Aber Ich freue mich bereits ausgesprochen darauf, ein weiteres mal mit euch die Klingen zu Kreuzen. Stellt euch mir mit all eurer Kraft!

Jugat

PS: schaut, was ich mir von einem Magier habe herstellen lassen: Explosive Runen !

Paraphrased: He had already had hoped to got rid of Ulwai, but she has tried to send a seducing Letter again, He has heard that they search for adamantine weapons, he hopes to honourously fight them again, and he had the letter enchanted with some EXPLOSIVE RUNES!

after the dust has cleared, they find another piece of paper. Written on it:
"since you have survived that, you are not shuck. Catch the Goblin with the red turban alive!"


Hunt for the Disease-Carrier, part 1


Still smoking from the explosion, they decide to find out some things about the sicknesses. Since the first (and the most)cases came from the watch, they decide to ask Ulwert. They find (via a somewhat wide interpretation of detect poison, if i recall right) three guys which are going to be sick soon.

The three reveal that they had some scrap on their patrol yesterday, with seemingly normal drunks acting like total madmen. They give the Party their patrolling route and are walked into the church of pelor to be treated.

Afterwards, the Party decides to rearrange the true-seeing statues. They want to exchange the working ones agains unenchanted spare statues and put the working ones one some roofes in the vicinity of the patrol round, and close to some important strategic points of the city.

Important is, that they choose to remove the statue overseeing the fish market...



A Problem at the Market.



The party was not happy about the Poisons which were sold on the open Market. They decided to send their Auxilliaries for a Razzia, and to tell both Klein and Kaal that they are doing so, hopefully paying back the favors they owe. What Schemers!

The auxilliaries do their Razzia in the morning. The Crossbow sniper takes a post a the entrance while the other four (plus some lvl 1 fighters as carriers [and an alchemist to identify the poisons) try to scour the market of poison. The Traders are not happy to be thusly threated, and intimidate checks have to be made. The Watchmen ACE all their checks, and so they come to the far corners of the market, to Sintak Gruba's shop. Now, a misterious figure casts something (which everyone fails to spot...) and walks unmolested out of the market. If the Party had not removed the statue at the markets entrance, they would have found out quite interesting things, but alas, they did....

After the Casting, the crowd goes wild, and the clustered Guardmen are swarmed by about 10 angry commoners and 5 rogues lvl 3. The rogues manage to get some good hits in, but after round 1, Lizzy, the Dwarfish Crusader, repostitions and gives her Combat expertise and shield bonusses to everyone and their mother. The Enemies have a hard time hitting, but since the Spearmen both hit some natural 1 and lose their weapons (houserule, do not hate me plz), and the guards try to resolve everything nonlethally, they do not hit either. Hilarity ensues.

The commoners start to Aid each other and make massed Grapple attacks on the spearmen, one of which nearly dies (Lizzy is able to save him with some crusader strikes). The Crossbow sniper criticals one rogue for BIG damage, and we decide he has been nailed through his eye, through his skull, to a wall behind him, but NONLETHALLY. The alchemist gets into Fisticuffs with an commoner and manages to knock him down. After a while, hilarity ends, and Prisoners are bound and taken away.

The guards didn't kill anyone, and that did get noticed. Good for the city's morale, to say the least.




Part 3 comes up soon...

[Phaederkiel]

Hunt for the Disease-Carrier, part 2



Even if the Party had made some abysmal hide checks to hide the statues on roofs, and even if, what they could have known, the Spider Woman mostly went over the roofs and therefore had a substantial bonus on her spot checks, she rolled two natural 3s and did not find anything.

As a result, one of the watchmen manning the statues had seen her, seen her undisguised, and could since draw a picture good enough to make scrying her possible.

The Party had before tried to scry Jugat and Ulwai (Jugat had moment-of-perfect-minded the Wizard casting, who only saw a fist coming his way...Ulwai was seen within the horde, much to the partys rejoice)

So now said wizard (even if he risked to get a bloody nose again) scryed Miha Serani, and found her as Lady of easy Virtue amongst other ladies of easy Virtue and their customers.

So the Party went to "big Mama", a whoremongress they already knew.
Big Mama had no trouble recognizing the new face, and pointed the party to a house (yes, you knew it, of easy virtue) nearby.

Jhoira and Reif went in, disguised as customers. Jhoira had stored her usual armor in her Ring and had borrowed one of Reifs hats of disguise.

Inside, I called for bluff checks, which Jhoira aced...not. Miha knew instantly her jig was up and tried to escape. As a "distraction", she had placed some wondrous figurines of elephant (boy are these things pricey) one the shelves of the brothel, amongst the figurines of expressive pose. Those she activated now, and two elephants started to step on things. She cast a Confusion, hitting Jhoira, most of the girls and customers and one elephant. Reif maneuvered his save, casted arcane Turmoil on her (costing her a 5th lvl spellslot and erasing her disguise) and went to follow her.

Fahwool outside heard the commotion, started his travel devotion and began to fly. He flew to the second store (where he could see through the window some customer management...boy these lego figurines look expressive enough, too).

Miha ran upstairs, and casted an Illusion of herself. Which Fahwool promptly charged, crashing through the wooden wall. Reif burned through his Inspirations to run up to Miha, and tried to Insightful strike her, which she countered with Wings of cover. He took another Action to grapple her.

Miha Casted a silent suggestion to grapple the illusion, which Reif, devoid of his maneuvers, promptly succumbed to. She tried to flee, but Fahwool gave chase.

Hilarity ensued once more. Jhoira was stepped on by the crazed elephants, was too busy running in circles confusedly to really do anything about it,
the girls ran either away or started punching each other out, Reif grappled the illusion with little chance to ever make his save, and Fahwool charged after Miha, only to be foiled time and time again by wings of cover.

Miha was able to use nights caress once on Fahwool, dealing quite some damage, but failing to do the con dmg. Fahwool switched from charges to full attacks, which Miha could not as easily stop. She ran one last Time, took a hostage and gave up.

Aftermath: Miha told the party, that SHE was the one casting contagion on the Military, but would not steep so low as to attack the civil population.



Notes about the session: Wings of cover is 3 kinds of broken. I will not use it again and will not allow its use.

Jhoira failed to make a single hit with her malenchanted sword. Which will cause her problems when she does hit someone in a real matchup...

Lowlvl encounters are really fun. I was happy how it turned out, even if i had to wing it completely. I knew I wanted my players to face some internal turmoil within the city, but to think that they will start it themselves by doing a razzia on the market...

Fun session, overall.

[Phaederkiel]

Red Hand of Doom

Session 21.
In which a naval battle is fought and an underwater cave is explored.


In this session, I did not DM. Fahwools player did. (Since we rotate DMing and I wanted to do A Big Campaign, we decided that I would give both of them a small dungeon / storypart to DM which I would work into the story.

After tying up some loose ends from the last session (asking Miha once more about the sickening and deciding they would believe her to some degree that she did not infect any civilians), the Party is called to the harbour. From the towers, a ship has been seen, the first for a long time. In hot pursuit are some enemy ships, obviously the reason why no ships have been able to reach bryndol for nearly two weaks.

We surprise the King and Ulwert by jumping on Fahwool's back and riding to the ship directly on the water. We found the ship burning and Fahwool used another of Waves abilities and sprayed water into the fire until it died. Meanwhile, Reif got some potion of water breathing from the crew (which he and Jhoira drank) and got a catapult loaded...with an Anchor, Jhoira and himself.

We got catapulted at the enemy ship, both Jhoira and Reif succeeding a Tumble check to stand on the anchor like a surfboard...Jhoira drawing after her a raibow made by her new sword. Reif jumped the anchor just before it hit the ship and hid in a sail's rigging. Jhoira hit the ship like a stone, broke through the upper deck and landed in a cabin.

Here, we seriously cramped the dms style. He wanted to have us fight the ships as creatures and had read a lot of rules to make this possible, regarding hardness, sinking, maneuvering, etc of ships. The first thing we do, we board one of three ships.

Fahwool jumped in the water and started charging the underwater escort of the ships, while Jhoira challenged all the enemies of the main enemy ship.
Reif climbed the mast and shanked the lookout. When Jhoira faced two enemies, she critted one. Finally.

I took over for a short time and asked her to roll a save. They were quite flabbergasted. Lucky for her, she got rolled an 8 on her prismatic spray, and then only a 1 and a 2. Which meant still a lot of damage, but at least she was still on this plane. The player pouted somewhat. And Blackrazor, king daddy of all evil daggers, started to laugh again..."did you think I laughed because that sword looked stupid? look at me, I am sprinkled with little stars! No, I do not care about looks. And it would been better if you hadn't thought me to be so shallow as yourself..."

She stopped using the sword and killed them with her hammer. Reif teleport-shotted (with his crossbow of great translocator, what an incredibly good item!) both captain and first maat off the deck and into the sea. The Captain called something.

While both groups of ships shot at each other, Fahwool killed a lot of seacritters, and then started to target one of the ships. Reif killed the last men on their ship with cunning surge and multiple icestorms, which unfortunately destroyed much of the ship.

A skillan attacked our group of ships. It howled, and seaman started to jump from the ships, panicked. After it ate some, Fahwool charged it. unfortunately, it took the 50 something dmg without any problems, but since it couldnt grapple him (domain ability travel), it started to flee.

We defeated the rest of the enemy sailors, saved as many of ours as we could, and brought the ships into the harbour.

[Phaederkiel]

hunt the skyllan



since the beastie had dissapeared somewhere close to our harbour, we decided to investigate. We "liberated" some more potions of waterbreathing and searched the sea.

We quickly found a underwater entrance to the rock the big lighttower stood on. We went in and found a complex obviously prior inhabitated by some kind of seamen. The Dungeon had a very nice design.

After finding some bedrooms (and behind hidden doors, some items: a crabshell-like armor and a pearly shortsword), we went into a part of the complex spiraling up like (corect word for this special kind of shell is missing), with rooms constantly getting smaller the further up we go.

The final big room contains, a quick glance through our periscope (best 50 gp ever...) and an aced hide check by Reif tell us, our skyllan is in there.

And here we make a big mistake. Instead of retreating with fahwool to a place with air and casting freedom of movement, we, forgetting that we cannot cast under water, rush in.

The beast has A LOT hp and has all of us grappled soon. Reif Darts in and out, using cunning surges to move and insightful strike and his full rounds to replenish the insight, but the skyllan eats Jhoira and nearly swallows fahwool too.

Fahwool does the impossible and beats the critters 40plus grapple check at some point and evades getting eaten, but Jhoira is in trouble. Lucky us the beast got her, though, since it cannot deal much damage. Fahwool would have been nearly unable to attack the beasts gullet with anything other than his horned helm would he have been eaten.

After 3 or four gruelling rounds in the beasts tentacles / stomach, we manage to finally kill it.

We find a trapdoor in the ceiling of the room connecting it with the lighthouse's cellar. A big chest stands upon it. We further investigate the complex and find a coralgolem which we roflstomp. It gives us coral worth 10 000 Gp. 10 000 Gp we cannot use to buy things in a city where only food is of value lately.

Then we find a room with a lot of treasure and two statues in there.

hmm- could this be a trap? The fighters ready themselves to charge the statues, and Reif touches the treasure. Surprise, the statues start to live!
We charge them! Surprise, your weapons have to make fort saves! Gulp!
Wave survives contact with the statue (see question below), but jhoira crushes her trusty glaive(while oneshotting the statue, i think).




question: you as DM, would you have allowed that such a monster breaks a relic / artefakt of Waves caliber? I mean not the "becomes water and takes a minute to reform", but the "is gone forever" option.