Eranor Campaign Journal [PF]

[Gimmedasummons]

Hey there forums :tongue: So this is a log of sorts for the (mis)adventures a few friends and I have been playing in a homebrewed campaign setting called Eranor. I am the DM of our little story and the author of Eranor (pronounced copy-right-violation) so I'll be your guide on this little trip. Please keep all hands, tails and claws within the railroads until the plot has come to a complete and full stop. Also this is my first time as regular DM and first time playing a full pathfinder game so I am totally open to suggestion and ideas.

Note: I have censored these journals to fit within the forum rules. If you want to read them with all of the drug and sex content they normally have (which is not a ton) you can go to eranordnd.blogspot.com and see my gmail blog instead.

Background of the world of Eranor:

Eranor is a plane marked by a massive collection of island chains that make up the primary setting for this game world. There are many (6) other planes in this setting but so far they haven't really had any bearing on the game. The archipelagos of Eranor were once dominated by an ancient empire, Nerath, not unlike Rome but the empire collapsed more than 100 years before the start of the campaign when the empire's capital city vanished overnight. Nerath was dominated by druids and druids still hold a high place in society even today. The empire also had several powerful houses of dragon-blooded casters called sages (Eranor's version of the pathfinder oracle) who still exist today as the dominant powers in former imperial lands. Nerath itself was shattered into city-states to prevent civil war (all of the credible heirs to the empire died with or within a year of the capital's disappearance). Nevertheless people still refer to old imperial lands as Nerath and the isles share both common culture and populations. About 5 years before the start of the campaign several of the sage houses and the druidic order were drawn into war with one another, this conflict continues mostly in the south central portion of Eranor, the south eastern edge of Eranor. Other parts of Eranor are controlled by the ancient (and extant) empire of Feywood or have never been controlled by the fey or imperials. Feywood is an arcane dominated nation which occupies the largest, australia-sized isle of Eranor and its neighboring region. The players are starting in the waters near the border of the Nerath and Feywood.

No one has determined the shape of the world and several things simply do not exist in Eranor (notably earthquakes, volcanoes or chemical explosives). Otherwise assume an Earth-like world.

Playable Races:

There are 6 playable races for this world, the races of Nerath. All of these races are humanoid bipeds with superficial features resembling an earth animal. Some of these names are borrowed and some are original. I apologize for any confusion.

Naga: The Naga founded the empire and these fish/snake-like amphibians still maintain noble stature in many parts of the empire. Naga are capable of mating with any of the imperial races but the result is always the non-naga parent. Such children are Naga half-bloods but appear to be the same race as their non-naga parents.

Seafolk: The Seafolk were present at the founding of the empire, though they were second-class citizens before a massive strike won them representation in the imperial senate. Seafolk are a frog-like people who are also amphibious.

Vanara: The monkey-like Vanara are natural climbers with semi-prehensile tails. They joined the empire when they allied against the yuan ti and brought their arboreal holdings with them. The vanara are a spiritual race who offer deference to the spirits and gods alike, often worshiping both in the same ceremony.

Avora: The reptilian Avora are also excellent climbers thanks in part to their strong claws. More so than most races the avora are a pious race devoted to the gods and tend their temples. This thick scaled, subterranean race was brought into the empire by military conquests and peace treaties.

Eladrin: The insectoid Eladrin are planar refugees from the feywild who long thrived with an empire of their own within Eranor. The Eladrin have suffered several severe population declines in recent times and are particularly inbred as a race. The Eladrin possess delicate wings more adept at gliding than flight although the most powerful of their numbers can hover and fly at will. They were forced into the empire following their war with the Tieflings.

Tieflings: The avian Tieflings were late arrivals to Eranor. Exiled from their home on the Shadowfell the Tieflings live as gypsys with no home. When they arrived in Eranor the Tieflings came into conflict with the Eladrin, weakening both races enough for Nerath to strong arm them into the empire.


Playable Classes by Power Source:

Divine: Cleric, Inquisitor, Paladin
Arcane: Bard, Sorcerer, Swashbuckler
Psionic: Barbarian, Monk, Wizard
Shadow: Magus, Rogue, Witch
Primal: Dragon Shaman, Druid, Sage, Scout

Magic and Religion:

In Eranor all playable classes have magic (at least in flavor) and all magic stems from the gods or the spirits. The gods come from the astral plane and they created the spirits with the help of the primordials (who hail from the plane of elemental chaos). Though they were once friends, the gods and primordials eventually went to war over who should control the planes and the spirits. Each side created mortals to fight for them while the spirits resisted both sides. After the terrible war destroyed the spiritworld, making it into the dreamscape, the gods and primordials agreed to a ceasefire and stepped away from the central planes. In Eranor the primordials have fallen silent to all but a few cultists but the gods maintain worship by perhaps 30% of the population. The spirits remained on the central planes and are venerated by another 30% of the population. About 20% of Nerath society does not venerate the spirits or worship the gods while the other 20% worship both. All of the playable classes derive their magic for either a spirit or a god who acts a patron to that PC's power.

[Gimmedasummons]

Here are the first 3 sessions! Let me know what you guys think please!

Session 1: I Smell a Bilge Rat

The campaign has just started and I am stoked for our little party of 5. I am so proud that we got through the whole session without a single round of combat! I was ready to bust out monsters if things went stale though.

Watanuki: a tiefling (naga half-blood) witch, questing in search of someone
Eva: a seafolk (naga half-blood) druid, training to become a courtesan
Ezra: an avora paladin dedicated to Dravos, returning home after a successful rite of passage
Fa: a vanara rogue
Rocco: a mysterious tiefling magus unwilling to share his past

The session opened with the party aboard a ship, the Little Jack, sitting down to dinner with captain Nico a few evenings after the party booked their passage. After the characters were each given the chance to introduce themselves the captain took his leave while warning the party to not just wander about the ship and respect the privacy of the crewmembers. Naturally they checked the doors immediately to see which ones were locked and which ones were not. The party did make a point of talking to the crew members on duty but did not try to get to know the other 2 passengers on the ship. I suppose that is just as well because those two would only lie to the party anyway. However the party did have a good chance to meet the ship’s cook Sarah. Sarah had an affinity towards Eva, who is the same race, and offered her extra food. The food was awful but Eva choked it down (thanks to a successful fortitude save) to be nice and said it was tasty. To the players’ dismay the cook has promised to keep food like that coming (she thinks they like traditional seafolk cooking now).
While the party was turned away from a number of locked or occupied rooms several party members went down into the hold of ship and found an unlocked door towards aft from which they could hear a clicking sound. Inside the room were a large number of clay urns which were sealed with putty and held in cargo netting but the clicking ceased. Rocco was first into the room and no sooner does he start peeling the putty away from one of the urns than he immediately has to make a fortitude save. He succeeds and is just barely able to hold down his lunch as his nose is assaulted with the smell of rotting flesh. Meanwhile Ezra and Fa explore the upper decks of the ship and Watanuki gets to know the cook. Watanuki makes a good impression on the cook and has thus far succeeded on every save to keep his food down. Rocco uses detect magic on the urns, finding that they are non-magical, but he calls Watanuki down for a consult anyway. Watanuki manages to pry the lid off the urn but fails his fortitude save, suddenly vomiting everywhere. After he finishes retching Watanuki sees that the pot contains a black goo and upon closer inspection finds a small piece of vermin intestine inside. He takes a sample of the goo for now, closes the lid and sweeps the vomit into the corner.
Fa went to bed first, but shortly there after the whole party passed out. Rocco and Watanuki make fortitude checks during the night to see if they puke more. Once again Watanuki fails his save and spends the next few minutes puking his guts out of the porthole but Rocco succeeds. Rocco’s player claims he has an iron stomach. Fa went to bed early so he is offered a perception check in the middle of the night to hear a clicking sound (everyone else is too tired to wake even if they hear). Fa succeeds and decides to investigate the sound while several other party members wake up to his stirring (except Rocco). Fa opens the door slowly but cannot see anything unusual going on outside. He actually failed a stealth check to open the door quietly and failed a perception check to hear the opening and closing of a door on the other side of the deck over the sound of the wind and rain 1 round later. Fa takes a moment to consider his options then steps out on to the deck and fails an acrobatics check to stay upright while the ship pitches in the storm. He does however succeed on a reflex save and catches onto the railing of the ship before falling off. Meanwhile the paladin moves to help the rogue but then realizes that still in his armor. So Ezra sits inside watching as Fa flounders to his feet. The ship’s navigator is at the helm this whole time as has been shouting for the passengers to go back inside. The rogue ties rope to the ship’s rail but ultimately decides to go back to sleep as does the rest of the party,
Pretty early in the morning the party gets an insistent knock on their door. Fa is the first to get to get to the door and opens it for Eunice, the first mate. She immediately demands that he explain himself while pointing to a scorch mark in the ship’s main deck. Fa denies knowing anything about the symbol carved by the marks but the rest of the party is roused anyway to account for themselves. The party explains they didn’t even leave except Fa for a few seconds and the ship’s navigator can confirm their story. Ezra recognizes the symbol is connected to the primordials and tells the party it is associated with the enemies of the gods. Eunice is impressed by Ezra’s knowledge of religion and presentation of a holy symbol so he is totally cleared of suspicion. Eunice goes and check with Yuri, the navigator, about what he saw last night. The party ponders what to do about the symbol until Eunice returns, convinced none of the party could have done the deed and promising reward if they find out who did. They’ll have to ask the captain to search rooms though.
The party decides they want to investigate the symbol and knock on the captain’s door. The captain is upset that someone vandalized the ship but has no interest in starting a witch hunt. The party is given permission to speak to the crew but not search room so they head below decks to learn what they can. The party talks to Yuri and Androcles, the rigger, but neither have more information for them. At this point Ezra wakes the cook to ask her about the symbol. She lies that she hasn’t heard about what happened and thanks to sense motive Ezra knows. Ezra decides to call the cook out on her lie with intimidate and she retorts that yes she heard about the symbol she just doesn’t care. This is also a lie but one that Ezra fails to detect and Sarah immediately pushes Ezra out of her room. Meanwhile Rocco has cast detect magic and found two magical aura’s in the cook’s room and a very large magical emanation from the urn room. Upon going down to investigate the previously non-magical room Rocco finds the urn room door locked so he calls Fa down to pick it. Fa attempts to pick the lock, fails and triggers a trap which sprays marker dye all over him.
Fa is covered in blue ink so he runs back to the party’s quarters managing to keep his face hidden the whole time and waits. Meanwhile a bell indicating a shift change has gone off and the crew starts stirring. The cook goes into the kitchen but the party does not notice any other crewmen yet. Eva goes to the cook’s door to see if it is locked but hears breathing from inside and thinks better of going in. Watanuki, Rocco and Ezra all eventually make their way to the dining room and are served by Sarah there before she takes food up to the common room. Fa and Eva have gone to the common room and are trying to think of a way to fix Fa’s blue face but learn it wont wash off for 3 days. When they hear Sarah at the door they let her through but Fa feigns sickness so he can hide his dye-marked appearance from the cook. Sarah attempts to pry but Fa manages to hide under the covers while “sick” and Sarah declares she will make Fa some split-slug soup to calm his stomach. Sarah gives a bowl of the normal soup to Eva as she leaves but Eva chucks the soup. Meanwhile Rocco, Watanuki and Ezra all eat their soup and make another set of Fort saves to keep it down. Ezra makes the best fort save by far and yet Rocco and Watanuki are totally fine while Ezra is churning out buckets of vomit. Yea turns out interrogating the cook is a bad idea if you ever want to eat again.
Fa doesn’t want to be caught by the cook so he decides to try the door again, he’s already blue so he might as well finish it. The rest of the party positions themselves to help or stand lookout except for Watanuki who chats up the cook. Watanuki is given a lime and a few glasses so he can make some drinks and he goes up to the top of ship to seek water. Watanuki notices the cook go up the common room (to deliver the split-slug soup) only to come out again immediately and head back down stairs. Shortly thereafter the captain comes out of his room but goes unnoticed as he descends into the belly of the ship as well. Fa slides a mirror under the door and sees nothing new although his mirror comes back sooty. He inspects the lock of the urn room door and notices the trap that sprayed the dye on him and learns that it has no more ink. Fa opens on the lock on his second attempt and Eva is able to smell incense as the smoke pours from the room. In the center of the room is a burning stick of incense and a piece of paper but otherwise the room is as Rocco found it yesterday. Fa picks up the paper and finds a note written on the back “And this is why we can’t have nice things.” Our rogue doesn’t know it yet but the captain placed all of these traps there last night after finding Watanuki’s vomit in the urn room and he is coming down stairs to see if he caught the thief. The cook has nearly made it to the hold and the players on lookout try but fail to delay her.
Fa hears the cook approaching and decides to hide in the urn room, closing the door again. He manages to do that quietly but as soon as the cook gets down the stairs and sees blue ink all over the floor she starts chuckling to herself. The captain has now come to where the players standing lookout are and they don’t even try to delay him after the first failed attempt. When the captain gets down next to the cook he sees the dye stains and immediately yells for the entire crew to get up on the deck, now. Everyone except Fa heads up immediately but the rogue relents and heads up to face his punishment. As the entire crew (some of whom were just asleep) heads up main deck the players notice the first mate Eunice emerge from the cook’s room. We decide to end the session here. At least 3 times already the rogue has said he wants to burn the boat down. I can only imagine how that desire is going to blossom after he faces the captain’s punishment.

Session 2: Monkey Blues

By all rights we should have had a total party kill today. It appears everyone, myself included, severely underestimated just how fragile 1st level characters are. It didn’t help that I rolled WAY better for these monsters than I ever did as a player and bombed every roll for friendly NPC’s. By the end of the session I wasn’t even looking at the rolls for friendly NPC’s anymore: auto-success on anything helping keep the PC’s alive.
So at the end of the last session the captain of the Little Jack had found his trap sprung in the urn room and had demanded that the entire crew assemble on the deck. Our rogue had been hiding successfully but knew that he couldn’t keep it up for the rest of the trip. So Fa joined the crew upstairs to face his punishment. As soon as Fa got onto the deck captain Nico ordered several crewmembers to seize the rogue and bind him to the mast. The rogue was then stripped of his weapons (a wakizashi and a kukri), thieves tools and the back of his armor undone. Several other characters spoke in the rogue’s defense but none admitted to having been a part of his crimes. Ultimately the rogue was charged with vandalism (for burning the symbol into the ship), theft (for opening one of the urns), disregard for ship rules (for picking the locked door) and finally for lying to the captain about it all during his interrogation. The druid points out that the party had evidence that they were not the ones to burn the ship but fail to get the first mate to stick up for them. Our witch looks at the symbol on the deck again and attempts to roll knowledge (arcana) and learns the symbol is associated with the gods. I wish I could frame the face the witch’s player made after learning that. So the symbol is associated with both the gods and the primordials: mortal enemies that fought long and bloody wars to control the planes and are only at peace because they are exhausted of fighting. For now the witch has not told anyone what she learned.
The captain called for his whip and lashed the rogue 3 times but only after missing his first attempt. Initially Fa tried to laugh off his punishment but the first mate warns him not to laugh during his punishment; after a sense motive indicated that she seemed genuinely concerned Fa heeded her advice and fell silent. If he had continued to laugh the captain would have gotten angry and dealt more damage. The captain lashed Fa a total of 3 times for 3 points of non-lethal damage total (the captain was taking a penalty on attack rolls to deal minimum damage) and then moved him down the ship’s brig. While this whole punishment has been unfolding the cook has been chuckling to herself while eating the stew she made for the rogue. At one point the cook notices one of the sea slugs in the soup is still alive and she tosses it back into the ocean.
The rest of the crew disperses when the whipping ends and return to their various duties. The magus and paladin are conscripted to help with some of the ship’s rigging but the druid and witch are not. The witch follows the other passengers on the boat to their room and tries to talk to them but they don’t want to talk (remember these are the NPC’s who have a bounty on them) and slam the door on him. The witch offers them her services anyway and points out she is an accomplished alchemist. That gets the couples attention and after some whisperings amongst themselves the “couple” asks her to make them a liter of brown dye. The witch also casts detect magic and see the same things the magus saw last session: two small magical auras in the cook’s/first mate’s room and a very large magical aura coming from below. Further concentration reveals that the two auras from the bedroom are for weak healing magic and weak divine (no school) magic. These are the auras of a potion of cure light wounds as well as a holy symbol. The large aura from below is glowing erratically with all possible schools of magic but is slowly decreasing in strength. The witch goes downstairs to investigate the large magical aura but when she enters the urn room she is blinded with an overload of her senses (she walked into the square with the burning screen incense with detect magic active) for 3 rounds.
The captain leaves the brig as the rogue has been locked into his cell already. Fa takes a few rounds to fix his undone armor and looks around. After a short while he notices a clicking noise coming from inside in the cell and from garbage in the cell rises an oversized rat with sharp bone spines poking out of it at all angles. The rogue starts shouting for help and climbs the cell’s bars so he can hang from the ceiling. At this point the cook has arrived to deliver food to Fa (she did just eat the soup meant for him after all) and she unlocks the door to the brig, but not the cell. The cook has a little melt down when she sees the rogue hanging the ceiling and a dire rat moving towards him. A second dire rat emerges from the refuse and the rogue is dismayed to see they both have climb speeds as they approach him. The rogue tried to get the cook to unlock his cell but she will not (she doesn’t have a key anyway). She demands that the rogue spare the lives of the rats, because to kill them would be a sin, and when he agrees she gives him the knife off the tray of food she was bringing. The rogue begins kicking at the rats and the cook runs upstairs to get the captain.
Most of the party does not yet realize that the rogue is in distress but the witch regains her sight and comes to help. The rogue is able to hold off the rats and avoids getting filth fever from their many bites. Eventually the captain along with most of the party gets down to the brig where the captain unlocks the door and lets the rogue out. One of the rats also makes a run for it but is immediately knocked unconscious. The rat still inside the cell lunges between the bars but gets stuck allowing the rogue to make an attack of opportunity. He both crits and maxes damage, sending the rat deep into negatives but not death. The cook looks horrified but the druid stabilizes the rats and they are both tossed back in the cell. The captain decides he should set some sort of trap to flush out any other rats that might be hiding in the ship. The rogue helps the captain search the kitchen for something useful while the druid tries to talk to the shell-shocked cook (and botching literally every roll possible) who she mistakenly thinks is pissed. At this point the lookout shouts for the captain to come up and see something.
The lookout has spotted a nearby shipwreck flying a white flag and the captain calls everyone to stations (thankfully the whole crew was already roused at the end of last session). The first mate goes downstairs and the players realize the last unknown room of the ship is the armory when the first mate unlocks the door and starts giving people weapons to pass around. The druid and then the magus decide it might be time to put on their armor so they move to their cabins to arm up. The Little Jack pulls up alongside the wreck and casts anchor. The captain decides he wants this investigated, the party sees white paint in the windows but fail to see what it says. The paladin asks to go on the away party and the captain agrees so the paladin, the first mate, the navigator and the carpenter take the ship’s rowboat over the wreck. The deck of the wreck is positively swarmed with seaweed and everyone is making acrobatics checks to stay on their feet while moving. (I really messed up twice here, I should have remembered that taking 10’s in this case would be totally fine and the DC was a little too high anyway) The acrobatics checks every round for every character got obnoxious quickly. The characters start hearing tapping and then buzzing but not from the same direction. After some slipping and sliding the paladin discovers a red, fleshy, small sized object buried in the seaweed but does not have a chance to investigate further before its time to roll initiative. Stirges attack the players, 2 on the ship wreck and two on the Little Jack and after a few rounds the paladin, the witch, the magus and the carpenter are all fighting the nasty beasts. The paladin fights his stirge pretty effectively and itrealizes its in trouble so it bails. The witch is not doing well to get rid of hers even with help from the magus and then the magus is struck with his own monster the next round while the druid comes up, sees the monsters, and heads right back down stairs. The rogue tries to attack the stirge on the magus but misses, badly, and ends up hitting the magus pretty hard. Comically the two other passengers had come up from their room and when combat started the woman rolled a pair of consecutive nat 1’s on aid another actions so she falls overboard. Her “husband” immediately jumps in after her and the players are left without much help. Eventually the witch and magus are able to kill off their stirges, but not before taking some Con damage, and some healing is dispensed. The witch and the magus also use a grappling hook and rope to pull up the two passengers in the water. 3 more stirges are circling above but some arrows from the lookout scares them off so combat ends.
Now the crewmembers on the wreck are spooked and declare they are going back but the paladin won’t have anything of it. So the paladin stays on the boat while the NPC’s get back to their ship. The other players help pull up the little boat and decide to go check out the wreck. The paladin is hearing very loud tapping now and he descends into the wreck before his allies arrive. Down below, the paladin smells dead flesh and hears tons of tapping so naturally he kicks in the first door he sees. He busts through the warped wood and is greeted by a pair of zombie who suddenly are very interested in eating him. The zombies move in to attack but the paladin decides to smite one of the zombies for a one-hit-kill and the other misses him. Next turn the paladin one-hit kills the other zombie with a critical and what should have been a challenge is just steamrolled. At this point the rest of the party arrives and climbs to the deck, except the druid (who has a swim speed) who instead swims into one of the gaping holes in the ship towards where the paladin is. At this point the tapping gives way to a moan as one of the cabins on the main deck bursts open and four zombies start spilling out. The rogue and the magus close with the zombie at the door (the other three are still inside) and start hacking. The witch backs up because she’s so squishy its not even funny. The paladin hears what’s going on above him but blunders on a few acrobatics checks to get around and takes several round to get upstairs and even then only when the druid joins him, not even checking the armory she went through to get to him. Upstairs the magus hits the zombies with a color spray spell, and it does nothing. It’s an illusion, pattern and mind-effecting spell being used on mindless undead so that spell totally fizzles. On their turn one of the zombie bullrushes the magus out of the way and the other three run out, all within striking distance of the rogue. The rogue manages to hit one with an attack of opportunity and decides to stand his ground and hack at one on his turn. So combat begins, the witch doesn’t have anything to blast with and has spent his ability to heal both the rogue and the magus so he just repositions. When the zombie go I roll stupidly well, as a matter of fact I think of the at least 20 rolls I must have made for those monsters between acrobatics and attacks I think I rolled under 15 maybe three times total. Oh and for damage on a d6 I am getting 5’s and 6’s almost exclusively. In a single round the three zombies drop the rogue back into negatives and one thwacks the magus despite the fact that he has cast shield and has an AC of 20. The fight takes on a real note of desperation as the paladin and the druid are coming up the stairs and the witch is doing everything he can to stabilize the rogue and threaten the zombies. The zombies roll well again and now the magus is down in negatives too. The druid and the paladin are finally there but they aren’t doing so well themselves. At this point I kill off two of the zombies with rolls from the lookout and the captain (using a ballista) on the Little Jack. The first mate has also shed her armor and is swimming for the wreck. The zombie near him has dropped the rogue to -11 and the next hit is sure to kill him outright, the druid moves in to heal him and is hit into negatives herself. At this point I am pretty sure I am about watch everyone die (except maybe the paladin who is nigh untouchable) so I decide for some really dramatic intervention. A ghost appears, soaks up some wasted attacks from the zombies, possesses one and walks it right off the deck while the last zombie left is shot off the deck by another ballista. The witch and the paladin are the only ones awake at the moment but everyone is stable and the first mate arrives with a potion of cure light wounds which she gives to the druid who then heals the rogue. The ghost passes through the rogue and Fa experiences a bunch of visions but the ghost disappears just as suddenly as it arrived. The magus is still out and there is no healing to give him so everyone picks him up and takes the rowboat back to the Little Jack. As the party leaves a survivor reveals himself, at first mistaken for another zombie, the survivor is also taken aboard the Little Jack. At the very end of the session the magus mysteriously gains hit points so that he can wake up and we call it quits. No one is dead but only because of repeatedly under-reporting the damage the zombies should have dealt, intervention with the ballista and the arrival of the ghost. The players did mention that they would have liked to have had the chance to rest between those encounters but I pointed out they could have, they chose to board the ship and the paladin chose to stay after the NPC’s bailed. The players joked that the loot better be worth it and I realize I haven’t picked loot for those encounters yet. . . . whoops. Good thing I don’t have to pick until next session now!


Session 3: Curiosity Killed the Seacat

So at the end of the last session the party had just had their collective a**es handed to them by a bunch of zombies; were it not for a lot of help from the NPC crew and a mysterious ghost it would have been a TPK for sure. Spells blown for the day, healing spent and were it not for some mysterious healing the magus would have been stuck at unconscious. I wanted to make sure the party wouldn’t flounder again so we opened this session with some combat 101: I taught the rogue how to gain the ability to sneak attack and the use/danger of flanking. As a side note he also got a refresher on attacks of opportunity. Then I took the magus and witch and let them fight some humanoid and animal opponents. They have some very nice aggressive spells that fizzled on the undead so I wanted to remind them that those spells are useful, just not against undead. Skittish spellcasters stay alive, terrified spellcasters will get the party killed. Then came time for the paladin to learn just how screwed he could have been when he decided to explore the wreck without the party there. I had him fight a spider swarm and it STOMPED him. I mean the thing is immune to weapon damage, isn’t susceptible to smiting and if it can hit him he has to make a will save or be nauseated. Then I showed him what happened when the witch and magus took it on. It is only a CR1 monster so the spellcasters beat it into submission with a shocking grasp and a burning hands. I had the paladin fight a level 1 wizard too to prove that swarms weren’t the only thing he needed to worry about. One sleep spell later the paladin is getting coup de graced, and that is after a few rounds of the wizard just running around and hitting him with ray of frost for fun. But as fun as it was to serve some humble pie I didn’t want to make the paladin’s player totally bummed so he fought the swarm again, this time with a lit torch in hand. Thanks to some fire damage from the torch, the swarm didn’t stand a chance. Now I should have given the druid some 101 time, she did get some last session, but I was in a hurry so I just went on to the lesson for the whole party.
I was really looking forward to this combat, I let the party face an exact copy of themselves. What was the lesson here? Retreat. Sometimes you need to retreat and back down from the fight; there are plenty of things in this world that can stomp PC’s, and if they fight those things someone is likely to die. 5 1st level adventurers are a CR6 encounter which is WAY more than my party can handle without at least one fatality but they all drew their weapons anyway. Combat started and the actual party moved into battle formation, which is normally a good thing. But when you are facing many spellcasters, formations can really bite you in the ass. The magus won initiative and buffed himself. Then the mirror party acted: the rogue moved towards the flank, the paladin charged in and the magus moved up to color spray the real party. The mirror magus failed his concentration and provoked from the real paladin and so his color spray was wasted. The mirror witch moved in and healed the magus so he could try again next round and the mirror druid hit the real paladin with a produce fire spell. Then it was the real paladin. He tried to smite his counterpart, as he declared the rest of the party groaned. He picked the only member of the mirror party his smite wouldn’t work on. Fizzled and sad he did manage to smack his counterpart at least. The real druid threw some flames at her mirror while the rogue hit his mirror and the witch healed the paladin. The magus stepped up and smacked the mirror rogue and down he went into negatives. Mirror party’s turn, the mirror magus tried to color spray again, this time managing not to provoke. Who is in that spell’s 15ft cone? Oh just the whole real party. The witch and druid saved but the paladin, magus and rogue were all unconscious, blind and stunned. The players groaned again but the mirror party had only just started. The mirror witch let’s a sleep spell rip and down go the witch and the druid. The mirror druid healed the mirror rogue back to consciousness and the coup de graces begin. After the TPK we had a short chat about tactics. My players were shocked when I told them that was a CR6 encounter, they assumed CR1 meant an evenly matched opponent. Anyway lessons learned and plenty more to come, next time I want to cover combat maneuvers and special actions. I also gave the druid, witch and magus a list of very useful spells that are available to their classes. Hopefully those suggestions will help them wade through their vast options of spells.
Ok so back to the real adventure. At the end of last session our intrepid heroes were pretty laid up after a bad run in with zombies and they had returned to the Little Jack to rest up. I had planned to have some more undead lurking underwater and have them attack in the night but the PC’s were in no condition to fight them off so I decided to forget those undead entirely. Upon returning to the ship the rogue must once again surrender his thief’s tools. The players talked to the survivor, Bill, they brought back from the wreck and pumped him for information about his vessel. The wreck was the Seacat, a spice trading vessel bound for the northwestern isles well past the Little Jack’s destination. The ship was attacked and a zombie outbreak finished off the survivors save Bill. Upon hearing this story Nico (captain of PC’s ship) decides he and Bill need to have a long chat about the Seacat. So the party is left to think about Bill’s story. Bill readily admitted he was bitten by zombies but claims he’s held his own against the infection, a claim only some of the party believes. Either way the Little Jack is not going anywhere because the navigator managed to scrape the bottom of the hull (by rolling consecutive natural 1’s on sailing checks last session) and much of the crew is working to repair that or is bailing the lower decks to protect the cargo.
The party decides they need to rest, even if its still afternoon of the 1st day at the wreck. They are beat to hell and sunlight be damned they need to lay their weary bodies down. The witch and the druid are both competent healers so the magus, rogue and paladin decide to sleep while the druid and witch give them long term care. The party doesn’t have even the simplest bandages though so they ask the first mate if the little jack has healing supplies they could purchase. Luckily the ship is well stocked on medicinals but the party has almost no money to spend. Having already given the party a potion of cure light wounds for free today, and risking her life to get it to them during combat, Eunice is not feeling charitable though and only offers supplies at market value. The magus has some snotty comments for the first mate and she offers them just the basics, bandages and a few medicinal herbs for 20gp and they take it. The paladin has the most money and feels somewhat responsible for their state so he picks up most of the tab. Now that they can patch their hurt the paladin, rogue and magus actually go to sleep while the witch and druid watch over them. A few hours later Nico arrives and tells the party members still awake that Bill is going to stay in their room (it’s the only room big enough for another person) and asks them to make up a bedroll for him. The party looks worried but most of them are sleeping and really need it. The druid puts her scimitar back on her belt while the witch interviews Bill and learns more of what happened to the Seacat. Bill claims that the Seacat was attacked by sahuagin raiders who literally catapulted zombies onto the deck, in the mayhem of the zombie attack the ship was crashed into the shoals where the wreck now is. The raiders abducted a large amount of the crew (who were still alive at the time) and left the rest to die at the hands of the zombies. The crew was able to defeat the zombies from the raider ship but not before much of the crew became infected themselves. Several of these crew members died and rose as new zombies and killed even more of the crew. Bill only survived because he was barricaded inside the infirmary and used substantial amounts of medicinals to hold off the infection. About 4 hours after the first party members went to sleep there is a quiet knock at the door. After some mulling the sleeping characters decide to roll over and stay asleep while the druid decides to open the door, scimitar drawn. On the other side of the door is the female passenger who fell off the deck before. She enters the room and closes the door quietly behind her.
Rhou, they finally ask her name, has come to take over healing so the other party members can sleep. The witch and the magus did stop to help her after she fell off the boat so she would like to return the favor. Sense motive checks from the druid and witch produce conflicting results: Eva thinks Rhou has some hidden reason to help the players while Watanuki finds her totally trustworthy. Bill has gone sleep and the healers need to sleep to regain their spells. So last of the party grudgingly goes to sleep after telling Eva’s leopard animal companion, Otto, to guard the party. Another 4 hours pass and the paladin, magus and rogue awaken, feeling rested though confused as to why Rhou and Bill are in their room. Rhou is awake to explain herself and Bill’s presence and her story is accepted at face value. Fa, our rogue, informs the captain that he can still hear the sounds of rats (last session he agreed to help the captain clear the ship of any other rats) and goes down to the kitchen to seek bait. The witch had already gone down to the kitchen and received dinner. The cook found some seaweed patches near the ship and was frying them to perfection. It was a running joke that eating the cook’s food required a fort save to avoid puking but this stuff doesn’t. Fa gets some food and rolls really poorly but no puking, its just tasty food. The cook says she will get some bait ready and starts boiling a dehydrated gecko. Ezra and Rocco go down to assist with the repairs on the ship and earn some good will. As repairs drag on the paladin and magus come upstairs and seek food of their own. The cook is hesitant to give the paladin a platter but relents and neither the magus nor paladin vomit on their only ok save rolls. The magus goes up to the dining room to eat while the paladin apologizes to the cook for interrogating her so rudely two days ago. The cook states she thinks Ezra has learned his lesson (after she dosed his food) and they decide to bury the hatchet. The rogue returns to get his bait and considers how to set the trap. The cook advises him to get a snare from the captain but upon getting to the captain he is handed his thief’s tools set and is made an offer by the captain. If the party salvages all the urns off the Seacat they can have anything else they find. Fa agrees and is told Eunice will be joining them. By this point the witch and druid are waking up and reequipping. It’s the crack of dawn and after grabbing a bite to eat (for the druid that is) the party heads back to the wreck. They take two trips by rowboat so that everyone, including companions and familiars, can go.
Back on the Seacat the party moved systematically through the ship searching for anything of value and always keeping close together. Amusingly all their caution was superfluous because they face only a single zombie, run through with a ballista bolt (which it got during last session’s disastercle). On the top level of the ship they went through the captains quarters and found some good loot. The magus searched the captains desk and found a false bottom drawer with a bunch of extra credentials for the ship all under different names. The party now realizes that the Seacat is probably a smuggling ship and get excited about the loot they might find. Rocco also notices Eunice duck into the Seacat’s dining hall, which the party had searched but found nothing worthwhile in. Eunice had closed the door and acts pretty shifty when Rocco opens it. Ultimately Rocco is convinced to help Eunice open a secret ceiling compartment, the contents of which she appropriates for herself. Rocco takes issue with that and grumbles quite a bit. Eunice counters that as a part of the boarding party she is entitled to some of the loot and this is hers. Eunice makes it clear it is not up for debate so Rocco grumbles away. Its at this point the players start discussing whether or not Eunice should have an “unfortunate accident” while on the Seacat. I am horrified they are considering killing the NPC who risked her a** to save them just a day before. All of this grumbling will have some consequences for Rocco. The party decides to go downstairs and finds a zombie in the hall. The paladin was first toward the zombie but the druid won initiative and hurled a produce flame at the undead corpse and the rest of the party groans. Because the druid was trying to shoot through a stairwell and around the paladin, I granted the zombie improved cover and the fire didn’t connect but it also didn’t hit the paladin. The paladin chose not to try to smite the zombie but did hack at it with his falcata, rolled very well and down went the zombie. He then took another round to coup de grace the thing to make sure was dead. With the monster dead the party had a brief discussion over when to cast/smite and when to save those abilities. I didn’t have to say a word, it was awesome. The paladin dragged the zombie out of the way so that the party could make a quick exit if things went south and the rest of the party descended, including the first mate. The witch went last and hung a bell on twine across the stairs so that if something approached them from behind they might hear it coming. We were running really low on time so I decided to withhold the other monsters I had planned for down there and let the players loot the rooms left: 2 bedrooms, the infirmary and the armory. That’s when the “I found the most valuable loot” contest began. The winner of that contest was the druid who opened the chest containing almost 1000gp in semi-precious gemstones. The first mate stepped forward before they entered the armory to disable a trap on the door using a bar magnet. Unfortunately for the party she only disabled half of the trap and the rogue failed to notice the mechanism so when the door opened the paladin took a poison dart to the neck. The party also breaks into the infirmary and sees the same symbol that was burned on the little jack’s ship has been cut onto this door. The witch literally started beaming at the mention of rare herbs in this room. The party sees evidence that seems in line with Bill’s story except there is a corpse in there with all of the flesh stripped off. This is the ship’s doctor, the one who carved the symbol on the door, he died by zombie and they stripped his flesh to the bone. Unfortunately the party now believes that Bill survived by cannibalism and are plotting his death. But hey at least the first mate isn’t first on the hit list anymore. I should have just let them go on but I panicked so I pointed out there were no tool marks on the corpse only teeth marks so the party swung back to thinking zombies ate the corpse. At this point the first mate gets the party to help her unlock another concealed compartment on the side of the ship that is underwater, again monsters were planned but time was short so I skipped it. She unlocked a panel using her magnet and pulled a bunch of sealed urns out of the ship that looked like the ones in the hold of the Little Jack. The party loaded all of the loot into various bags and called it a day. On the way back to the Little Jack they encountered another ballista-skewered zombie but it was pretty far away. The paladin used an atlatl on it but the damage reduction was too annoying for him so they ignored it. Also the paladin was exposed to weird gases while moving a corpse: that might come back later but I have to pick what effects it will have still.

[Gimmedasummons]

Here are the next 3 sessions from our group :) Like I said any and all feedback is super welcome.

Session 4: Jacked Up

Coming off a large loot intake last session, the group started back on the Little Jack having benefited from a level up and a full nights rest. Today we were pressed for time so I decided to skip our combat 101 and dive in. Despite the rest period we played it as the same day and the party started with figuring out what to do to get the Little Jack on the move. The ship was running low in the water due to leakage from the hull breaches (thanks to some bad navigating) and the paladin decided to start working a pump to drain the bilge. The rogue and magus started looking over the questionable charters they found on the Seacat and a few linguistics checks later they determined that several of the documents were good forgeries and others had valid seals. They also discovered a secret compartment in the Little Jack’s dining room. All of the charters were for a spice merchant but various captains, ship names and ports of harbor were listed on the documents. The druid flitted about and eventually joined in with the forgeries. I lost track of where the druid was at one point and thought she was looking over the charters so I rolled a perception check she never intended to make and revealed that her touch smudged the charter ink. The players decided to do nothing with this information so no harm done really. The witch starts making green dye from the seaweed recovered from the seacat and then witnesses Bill and Eunice hold a service for those who died on the Seacat before they light the ship up for a Viking funeral. Watanuki could have said something to stop the funeral if he wanted to explore the wreck more but he decided to stay silent so the Seacat was set alight. The rogue, paladin and the magus all helped crew members ready the ship and the Little Jack was back underway thanks to their efforts.
The party took this chance to interview Bill and ask about the mysterious symbol on his ship. I prodded the crew to share their clues with each other. Fa had had a weird vision when the ghost walked through him, Watanuki had learned the mysterious symbol was associated with the gods (the party already knew it was associated with the primordials) and Ezra had noticed Bill visibly react to the symbol burned onto the ship. The party first took a crack at Fa’s vision. He had seen through the eyes of an eladrin who was holding fire in their hands and ran through a tunnel lined with hooded candle-bearers, each lighting their candle from the eladrin. Finally the eladrin emerged into a large cavern with red dragons painted on every surface and a glowing pit in the center of the room. The eladrin threw her bare flame at a candle suspended from the ceiling and leapt into the pit. The vision ends with the eladrin falling faster and faster as the light in the pit becomes blinding. The players make some knowledge and wisdom checks to recall info or experiences of note. Eva fought in the clan wars and she remembers seeing magic like that being wielded by the fire sages of House Madraska while Watanuki and Rocco suspect the vision was actually composed of memories of a real person but they do not know what it means. At this point the rogue asked who the fire sages were. I groaned this time. We are playing in a custom world which I designed so I made a “little” ok like 20 page primer about the world, races, classes and so on. Now I gave this to the party months ago and I didn’t expect them to read every bit but that was a big thing. The fire sages are right at the center of the clan war which is still ongoing at the time of campaign further south of where the players currently are. Asking who the fire sages are is like asking who the current president is. When my grumbling is over the party decides its time to talk to Bill.
The witch decides to talk to Bill and convinces him to answer some more of the players questions. Convincing the traumatized zombie victim to talk about his recently dead friends, yea that wasn’t easy but I decided his in character dialog was good roleplaying so he got a +2 to charisma based checks. The crew started asking Bill about the symbol on the door of the Seacat infirmary, the fleshless corpse they found there all while testing him with the false credentials of the Seacat. Bill tells the players more about what happened to his crew. After the outbreak happened and most of crew was pretty injured he and the ship’s doctor tried to hold up in the infirmary. The doctor had told Bill not to fight or try to kill the zombies and as Bill was getting ready to barricade the infirmary door the doctor stepped out to carve the symbol. The coo- I mean doctor insisted the symbol would protect them but just as he finished the zombies still loose noticed the doctor and attacked. Yup right here I totally had a brain fart and said cook by accident. Whelp now the players know who to talk to about the first symbol. The doctor did not fight back and Bill watched, paralyzed with fear as the zombies began to eat the doctor alive. Days later Bill got the courage to go out again and managed trick the zombies into a bedroom and locked the door. He then pulled the doctors corpse into the infirmary and barred the door again. After hearing all that the players are no longer suspecting that Bill is a cannibal at least (despite the fact they saw partially used rations in the infirmary). Some of the party was pretty rough with Bill’s questioning and so Bill left them even more depressed than when he started. The adventurers ate, tied up loose ends and went to bed.
In the morning they wake up, reequip and get ready for the day. The rogue hides the drow-poison needle he has in the gecko Sarah gave him as rat bait and goes down to set the trap. When he does he finds Bill lying on his side. Bill isn’t moving so Fa draws his weapons and kicks Bill, nothing happens. Fa calls for help and much of the party and a few crew go down to see what’s up. Bill is dead, holding a bloody dagger and wounds on his chest. What do these wounds look like? The same symbol on the hull of the Little Jack and the infirmary of the Seacat. At this point the magus notices this symbol is slightly different than the one on the Little Jack. The druid’s player assumed I made a mistake and starting adjusting the symbol back to what the symbol on the Little Jack looks like. *groan* Its not a mistake, it’s a clue so I put the symbol back to what I put and remind the party that the symbol on the Seacat looked the same as this one, both have one more dot in the center of the shape than the Little Jack does. Anyway the captain starts asking around as everyone suspects everyone of possibly killing bill. Once again the PC’s are able to clear their names and despite some out of character joking no one is whipped. Fa had the hardest time doing that because he was found standing over the body, weapons drawn, but Bill clearly died in the night and the PC’s are alibied out for that time. Eunice, Fa and Watanuki decide to give Bill an autopsy and become pretty certain Bill died by his own hand. The cook sees the symbol on the body and has a meltdown. Eunice sends the magus to fetch a book from her room which they discover to be a prayerbook. Inside she finds descriptions of cults that revere the gods and primordials. Eunice is convinced the symbol is the mark of such a cult but she can’t be sure which one. The PC’s look for a suicide note but find nothing on Bill’s person. The autopsy also reveals that Bill was very close to death by zombie rot. He had hidden just how bad his condition was, he was one failed save away from undeath. But by killing himself Bill has ensured that he will not become a zombie. In Bill’s bedroll the witch finds a note with “I will not turn” written on it over and over and over again. The captain is given the note and releases it’s a letter. He folds it into an origami crane and it flies away (that is the normal mail system of this world). Bill is given a hero’s funeral and his anointed body is tossed into the sea.
The Little Jack is still limping towards Freeport but a few hours after Bill’s funeral ends the lookout spots something and calls the captain. A few checks later and it is clear the Little Jack is in trouble. Two sloops are coming up on the Little Jack: one starboard, one aft. A few round later another sloop appears ahead of the Little Jack and the crew is really starting to panic. Battle stations are called and the ship prepares for combat. The adventures are told to hold the main deck, they are the only line of defense between the pirates and many critical points of the ship (the ballista, the helm, the stairs to the lower deck (and thus armory)). Hold that ground or lose everything. Long range combat commences but the players do not take part other than the witch who chooses to assist the ballista firing. The ballista isn’t connecting with much but it is harassing the starboard sloop. The sloops return fire and bones held together with netting fly across the ship. The players do very well on their reflex saves and so only the magus is struck and only with 1 of the 3 projectiles. The two bone-nets that hit no one miss the ship entirely and splash into the nearby water. The rogue goes to look at the netting that did land on the deck but it immediately coils up to form a complete skeleton covered in a mishmash of rope. The rogue succeeds a reflex save to avoid entanglement and the battle begins. The skeleton wins initiative with a nat 20 and starts clawing at everyone it can. The players clump around it and start hacking. At one point the paladin, who is not close enough to melee the skeleton decides to bull rush it, moving through the magus’s square. Since he doesn’t not warn the magus the magus is forced to make a reflex save, he fails and falls prone. The bullrush attempt also fails and now the two allies in the same space are considered flatfooted due to their inability to move within the space. The magus manages to crawl out of harms way while the druid and her animal companion move in. The druid wiffs but the animal companion hits, fails to overcome damage reductions and manages to trip itself in a very bad attempt to knock the skeleton prone. The skeleton smacks around but after much flailing it is slain. Meanwhile the first two sloops close to within very close range and grapple onto the ship. None of them manage to get across the lines though and the captain calls for a volley. The rogue and druid cut the boarding line and force a would-be boarder to reflex save to avoid falling which he succeeds. The magus and first mate fire with the captain and suddenly the starboard sloop buckles and falls abruptly behind. The captain had used an arrow fletched with an anchor feather token to suddenly immobilize the sloop. The players were made aware of this object and know that they possess 2 such tokens of their own, though not mounted on arrows. The other two sloops close in and this time the boarders are successful. Two sahaugin pirates and a pair of large crabs scuttle onto the main deck and forecastle and engage the party. The ship the crabs came from had a caster on it. He let 3 sleep spells rip on three consecutive turns and to great effect. We decided to stop the fight here because it was very late and we were all exhausted. I hate stopping mid-combat but we really didn’t have a choice. We are going to have a special make-up session to finish the combat and deal with loot.


Session 4.5: Welcome to Whitefall

This was a makeup session to allow everyone to finish the combat that we started and to tie up some of the loose ends. This session also marks the end of adventure 1; there are plenty of unanswered questions left over from their time on the Little Jack but the players have found their ways to dry land and it’s a whole new game. At the end of last session the adventurers were mid-combat with pirate boarders with at least one enemy spellcaster and a pair of monstrous crabs. Things were not looking good when we stopped: several defenders were asleep, many others were unconscious or close to and more boarders were inbound. First up was Fa. Our rogue had moved up onto the forecastle to defend the ship’s ballista and was locked in battle with a sahaugin pirate. Those two managed to exchange a number of whiffs but Fa had the upper hand and managed to avoid damage. Next up was the druid who brought her scimitar and her animal companion against the two monstrous crabs that had just scuttled onto the ship. Eva hit decently but Otto (her leopard) managed to trip himself and took a few good licks. Rocco was unconscious thanks to a sleep spell and very low on hit points so he could do nothing on his turn. Watanuki stepped into harm’s way to heal Pical next turn while Ezra took his turn switching with the unconscious Rocco so the pirates couldn’t hit their defenseless party member. The pirates were smacking Eva and Watanuki for nonlethal damage and the crabs were smacking Eva and Otto for lethal damage while Ezra was taking rays of frost from the enemy spellcaster. Rhou and Pical (NPCs) withdrew into the party’s room with Rhou standing in the doorway because Pical was at a single hit point. The crewmates who had fled into the belly of the ship returned with some angry sounding creatures in large crates. Ever wonder what happened to those dire rats Fa faced in the brig? Unfortunately a pirate was blocking the stairwell and the crew called up the party to clear the way for them so they could get up onto the deck.
The battle pitched for a few rounds that way but Eva and Otto were flanked so down they went, Rocco took some damage from the enemy spellcaster’s rays and Ezra hit negatives when the pirates ganged up on him. Rhou had blown through her spells, Pical was up a few hit points thanks to Watanuki but things were looking pretty grim for the party. Then the party caught a pair of breaks: Fa brought down his foe with a critical threat and immediately moved down to the main melee at the same time Watanuki was able to get to Ezra with a healing spell which just barely woke up the paladin. On his turn Ezra healed himself and Eva with a pair of lay on hands uses (he rolled poorly for his own lay on hands though) expending the last of his healing to get both of them back on their feet. The crew with the crates are able to get to the main deck and chuck their dire rats onto the enemy vessels. The direrat intended for the sahaugin caster’s ship misses but the other is placed well and suddenly those pirates have to deal with arrows, fire and an angry rat. The rat-bombed ship decided to disengage and abandon its boarding party. Next turn Fa managed to get flanking on a pirate and sneak attack shim into submission while Rocco finally connected with a shocking grasp spell he’d been trying to get off. Ezra and Eva were both hit again but they both had enough hit points and AC to survive that assault and deliver some flanking attacks of their own. A number of the party’s enemies had been fighting at pretty low health so they fell like dominos when the party got its momentum back. The spellcaster and his ship unhooked from the Little Jack decided to make a run for it. Eunice called to Watanuki asking for good luck, the witch obliged with her fortune hex as the first mate shot the last anchor arrow. The arrow was fletched with an anchor feather token and sure enough it flew true, stopping the sloop in her tracks.
The Little Jack came about and prepared to board the sloop but the Sahaugin were already calling surrender. Only Watanuki spoke the brigands’ foul tongue so he translated for the rest of the party. The three sahaugin left on the sloop (an unconscious spellcaster, a sailor and a navigator) claimed that they could be ransomed to their master and that killing them was unnecessary but the party was conflicted. While Rocco and Fa went over to take prisoners, Eva decided she didn’t want prisoners and chucked a shortspear at one of the pirates. She misses, but the sahaugin realize there will be no chance of ransom and immediately dive into the water. Only the enemy spellcaster is still on the ship, Fa and Rocco bind his hands and wake him up. The caster starts in on how he can be ransomed but the party seems disinterested. The party goes into the sloop’s hold and find a few crates and a brig. One of the crates is making noises and the paladin determines that some sort of necromancy is contained within the box. The party opens some of the other boxes first and finds food, rope, sails and clothes. Meanwhile the caster is still upstairs and trying to appeal to Rocco or Watanuki by speaking Abyssal or Yuan Ti alternately. The caster tries to leverage handing over his spellbook for his release and Rocco tells him he is in no position to bargain. The party members downstairs decided to open the necromancy crate and find another of the net-skeletons like those fired at the Little Jack when the pirates first arrived. Before anyone can get a chance to start attacking the spellcaster upstairs says something in abyssal and the skeleton sits back down in its box. The sahaugin caster reminds the party that more ships are coming and appeals to Watanuki this time. The caster offers to lead his fellow raiders in the wrong direction and Watanuki decides to help him, not that any of us know this. When Rocco and Watanuki escort the caster back across the plank to the Little Jack Watanuki pushes Rocco so that he looses his grip on the spell caster and the caster jumps into the water. This particularly pisses off Rocco since he had used his whip to secure the caster (he hadn’t brought rope) but whips make poor bonds so no one was surprised when the whip floated back up. The caster kept his word and told Watanuki where his spellbook was hidden as he was released so Watanuki goes over and retrieves the book as well as Rocco’s whip. The players get the food and rope off the sloop just before the Little Jack hauls anchor and the first mate sets the sloop ablaze.
The same ghost the party ran into on the Seacat appears again, this time the party bothers to ask about it and learns the ghost is clearly an eladrin female. A few knowledge rolls reveal that the ghost must have unfinished business, can only manifest for short periods of time and also that it is incapable of speech. The ghost bows to Eva and passes through her and Fa before disappearing without explanation. Confused but tired party decides its time to take a rest but before they can the Little Jack comes across a large ship which they quickly learn is from the Whitefall (a nearby isle) navy; the captain quickly tells the crew to pretend as though the “captain” was taken by the pirates and to call him quartermaster Nico now. The Little Jack is taken into custody and piloted by eladrin soldiers into an unfamiliar port. and the party is escorted from the docks into a marble palace and eventually brought before the queen. Illyana Tatovich, queen of Whitefall, regent of Greccia, noble fey madam and protector of the realm receives the party and questions them briefly on why they were within her sovereign waters especially while her isle is besieged by the Baron of Blood. When the queen is announced the party kneels, except Rocco who refuses to bow. The queen attempts to compel Rocco to kneel with a finger snap but he manages to roll a good Will save against what the party can only assume was a spell. With a raised brow and smirk the queen gestures to her guards, two of which force Rocco to his knees for the rest of the conversation. When the queen finishes her initial questioning she warns the party to stand very still and snaps her finger again and the party finds themselves teleported into a totally different room.
A quick investigation informs the party that they are in swanky, but otherwise empty accommodations with barred windows and no visible door. The lower level is a large living room with a study, foyer and kitchen attached while the upstairs has 6 small bedrooms and a common bathroom. There are 3 spiral staircases to move between levels but the party finds no easy means of escape. With all of their combat gear disarmed and left on the Little Jack the party is feeling very exposed but find they have no choice but to rest. We end the session here.


Session 5: Trial by Fire

Last session the PC’s had just been “teleported” into a royal apartment and, upon discovering no visible means of escape decided to sleep for the evening. As we opened this session the PC’s were rousing from their sleep, feeling as though they had only just drifted off. The witch had perused the books in the study before going to bed so I showed her player a map of Whitefall at both the city and isle level, reasoning that she would have taken notice of the atlas amongst the books. The witch also made it a point to raid the kitchen looking for turmeric, she still wanted to make the brown dye for Pical and Rhou. She had missed getting the spice from the wreck of the Seacat or by trading on the Little Jack so she was determined not to miss another chance. Our rogue finally washed the blue marker dye off his face while the rest of the party searched the apartment and raided the kitchen for food. Suddenly a scream issued out of the common room (where none of the party was). The party rolled initiative and everyone moved to investigate. The magus was the first in the room and he saw an eladrin woman on the floor and a dark figure standing over her, he closed with the figure and discovered it was an very pale vanara male. The rest of the party burst into the room, but the paladin was the first to move in such a way as to provoke from the vanara if it was hostile, and it was. The vanara was actually a vampire and it took a swipe at Ezra, to no effect, and revealed what it was to Watanuki and Ezra (who were given passive knowledge checks to recognize the vampire for what it was). The party closed in at this point and let loose all their goodies. The eladrin woman begs the party to kill the vampire then passes out. She clearly has bite marks on her neck and has lost blood. The party had been stripped of their backpacks, weapons and other possession, but they did have their armor on still. The rogue drew and activated the liquid blade he had smuggled into the apartment by hiding it somewhere on his body. . . we didn’t ask where. The druid had blown all of her 1st level spells fighting the pirates and without her spellbook (sidenote: all the magic users of this party have a spellbook, I’ll explain in the DM notes) she couldn’t set any new ones. Without her most potent magic on hand she ordered Otto to attack but stayed back herself. The leopard managed to hit the vampire but to no effect, same for the magus who stepped back to loose a ray of frost. The paladin decides to declare his smite on the vampire and whack it with a lay on hands. The vampire hisses as it sizzles under Ezra’s holy energy and Watanuki moves in to heal the eladrin woman, to no apparent effect. Rocco steps back toward the vampire to make a trip attempt but provokes an attack by doing so. The vampire gets its first hit this session and I don’t even roll damage. POOF, Rocco just explodes into a pile of dust. The party is flabbergasted but Ezra charges another lay on hands and Watanuki positions herself to blast a burning hands next round. Fa moves into flanking position and sneak attacks with the liquid blade. Eva moves over to Rocco’s dust pile and orders Otto over to guard it with her. Both Eva and Otto are smacked with attacks of opportunity and get dusted themselves. Meanwhile Rocco finds himself back in the throne room with the queen and her guards. He just woke up from a dream (of fighting the vampire) and is pulled away from the still sleeping party while their “trial” continues. Eva and Otto join Rocco shortly there after and quietly wait to see if the rest of their party will “pass”. Back in the dream Ezra and Fa roll well and smack the vampire down, waking all of the party up.
Upon seeing the remaining party wake up at once the queen gives them a quiet hand of applause. She tells the party they did well to slay the vampire and the trial is over, they are cleared of the charge of treason. The still confused party manages to ask about the eladrin woman they saw, the queen said that the woman died long ago. Watanuki suddenly realizes she still doesn’t have real turmeric and curses the dream. The party also learns that the crew of the Little Jack will be put on a more conventional trial later that day and that the party is expected to give testimony. Until the trial they will be sequestered somewhere safe. The walls of the throne room waiver as a silent image fades and the room is revealed to be substantially larger than it first appeared. Several soldiers who were behind the false walls stepped forward and guided the party to their lodgings. The party chuckles when they arrive at their lodgings, it’s the same apartment they dreamt of, although it does have a door this time. Watanuki is set on checking the real kitchen, for real turmeric, so he can make the brown dye already but when he opens the door he finds someone already inside. The well dressed, pipe smoking seafolk introduces himself as Orland, a barrister assigned to the crew’s case. He is evasive about how he caught this case and interviews the party to see what they might say at the trial. Orland asks the party if there is anything on the Little Jack that “would be best left unfound” and also offers to fetch relatively small items from the Little Jack for a 5% fetcher’s fee if the party wants. Fa tries to haggle him down and Orland retracts his offer to the rogue altogether, saying he’ll get his in 2 days. The party denies any illicit goods and declines his fetching service. The barrister also asks about Captain Finnegan and how he died. The party is totally confused until Rocco remembers that Nico told everyone to start calling him quartermaster, and to claim the captain had died. Orland is disturbed to hear this but subtly suggests that party simply testify about what they heard, rather than what they actually know. The party realizes this barrister is pretty sleazy and Rocco in particular gets pretty hostile and claims he can’t stand lawyers. The whole group chuckles at this, Rocco’s player is a lawyer in real life. Orland gives the party a heads up that there are penalties for perjury and takes his leave.
The party reflects on Orland’s words and Fa declares he is particularly anxious to get his thieves tools back from Nico. Shortly there after the trial begins the party is called in to give testimony. The prosecution and the defense are each given 2 lines of questioning to open. They call for the first witness and Ezra jumps into the witness stand, which is a sturdy chair with straps for immobilizing ones arms, legs and waist. The bailiff asks if Ezra has even seen a chair of truth before to which Ezra says no. The bailiff puts a bucket on Ezra’s lap and the questioning begins. Prosecution goes first and asks Ezra about Captain Finnegan. Ezra flatly states he does not know a captain Finnegan, and reveals that Nico was the captain of the ship. Orland objects to the witness’s statement but the chair of truth hasn’t acted up so the magistrate (aka judge) moves on. Orland declines to question Ezra so Fa gets in the chair next. Orland questions Fa about the Seacat and what happened there and he reveals the story of Bill, the survivor of the Seacat, and his eventual death. Fa also refers to the Seacat as the Albatross (which he knows is from one of the forged charters and thus false) and, after a failed will save, starts vomiting into the bucket in his lap. The prosecution asks Fa about his blue stained face (which he realizes he only washed off in the dream) and he is somewhat evasive but finally admits to picking a locked door. This leads to questioning about the urns in the ship but Fa does not provide conclusive evidence as he cannot be certain who owns the urns or what is inside them. Fa is remanded on the charge of perjury and Orland suggests that the paladin’s statement is also suspect given this party’s proclivity for lying. Next up is Eva who is questioned by the prosecution about looting the Seacat and what was recovered from it. See makes several statements that aren’t true regarding who actually took things from the ship but rolls very well and avoids puking. In Eva’s version of the story, the party cleared the ship but the looting was carried out by the Little Jack’s crew. Eva is also questioned about the urns on the ship but she claims to know nothing about them. Orland then questions Eva about the possessions in the room and implicates the party in the possession of illegal goods (poisons) and once again tries to discredit unfavorable testimony. Next up is Rocco who is questioned by Orland about the valor of the crew and leads Rocco to telling the story of how Eunice risked life and limb to bring a healing potion to the party at a critical moment. The prosecution gets nothing useful from Rocco (who technically never lies) and thus the prosecution and defense rests. Watanuki is called forth by the magistrate to shed light on the mysterious symbol on the deck of the ship. Watanuki explains that the symbol is believed to be protective and tells the magistrate about its occurances on the Seacat and Bill’s body. The magistrate pushes Watanuki to name a likely suspect for creating the symbol but Watanuki reasons that he does not have conclusive proof, he cannot rule out the sahaugin raiders from suspects. The magistrate then questions Fa about his perjury and determines, given the nature of the Seacat’s charters, he might have triggered the chair’s magic inadvertently and only assesses him a 50gp fine before releasing him.
The party is excused while the rest of the trial continues and eventually the party is recalled so that Ezra can participate in trial by combat. Ezra provided the most damning evidence and all of it directed towards Nico who demanded the right to face his accuser. The magistrate tells Ezra that he may withdraw his claim, at a legal penalty, but otherwise the combat will commence. Ezra refuses to back down and steps into the arena. Both Ezra and Nico decline the option to try to get a champion to fight for them so they are stripped of their armor and handed daggers. Nico wins initiative and charges Ezra. He hits Ezra for decent damage but Ezra chooses to smite Nico (using it in the dream didn’t count for actual use) and starts swinging for pretty heavy damage. They exchange blows for a few turns but Ezra is healing himself with lay on hands and getting a clear advantage. Nico makes a gambit to disarm Ezra and succeeds despite Ezra’s attack of opportunity thanks to his special training. Ezra is totally unfazed and punches Nico right in the face. Nico misses his attack of opportunity and goes down to unconsciousness. Ezra retrieves his dagger and looks at the magistrate for orders. The magistrate calmly states that Ezra is not required to kill Nico but he can without legal penalty. If spared, Nico would be tossed in prison but might cut a deal to work for his freedom. Ezra turns back to Nico and delivers a coup de grace while the court audience gasps. Ezra’s dagger is taken and his armor returned as the party is escorted from the palace. The court finishes its administrative matters and hours later the party is released from sequester.
Royal soldiers escort the party back to the Little Jack so they can get their things back. The party finds their room has been tossed and the large bag of gems they recovered from the Seacat is gone and their vials of poisons have been emptied. The party is not permitted to search the rest of the ship and so they grab their things and leave, but not before Fa reminds the soldiers to check the secret compartment in the dining room out of spite. As the party leaves the ship, Watanuki notices someone watching them from a lower deck porthole but she says nothing and the party moves into the wharf district. The party splits at this point, Ezra and Rocco find an inn for the party to sleep in while Watanuki, Eva and Fa go towards the customs house to see if they can retrieve any of their belongings that might have been seized by the crown. Ezra and Rocco ask around about inns in the area, stating they are looking for a modest, but safe, place to sleep for the evening. The pair are directed to the Grinning Cat, a popular tavern in the wharf district, and make their way there. They arrive without incident but are turned away from the bar by a bouncer for being so heavily armed and are directed around back to purchase a room. Around back the party meets a clerk who arranges for the party to have 3 rooms, one of them pet friendly and the pair are given a single key to each room. Rocco and Ezra both go into one room and drop off their things. Rocco decides to sleep for the evening (so he can reset his spells) and the stash is left with him. Ezra decides to disarm himself and return to the bar where he drinks a few ales.
Meanwhile Fa, Eva and Watanuki go towards the customs house and come the to walled edge of the compound. An agent is summoned to speak to them and they inquire about items recovered from the Little Jack. Fa is intent on getting his thieves tools but the agent informs them that nothing fitting that description was taken from the ship. The agent did have several large urns listed as coming from the Little Jack though. Fa and Eva attempt to claim these urns and are immediately placed under arrest. Given that the content of urns came up during the trial it wasn’t surprising that anyone claiming to want the urns was detained for questioning. The pair were briefly interrogated while Watanuki shook her head disappointedly. Fa and Eva admitted that they did not have any right to claim the urns and thus they were set free after being made to pay fines of 1gp each. Watanuki tries to see if the gems might have been seized but he learns the customs house is not holding any gems. This whole time the customs agent (who has a weird slurping tick) has been flirting with Eva and she start reciprocating. The trio ask about the purple dahlia and the agent offers to bring them there at the end of his shift. The trio decide to wait for the agent and an hour later they make their way into the city’s fey quarter. The shop Orland had mentioned was an unassuming basement shop but the agent insisted it was the right one. Fa and Watanuki moved down to go into the store while Eva went home with the agent. Fa and Watanuki knock on the shop’s door and see an eladrin woman come to the door, see them and immediately pull down the shade. Fa and Watanuki start shouting through the door that they would like to conduct some business and that they are looking for some lock picking tools if possible. The woman inside shouts for them to go the f*** away and loudly draws a blade. Fa and Watanuki realize the woman might have been a friend of Nico’s and decide they have no interest in fighting her. Disappointed and frustrated the rogue and witch return to the Grinning Cat. Eva follows the customs agent home which is a small studio apartment his mother only just moved out of. Eva and the agent spend the evening together and in the end he gives her a silver piece to “take a coach home”. Eva gets lost for awhile but finally makes her way to the Grinning Cat where Fa and Watanuki have already joined Ezra and the sleeping Rocco. The party decides its time to go to bed and passes out. We end the session here.

[Gimmedasummons]

Session 6: Don't Feed the Hobos

This was our first session with a player absent. Watanuki’s player could not make it, so he left instructions for Rocco’s player to take over for him. We started with the party waking up in the Grinning Cat to the knock of innkeep. Rocco answered his door and the innkeep informed him that the captain of the guard was looking for the party, saying something about a job for them. The innkeep said he would keep an eye out for the party. Rocco is pleased and thanks the innkeep with a silver for both the information and his discretion. The rest of the party is roused and equips for the day. The party discusses what to do about their things and sleeping arrangement but ultimately decides to pay for another night at the Grinning Cat. Fa and Ezra both expressed an interest in finding an armorer to commission some work so the party set off to find a good smithy before swinging by the palace to see what the captain of the guard wanted. After some asking about and wandering the party determined that they should go to Brassworks, the city’s premiere smith. Upon arriving at Brassworks the party introduced themselves to Cedric, an avora and master smith of the forge. Ezra ordered a chainmail suit while Fa ordered a second wakizashi. Cedric took both orders and offered rush service on them if the players were willing to pay extra but they declined. Cedric explained the shop was inundated with orders so the chainmail would be ready in 3 days and the wakazashi would be ready 4 days after that. Satisfied Fa and Ezra paid the first half upfront for their orders. Eva had taken notice of a scythe on display within the shop and purchased it immediately. Cedric also offered to buy Ezra’s old armor at 60% value when the chainmail was done.
The party decided it was time to see the captain of the guard and investigate his offer of work. The party approached the royal palace but found the gates closed and guarded. The party presented itself to the guards and explained they had come to answer the captain’s summons. The guard dispatched an origami crane to the palace and quickly received a response that the captain would see them within the hour. The guard would escort them to the captain’s chambers when the time came. The party had no interest in waiting for a hour so they began discussing where to go. Because they were still in front of the gates the guard overheard them and suggested that the public park was nearby. The party asked if the guard could provide them with a map and he offered them a noble’s map for 1gp. The party was all too happy to purchase and handed over the cash eagerly. The map not only showed a vague outline of the city it also listed some of the most reputable shops in the city. The party took a particular interest in the Greenleaf Teahouse, the local companion’s guild. The teahouse was close enough to the palace that the party decided to go there and see what was happening. As a companion herself Eva was intent on seeing what she could learn from her “sisters” while Ezra was excited to hire out a few girls. Fa took this time to roll an appraise check on Eva to see how much she might be to hire. Turns out she is worth about 15 silvers a tumble, Fa suggested he might rent her by the week when the time comes. While the rest of the party facepalmed they made it to the teahouse. The establishment was a sprawling building assembled from several pavilions and rice-paper walls. Upon stepping through the front entrance the party was greeted by a Naga woman who asked if they were interested in tea and offered to seat them. The woman was well aware of who the party was and turned her nose up at Eva claiming “there are no druid-companions here” and that the party had made quite a splash upon arrival (hinting at Nico’s death). Fa then expressed an interest in getting a cup of tea, asking for the one of the best teas money could buy. “Ah you must be looking for white jade tea” the naga said smiling, but Fa baulked at the 50gp price. The party attempted some knowledge nature checks to determine if white jade would be beneficial to them but only learned that the tea was derived from a local and common flower. Fa declined the tea, to the woman’s obvious surprise, but she quickly recomposed herself and reminded the party of their cheaper teas as well as the companions in the backrooms. The party decided they had best be moving on so they thanked the woman and returned to the palace.
Back at the palace the party was ushered through the gates and up to one of the guard tower ward rooms where the captain of the guard awaited them. The party instantly recognized the captain as the prosecutor from Nico’s trial. The captain greeted the party warmly and explained that he had a job in mind for them. He explained his men were stretched thin dealing with the city’s swelling numbers of refugees and constant threat of attack by the Baron’s forces. To that end he wanted the party to investigate the disappearance of one of his patrols. A pair of guards were sent to patrol a condemned city block but had failed to return at the end of their watch last night. The party was asked to find out what happened to the patrol and clear any vagrants/riffraff squatting within the block. Additionally the captain had several pieces of mail addressed to the party which he distributed, recommending that the party find themselves a keystone (so that origami mail could be sent to them directly). The party “remembered” that keystones were specially crafted inkwells that enchanted the ink they contained to animate paper into origami cranes. Such cranes could be set to fly towards specific keystones for actual delivery. If the party wanted a keystone of their own they could buy on from the postmaster or from any sundry store. The party said they would get back to the captain about taking the job; he said he would leave a key to the city block with the guard who escorted them in case they accepted. The party exited to the palace courtyard and opened their mail. Eva answered hers first and unfolded the fancy black paper with silver ink. Her message was an invitation to an audience with ambassador Kiyo at his embassy for a job offer, the message clearly stated that the party would be under diplomatic protection their entire time within the embassy. Next was Fa who noticed his mail was heavy and jiggled when shook. Everyone took a step away from him as he unfolded his letter. Inside were a few pieces to a thieves tools set and the anonymous letter claimed that if Fa was willing to pull a heist he could earn the other pieces to the set. Next up was the letter jointly addressed to Rocco and Watanuki. Rocco unfolded the letter to a coded message.
“Birds of a feather always stick together right? You will hear from us again, don’t forget our dye.”
The party agreed the message must have been from Pical and Rhou, the other passengers of the Little Jack, who broke out of the palace a few days earlier for reasons unknown. Last up was Ezra who unfolded an quick and messy scrawl warning that if he would pay for what he did. It also said that if Ezra wanted to keep that head of he would have to work for it. More instructions to follow. At this point Ezra noticed a large tattoo suddenly appear on his right hand and a tiny spider jumping away from the new tattoo. He did his best to stomp the spider but it was extremely small and decently fast so he lost it quickly. The tattoo was of a black spider and appeared on both the palm and back of Ezra’s hand. The party collectively scratched their heads at this, only determining that he had been magically marked and that the caster and the person who hired the caster (if applicable) could remove the mark. Some people will be able to detect the mark even through solid objects and it could be used as criteria for scrying. No one in the party was trained in history so they did not know what the symbol might have been used for in other places but Ezra said he knows a black spot when he sees one. He has been marked for death.
The party is disturbed by Ezra’s mail but can’t think of anything to do about it so they decide to see Kiyo. Although his letter included directions to the embassy the party decides to ask the guard how to get to the embassy. The guard is visibly disgusted that the party would even go there. The party asks him what is so upsetting and they learn that Kiyo is the Baron of Blood’s personal envoy to Whitefall. The party is at first split about whether to go or not. They are fully rested but the idea of meeting a vampire’s henchman, even with the promise of protection, is too unappealing. They decide to accept the captain’s job, mind you never having asked how much they are getting paid, and get the key from the guard. Once they hit the street the party heads for the canal street ward, the condemned block, and unlock the poorly erected barrier. Many of the buildings within the block are partially, if not completely, destroyed by fire and ash litters the street. The party first investigates a semi-intact bistro with Fa leading the way, checking for traps on almost every door and never finding a one. The party sneaks about the ruined building and within the banquet hall come under attack from a big snake. Fa was first through the door and takes the first hit, though he manages to avoid getting poisoned, and the rest of the group filters in. It’s a quick fight and the snake doesn’t stand a chance against the party’s front line. Once the snake goes down the party sorts through the room and finds some silver cutlery. Fa manages to pry out one of the snake’s fang (but made no attempt to recover the venom sacs attached to it and thus ruined them) but Watanuki manages to get a dose of venom out of the other fang. The party searches the rest of the bistro but does not encounter any further creatures. In the lounge area Rocco finds nothing but Fa notices something metallic in the rubble near the fireplace. Fa determines it is the scabbard to a very nice rapier and starts looking for its matching blade. In the end he locates a masterwork rapier, a masterwork katana and the katana’s scabbard in a fancy coat of arms. The party wonders who’s coat of arms it is but without the right knowledge skills they don’t have a prayer of learning.
The party is satisfied with the bistro and decides to move down to the large yard at the opposite end of the block. They notice a ruined mansion with very overgrown hedges on the opposite side of the street but decide to investigate the yard first. Fa scouts ahead and sees a few people sitting around a firepit, he climbs the fence but he is spotted and climbs back over to see the party. Rocco offers to use his illusion magic to make it appear like there are a large number of soldiers with the party if things go sideways but the party suspects that the people in the yard are not a big threat. Meanwhile the people in the yard have been yelling for the party to show themselves or leave as that this yard is already theirs. The party decides to walk through one of the yard’s gates and meet the people in the yard head on. When the party entered the yard they saw four people, in ratty clothes and holding primitive clubs, along with the patchwork tents and bedrolls of a homeless camp. The paladin stepped forward and told the homeless that the party had been hired to clear the block and that all within must relocate. One of the homeless speaks up asking where exactly should they go, with no money, no work, no prospects. The party learns the four homeless are refugees, driven from their homes by the baron and seeking shelter in the unforgiving city. Ezra does not seem sympathetic, although he clearly told the party earlier had no desire to kill any homeless people they might find if he could avoid it. Eva speaks up at this point and offers the refugees 3 gold pieces so that they might find a place to rest their heads in the meantime. The refugees happily take the money with a “bless you my druid lady”. As the refugees begin packing their meager belongings they warn the party that the area across the street is claimed by someone else and that none of the refugees they know who entered ever returned.
Once the party see the refugees leave the yard they investigate the area, finding little of value but noticing that the rose bushes are being parasitized by a carnivorous plant. Watanuki goes to take a sample of both but is exposed to a puff of pollen. Though feeling slightly drowsy Watanuki stays on his feet and the party decides its time to go across the street to see what the hedged row might hold. The party finds the gate ajar and take cover behind the hedges while peering into the yard. Suddenly another burst of pollen goes off and Rocco is out cold. The hedges writhe as two plant creatures emerge and start raining sleep pollen and acidic stings down on the party. Rocco, Watanuki, Eva and Otto all push through the gates and try to flank the plants while Fa and Ezra keep the pressure on. Everyone falls asleep at one point and both Fa and Rocco have the misfortune of being feed on while asleep, each taking constitution damage thanks to the blood loss. Meanwhile the party hears something chittering and clicking from further in the yard but thinks nothing of it. Fa is caught on the street side of the plants while the rest of the party has entered the yard. The plants send out another burst of pollen and Ezra goes down, but Fa and Otto drop one of the plant creatures right after. At this point the party sees a swarm of rats round the corner of the mansion and barrel into the party. Eva, Rocco, Watanuki and Watanuki’s (still nameless) fox suddenly find themselves covered in filthy biting rats and several of them start vomiting on the spot. Most of the party is disabled at this point but Fa keeps beating at his plant creature while Eva casts produce flame to start roasting some rats. Otto is ordered to attack Ezra and that wakes the paladin back up. Watanuki and his fox fail to save again and continuing vomiting until the swarm drops them both unconscious. Rocco manages to get free and casts shocking grasp but can’t land a good hit on the swarm, Ezra is now awake enough to smack the remaining plant creature and he, along with Fa, are able to finally drop the last plant. Meanwhile the rest of the party is in bad shape, Otto is can’t understand Eva’s last command before the swarm drops her into unconsciousness and plunges Watanuki and his a fox a round from death. At the last second Rocco is able to finally drop his shocking grasp into the swarm, causing it to disperse. Ezra just barely manages to wake Eva who then heals Watanuki back to consciousness. Watanuki has the healing hex so she patches up the entire party, including her fox. Though the party is injured they are out of immediate danger even if it cost Eva and Ezra all of their magic for the day. Rocco and Watanuki are substantially drained as far as their magic goes so the party decides its time to head home. After they stuff their faces in the Grinning Cat’s tavern the party has Eva give long term care to the party and they pass out. We end here.

Session 7: Spider Spider

The party woke up the next day, most of their hurt patched and set out for a little shopping before returning to the Canal St Ward to complete their mission there. Before the group split up to attend to some errands they go downstairs and talk to Dimitri, the innkeep, and decided to rent out their rooms for the week. Ezra and Rocco decided to make their way to a sundry store so they could purchase some keystones for the mail system. Upon entering the store, Rocco was greeted by a heavily accented tiefling who immediately starts peddling wares to him. Toni, the shop owner, took a liking to Rocco right away but was suspicious of Ezra, telling the lizard to watch himself. In the end Toni ended up selling 5 keystones to the party but fails to get them to purchase anything else. At that point he tells Ezra he’s not long for this world and starts offering him his most expensive liquors so he can go out with a bang. Meanwhile Stella, another tiefling and proprietor of the bakery across the street, comes over to see what’s up. The clearly pregnant tiefling is carrying a delicious smelling pie and insists that they should come over to her far nicer store. Toni points out Ezra’s mark to Stella who then spits on Ezra’s palm and forehead for protection. Stella then proclaims she can make a great funeral cake, a very tasty and very classy one, and that she would be happy to cater Ezra’s funeral when the time comes. Meanwhile Fa followed the map in his letter to a dead-drop in the wharf district with a leather pouch tucked into a dumbster. Inside the pouch was a pair of grappling hooks, a map of the customs house and a note giving instructions to steal urns from within the house. The note warned that the urns would have an alarm on them and gave instructions to bring them to a location within the merward. Fa took all of these items and returned to the inn. Watanuki stayed behind with the sleeping Eva (who had spent part of the night staying up to give long term care to the party) and continued working on crafting her bone necklace.
After they reunited the party roused Eva and headed back to the canal street ward to finish their work there. The party unlocked the barricades once more and picked up their search where they left off, starting with returning to the ruined mansion where they encountered the sleeping plants and the rat swarm. They went around back where the swarm came from and found a few piles of trash with the occasional rat scurrying in and out of them. The party looked the nests over but after some prodding at it with their weapons they decided not to search them for fear of awakening another swarm. Fa steped up to search the stairs and front door of the mansion but found no traps so the party entered the largely ruined first floor. The party searched around for valuables but the fire consumed almost everything here and caused the upper floors to collapse onto the next property. The party did find some brass candelabras and Watanuki decided to keep one. The party then moved down into the basement with Fa and Eva first. The basement was made of stone so it was somewhat protected from the fire and had a few boxes of miscellaneous possessions which have survived. Fa and Eva see a glowing figure in the room, an eladrin male with burn marks on his face and body. “There was a fire,” the apparition said, staring blankly at Fa “I think there was a fire.” Eva asked the ghost if there was anything she could do for him. “Get out of my house.” The apparition said, his body beginning to glow with ethereal flame. Eva and Fa decide its time to get back up to rest the party and the ghost begins to follow them. Watanuki and Ezra put their heads together and determine that the ghost is probably a death omen, a territorial spirit but not a vengeful one. Death omens do not feed on lifeforce like angry spirits but they can recreate their cause of death in others. While the party is discussing this the ghost starts insisting they leave and telekinetically shoves Fa out onto the front yard when Fa taunts him about his death. The rest of the party is impressed with this display of power and decides to leave the house. Rocco and Fa mock ghost again and have to quickly move aside as the ghost tries to get a telekinetic grip on them again. The ghost shouts for them to get off his lawn but makes no attempt to follow them further so the party leaves.
The party starts looking through the other apartments, Ezra and Rocco notice someone moving on the rooftop but they appear to be moving away from the party so the party moves on. They keep searching a few empty apartments but find few things of worth until they try to search one of the apartments and Fa accidentally sets off a spiked pit trap. Ezra was within the trap’s radius as well but he managed to step away in time while the rogue tumbled onto the spikes. Fa took a spike straight to the chest but he stayed conscious and noticed two bodies in the trap with him. These bodies did not respond to Fa’s fall or prodding with a rapier, much to the party is relief. Fa clamors out of the pit and the party hoists the bodies out to look them over. The bodies are both wearing chain shirt and bear official seals of the Whitefall guard. The party searches the body but finds nothing other than a handful of coins and the two spears in the pit still. Now the party is in a pickle: the door to the apartment is locked and a spiked pit open in front of it. The party starts looking for first floor windows but all of the buildings windows start on the second floor at least as far as they see so they decide to check around back. The back is the same story, no first floor windows but the party does notice some gardening lattice. Fa grabs his grappling hook and rope and scales up to a second story window. Fa stealthily looks in the window but see no one in the room so he opens the window and lowers the rope for the others. Fa is first into the room and finds evidence someone was living there recently but all that is left behind is a ruined tent and a few jade coins. The rest of the part (except Otto who has no way to get up) scrambles up into the apartment and begins checking the other rooms. In one of the bedrooms the party found a few pieces of minor art but it is clearly the work of an artist still in training. Another of the bedrooms is extremely cold when Fa opens the door. When he steps in to investigate it he gets blasted with cold that seems to drain the life out of him and he sees something rustle under the bed. Fa steps back and the party calls out if anyone is there but get no answer. They stare in but can’t see anything moving within the room and detect magic finds no auras. They can think of a few creatures and spells that could cause that kind of cold but see no further evidence of either. The party closes the door to the room and decides to move on for now. The party heads downstairs and notices things are very cold down there too. Ezra decides to investigate the fireplace and gets blasted with some cold of his own as the ashes rustle inside the fireplace. Watanuki heals Ezra and Fa with her hex while Ezra uses a lay on hands on himself. The party decides to regroup on the second floor again and Ezra lights a torch. The bed start rustling again and the temperature drops. Ezra puts out his torch while Rocco has an idea and takes up position at the edge of the room, firing a ray of frost at the bed. There is a sick sounding curdling as the room becomes noticeably warmer. Rocco goes downstairs and repeats the process on the fireplace and sees a strange moss peel off some of the bricks. Watanuki then has a revelation that brown mold is a fungus which feeds on heat, it probably grew up during the fire to infest this portion of the house. The party considers trying to harvest some of the fungus to weaponize it but ultimately rethink their decision and leave the house.
The party went on to search the next apartment but found the gate chained shut and the lock smashed enough that picking it would be impossible. The party hears some chittering from behind them and Ezra’s spider mark starts to throb. As the party starts looking around and they notice an archer on the roof and a spider swarm amassing behind them while Eunice emerges from one of the apartment gates. Ezra taunts Eunice and she challenges him to step forward and “face the judgement” for his sins. Fa wins initiative and he starts scrambling towards the roof, the archer shoots at Ezra and Eunice hits Ezra with a tanglefoot bag. Ezra manages to avoid getting stuck to the ground and is able to scrape the goo off himself. The swarm moves in to attack but Eunice demonstrates she can control it and she challenges the paladin once more to single combat. The paladin accepts and tells the party to back off as Eunice snaps her fingers, causing Ezra’s spider mark to pulse with painful black lightning. Eunice draws her longsword and taunts Ezra, calling him the servant of a usurper king. Ezra and Rocco both realize that Eunice is a worshipper of Graegus, the god of wrath who was replaced by Dravos (Ezra’s patron diety) as king of the gods. Eunice charges Ezra and puts a nasty gash in his side but he cannot get through her armor. The rest of the party begrudgingly watches as the duelists trade blows, and while Ezra is still on his feet he is having to use his lay on hands just to stay up. Ezra finally lands a hit on Eunice and notices that she is covered in some sort of illusion although she is not made entirely of illusion. As Ezra is starting to falter and his smite fizzles Rocco asks him if he is still sure he wants to keep the fight up but the paladin reassures the party that he will not have anyone die for him. Next round “Eunice” smacks Ezra down into negatives and Rocco shouts to Eunice that she got what she wanted it so she should leave. Eunice looks at Rocco but says nothing moving in to take a coup de grace on Ezra. Watanuki was prepared to cast on Eunice if she went for a killing blow and her sleep spell goes off, dropping Eunice to the floor. Immediately the archer and swarm take their prepared actions to shot Watanuki and for the swarm to moves in to attack Watanuki and Rocco. Rocco tries to retaliate with a shocking grasp but he can’t hit anything. Fa scrambles up onto the roof and draws his weapons to threaten the archer. The archer takes a shot at Ezra but he can’t connect and Eva orders Otto to attack Eunice while she moves in as well. The party groans that it’s a terrible tactical choice but its too late. Otto and Eva hit Eunice for a pittance (and recognize that she has an illusion on her) but Eunice wakes up and on her turn stands up, snapping her fingers to damage Ezra with black lightning again. Watanuki hits the swarm with a burning hands but scorching the swarm isn’t enough to bring it down. On its turn the swarm moves in to attack Ezra, Eva and Otto; Ezra falls deep into the negatives and can’t take another hit. Rocco moves in and connects with his shocking grasp, scattering a portion of the swarm and moving next to “Eunice”. Watanuke uses his sling staff to whack Eunice and she is definitely looking worse for wear. Fa hits the archer who withdraws away from him at top speed. Eva and Otto keep beating on Eunice but can’t make anything stick. The swarm attacks again and finish Ezra off while Otto starts vomiting. Rocco realizes that Eunice has an illusion over her and blasts her with a color spray, the archer disengages and takes off at top speed. Eunice is stunned and blind so she cannot do anything meaningful this turn. Eva and Otto hit Eunice and Fa scrambles down to the rest of the party. Eunice wakes up and commands the swarm to become a meat shield for her but it doesn’t matter, the party wails on her and down she drops into negatives. Watanuki halfheartedly stabilizes her and the party determines the illusion is coming from an object on her head. They remove what appears to be a hat of disguise from the woman as they strip her down and are shocked to discover she is a yuan ti. The yuan ti are mortal enemies of the people of Nerath (at least as a society) and they do not operate openly in imperial lands.
Having bound the yuan ti securely the party sends Watanuki to fetch some guards to help them transport their new prisoner to the palace for interrogation. The captain of the guard meets with the party again and they tell him about his lost guards as well as the ghost they encountered. The captain was troubled by the death of his men and seemed genuinely upset that Ezra died as well. He asked the party what they knew about the yuan ti and upon learning she demonstrated magical powers he has both of her hands broken (specifically fingers too) and has her gagged in case she awakens sooner than expected. Fa decides to show the captain the letter he received and told him about the orders to steal the urns. Rocco and Watanuke are visibly appalled but the captain takes the letter and promises to do something about this troubling news. The captain says he will pay for Ezra’s funeral and rewards the party for completing their mission with gold and a gem. Ezra is at peace with his death so he passes to the next life without attempting to cling on as a ghost. The surviving party takes his gear and returns to their rooms in somber silence. So we have a rogue who loves the law, a druid with a flock of grateful hobos, a paladin who was just eaten alive by spiders and a pair of tieflings who are trying to avoid attention though all of that. What could possibly go wrong.

[Gimmedasummons]

Here is our party roster, I'll keep it updated as characters are brought into or out of the fold.

Current Members:

Watanuke: a Phoenix bound, 2nd level Witch. Tiefling of unknown gender.

Watanuke's fox familiar. No name or gender yet but I want a female named Vix. We'll see.

Rocco: a Phoenix bound, 2nd level Magus. Male Tiefling.

Eva: a Fairy bound, 2nd level Druid. Female Seafolk.

Otto: Eva's male leopard animal companion.

Fa: a Will-o-wisp bound, 2nd level Rogue. Male Vanara.

Ezra's replacement: a 2nd level Bard.


NPC Hirelings and Allies:

-None Yet

Former Members:

Ezra: a 2nd level Paladin of Dravos. Male Avora. Killed by a yuan ti assassin.