It's another day before Kharmlund once again begins play, and I continue to be extremely late on my session reports. This session report in particular is for a session from almost exactly two weeks ago, but I just haven't had the time or interest in updating it. Mostly it's the fact that I didn't get the map for the players updated at this time.
Anyway, Kharmlund 5: Loredumping and Munchkinery.
Our Players...
Ildaberd played by anon.
Turk played by anon.
Talci, played by my girlfriend.
Nibbles - DMPC
Lemmy - DMPC.
Begin
The party began by assembling as they do. Carousing tables all, and mostly bad things. Talci's absence was explained by being turned into a pig for the last two months and now a little annoyed at the whole affair. Turk accidentally burned down a tavern, and Ildaberd joined a spider cult.
Fun.
They also were joined by Nibbles and Lemmy, Nibbles dressed well and about the same as before, and Lemmy now kitted out like he'd been reading the Byzan equivalent of Soldier of Fortune Magazine, so picture equipment with too many slots, useless ornamentation on the hilts of weapons, things like that. His entire loot spent, he needed to go back in there. Guy needed to get himself, I dunno, a scope for his crossbow he was definitely going to buy one day.
Into Kharmlund
Party made it to Kharmlund just fine, and then decided to forgo much searching and to look for an entrance to "Newforge", the bastion of Byzan power in here since the forges fell. And they didn't have to look far, since they'd accidentally found an entrance (near the spider orb of hell room, just south and a little bit west from the tiny goblin brewery) to the underground settlement.
Traveling there without issue, the party were accosted by guards hiding behind false walls, spears pointed at them like a thicket. They explained they were adventurers and that they'd heard Yoki, the Legate of Newforge was looking for skilled adventurers, and such.
After some discussion, they were allowed in, warned they'd be getting watched by the Vulpes- the Wolves, think secret police, elite scout, etc of the Byzan army, but could explore freely.
I've provided a map of Newforge below. The party, before running into anything resembling the Legate's quarters, found a fairly squat, bunk-heavy area of underground rooms filled with working peasantry, grim soldiers, quiet slaves, busy workers. They found evidence of piped in running water, free to anyone who needed, and they found evidence of, at the very least, semi-frequent cropcrowing, although very similar to the kind of fare you'd see in Dwarf Fortress. The Arin-Vosdht(Orcs) were getting used to mushrooms, it seems!
And then off they went to Yoki's quarters. Yoki is, despite being the head of a primarily Orcish settlement, as the Byzan empire are Orcs, a human male fighter, the chaddiest of race/class combos. Yoki lives in a very, very nice place and it's right next to a heavily guarded door, and among a massive pile of treasure, magic items, and Kharmlundian curios. A friendly chap, he took the invitation more seriously and assumed the party was there for some free citizenship in the (still, for now, who knows) largest Empire there was and ever had been.
Now it's important to understand why a human would simp for the Byzan, and why that's so odd. Here's some facts about the great Byzan empire.
When they conquer an area, they typically rename the people from whatever they call themselves, to a version of themselves in their own tongue. So the Dwarves are called Basht-Vodsht, or, "Mountain-Men" and so on. Most people chafe under this, but they really chafe under the nightmare construct known as the Byzantown, which is a multicultural society free of hate*, in these places, the various peoples are placed, given jobs, educations (careers typically useful to Byzan military needs like engineers) and stripped of useful identities. Voshdt(people) are typically allowed to choose parts of their own leader, but make no mistake, every Byzantown is run by a Legate(military governor, basically), which reports directly to the people in the Capitals of Arin, the homelands of the Orcs. That's not a typo, there's been some issues on where the real centers of power are, now that the forges have fallen.
Yoki is the first human Legate, and he earned this position by leading a hundred and twenty five Arin-Vosdht survivors: slaves, plebs, patricians, etc from the smoking ruins of the qephom forge as it was cursed five years ago. He took them to Kharmlund, and helped settle it, keep it safe, and organized, and was generally well-liked enough that the Patricians finally decided that race-gating(in this one instance) the levers of power was maybe not the vibe, as the zoomers say.
Yoki is understandably one of the first people to actually benefit from more than the cleanliness, law and order (cue Life of Brian scene here) and actually see his ambition rewarded, and he's full-on on the Empire train now. He expects that this crisis will end, the forges will be un-cursed, and a new, changed empire will lead the Voshdt of the world into a new empire.
The party almost unanimously decided he's a retard, so I may have not done a good job of showing that Yoki does have a point, since, if a system rewards you immensely, even if it sucks, you tend to support the system. When asked about the Forgecursing, Yoki had no information for the party. He was there, shit went bad almost instantly, and the few scraps of information he could muster means that it's world(when Yoki says world, he means Empire) wide. There is also talk of an "invasion" far to the north, from beyond the icewalls that, as legend tell, sealed around the lands that are known. Who knows? The point is, help isn't coming, and Yoki is looking to become the help for everyone else. This empire isn't dead yet damn it, and even if he has to declare himself Khulmar(Emperor) well he um haha nevermind that last part.
He gave them more information on the various other major factions that populate Kharmlund.
First, there's Kurhgan, the Bandit king. He definitely is the guy resetting and laying new traps everywhere, and he does want any and all magical items. An attempt to raid him with a war party lead to what I described to the players as "dungeon vietnam". The guy is entrenched and only his men know the tripwires. Killing Kurgan and bringing back his head? That's how you get the massive treasure hoard he had in his quarters.
Ratmen are an unknown. They swarm and they attempted to destroy the Newforge once. The attack lasted nearly half a year, with seemingly endlessly replensished chittering ratmen swarming but also literally incapable of learning tactics of any kind whatsoever. But the endless numbers worked against them under a Vulpes agent was able to turn them against each other - with absurd ease, I might add, and the attack fell apart in hours.
The tainted area is a nightmare hellzone. Every single faction, as far as Newforge knows, has sealed it off in some form or fashion. It's filled to the brim with moon-haunted, people cursed into the mad slaves of Lund, the moon(the moon is evil in this setting). There's been attempts to purge it - these have never worked. They take prisoners. Those prisoners then show up as more moon haunted. It's a problem. They can't be reasoned with. They are innately hateful. Communication seems impossible.
There's some discussion with them about heart theory, something that the Solarguard believe in - they claim that Lund-tainted areas are controlled by these odd things called hearts, and destroying them removes the taint. They also believe that hearts exist every where, buy Yoki reminds the party that the Solarguard were, before the cursing of the forges, a bunch of religious extremists the Empire was "getting around to" exterminating before bigger issues arrived. He also has a massive lump of Solargold in his study, and the party did mention that Vandus would likely be returning in search of it, since he was interested overall. Yoki also attempted to pay the party to kill someone who was rousing up the workers, forming something called a "union" but the party wasn't interested.
Talci wished to speak to a moon-haunted. It was not really useful, they look like the moon-burnt, but their eyes are replaced with obsidian polished black orbs that constantly leak blood(?) and they jabbered incoherently, seeming to know Talci but having no ability to communicate what that meant or why. Then the party realized they'd spent basically the entire session more or less grilling someone like it was a goddamn bethesda game and needed to make some money, so they decided to go smash up the goblin brewery. Why the fuck not? Although, smash up isn't the right word.
Basically in an act of extremely based DnD play, the party drilled a hole in the door, stuck a magic stave through, and fired a lightning bolt into it. Since the room is half the size of the projectile, they barbequed everything inside, took the gold and left Kharmlund about 300 or so GP richer.
Christ on a cracker. It took five sessions to turn them into literal sociopaths.
There was some leveling once they made it to the settlement of Lester's Folly safely and I closed the book on a session that had more roleplaying than I've ever seen in a game of DnD.
Anyway, until next time, cheers!
*by the point of a sword. You will not be racist against elves, Dwarf, or you will be hang from a gibbet.
