Another month, another two sessions. These are what I call the "detour" sessions, as players begin to leave the mega-dungeon behind, their stores full of glittering jewels and mighty weapons! First they took a wizard's tower, and then learned what that actually entails, becoming an extremely powerful and well-known power in the region, and then they used a potent mixture of poison, sociopathy and the "magic jar" spell to clear out a small bandit camp. Power was gained, and their first true enemy was made!
Session 8
LVND STATUS: Apogee, Gibbous
Player Characters: Ildaberd, Half-Elf Bard, played by anon.
Aurelius, Half-Orc Fighter, played by anon.
"""Carver""" played by anon.
NPCS: None, except for a brief appearance from Lemmy.
Begin
The session started with the players meeting up by checking out Rivertown, and learning that the Byzan Empire is not in particular very creative with their naming conventions. Honestly, calling it "rivertown" is probably the upper limits of Byzan administration creativity, it's a far more common thing to call them things like [Area] Fort 01,[Area] Fort 02 etc. They were not stopped at the gate but did note that the guards were more non-Arin-Vosdht(orc) than not.
The Byzantown was a paradise compared to the dumpster-shaped-like-a-town Lester's Folly.
Lester's Folly is mostly...a pop up settler's town. There are beautiful manors, lots and lots of District 9-level shacks, "inns" that were clearly slapped together to meet ever-rising demand, and trade with Rivertown/a hunting lodge to get supplies from the wilderness. It's a hungry city filled with horrible adventurers who emerge with pockets bursting at the seams with gold and want to live a good life and retire eventually.
Rivertown is a city that was built to be a stopping off point for trading barges that move around the Empire. It's built to take advantage of the river, there's a special "port" built in at the widest point of the river that allows barges to enter the town and do their trade easily, a fort (RiverFort) that provides and protects a bridge to the western half of Rivertown, and a Tower for a Magus that allows them to protect the town and purify the waters. Water flows into Rivertown and provides fresh drinking water through some impressive engineering on the Arin-Vosdht parts and the whole place, instead of mud and axe-chopped wood planks and horse shit, is all cobble tiles, nice(but small) houses and nice fruit trees and market squares all over the place. Slaves clean up the streets hourly and (Arin-Vosdht/Orc only)Patricians move around in Palanquins carried by slaves. Everything is just so clean, people wear nice robes and tunics, some wear togas except for the laboring class that tend to wear pants and other things like that. The Dwarves shave their beards, or keep them trim. Elves dress the same as everyone else and lack any of the odd arrogance or grace they're said to have, in fact everyone in RiverTown acts like everyone else - oddly restrained seeming, calm, not overwhelmingly violent, and very nervous and fearful of the Arin-Vosdht, with everyone carefully saluting the Militias that still patrol the town - and I do mean militias - there are no Legionnaires. They seem to have a different character than the people of NewForge, who seem more grim and not as - personality-less if that makes sense.
Ildaberd and Carver were not that interested in exploring the town, following Lemmy's instructions. It's possible to buy some basic charms, luck buffs etc and the like for cheap but nothing major. Some of the merchants feel like charlatans.
They eventually found a "jester" slave, a Halfling, and they had a conversation with him for a coin. Halflings are typically not treated well in the Empire, but he was able to give them some good information.
- There's been difficulty keeping wizards in the tower. Folk say it's haunted, and the kalKhulmar(mayor/regional governor, literally "littleBigLeader") has thrown up his hands in frustration and offered it to anyone that won't leave in a "Lund-Cursed Week".
- At least seven Wizards have done this so far.
- Nibbles, another slave, was there. This caused Ildaberd to get annoyed/suspicious about the motives of Nibbles(Nibbles is his slave name).
It should be noted that the party had their first followers. Carver his small pack of assassin trainees that he unleashed upon the town to set up a small base somewhere/scout it out and Ildaberd with his spider cult(they are not subtle and dress like this) warrior-volunteers.
The tower was empty, and the doors openable without keys or locks. As the party approached, it rotated to face them. Going inside, they found a skeleton that was dead with his hand on the door. They poked it and found that it was stuck in place, so began looking around. After absolutely tossing the place up they found a small control panel, and, prying it open, they began to experiment. After both almost killing themselves using poison gas (and actually killing one of the Spider Cultists) and discovering that it is possible to inflict so much pain to a skeleton(a dead thing), it will actually scream, something that shouldn't be possible, they shut off the trap and began to explore in Earnest.
Almost immediately they ran into a Beholder.
Alright, it was a small one, and probably one of the lesser breeds(?), but still dangerous. Of course, Carver had done his prepwork to make sure his arrows were poisoned. So a small battle began, and it was "saves-o-clock" because the party was able to easily defeat it, much to the chagrin of the Illithid creature that was coming to inspect the noise. That was his friend, you monsters! After trying to push a boulder (more like a magically conjured ball) onto the party, it ran ahead after taking a hit (and failing the save) from Carver's poisoned arrow. Not an instant kill, but it did something ridiculous like 25 damage in a single hit, which is absolutely insane for this system.
There were surprisingly few traps for them, but once the party reached the halfway point, they decided instead of climbing the tower and dealing with every contingency the Illithid would likely have (and basically all of my prep) they decided to go on the balcony at the halfway point, and use a grappling hook, some rope and some damn lucky rolls to just climb all of the way to the top.
Well, okay then. *crumples up notes, tosses them in the garbage* Reaching the top room and finding no Illithid, who had begun to wander/check the lower levels to see if they ran, they entered into the Charting room, the most important room in an Arin-Voshdt built Byzan tower. Ildaberd likes to touch things, so he managed to have a fun conversation with the spirit trapped in the tower, and, making a fun pledge of fealty to the Khulmar(Emperor, literally "big leader") of the entire Byzan Empire, Ildaberd became the Tower's master, a privilege usually for Wizards. What's going on? What is going on
The tower, a spirit being, began the repair/upkeep of itself having permission to do so and the Illithid began to come back to win back his prize - he's dead now. The turn tables and all that - arrows to the face. With this done, the power of a Byzan tower.
In this world, a 'spell' is just sort of like a schizophrenic projection from the darkest depths of the world. It's not quite the winds of magic from WFRP, but it's similar. It's dark, and it's fucked up below the surface. Shit...tends to bubble up, take form, think clearly, etc. Some of these things are bad, dangerous, evil, and can become what we would call demons. Other things, less awful things, might be like spirits, faeries, but most are just spells. They're invisible, they wander like shades, making weird things happen and wizards can both perceive and take these things and bind them to themselves. Dwarfs got even more aggressive, shattering them and binding them into runes etched into weapons, etc. There's other kinds of magic, what with LUND and SOL the two heavenly bodies seeming to have agendas and blessing people with abilities and such but the main idea mechanically is that spells that we would say are level four, five or six are too dangerous for a wizard to have, doing that is mutations, possessions, exploding into chunks of gore or dissolving into steaming piles of bone - look, just don't do it man.
A tower can be used to cast 1/day spell (randomly rolled for non-Wizards) and that's the main issue for Ildaberd. These can be used anywhere within the same hex or adjacent hexes(really powerful towers can project through what would be called your "area of influence") if that makes any sense.
Ildaberd also received an offer of ever more power and arcane knowledge through a wall-call (the wall turned into a zoom screen if you know what I mean) from...The Forge of qepHom. Yes, the impractically tall, highly mysterious Arin-Vosdht super structures. An entity in it, a wriggling mass of worms and wires "wearing" a robe invited him to stop on by. He declined, but the entity simply said it wouldn't mind waiting.
Ildaberd was also able to see that Vandus has returned! Leading a war party. Of five others. They were looking like they were probably heading to Kharmlund. Having gained this, the party turned their eyes to...Riverfort, the Byzan-named Fort on the River. Okie dokie. Also, they found some notes that indicated that the last few Wizards that tried to live here had an assistant, a Halfling named Nibbles.
Wait, NIBBLES?
Session 9
LVND STATUS: Perigree, Half-Quarter
Player Characters: Ildaberd, Half-Elf Bard, played by anon.
Aurelius, Half-Orc Fighter, played by anon.
"Carver" played by anon.
NPCS: Nibbles the odd halfling and Lemmy the upgraded torchboy.(cameo)
So one of those spells was Magic Jar, and there was an idea here to use said Jar to do some awful shit. Ildahberd Jar'd himself, and Carver hopped over the wall of Riverfort at night, having heard that it was controlled by assholes. They learned this from the Mayor, and one of the weirder aspects of Byzan governance came forth. While the cities are clean marvels of engineering, the leadership (kalKhulmar, literally "littlebigleader") had an area of governance that looked more like something out a movie, burning torches, animal skins and half naked serving slaves and all. He was impressed with Ildaberd's moxie and offered him the fort as well (they got the impression that they don't have options) if he could clear out the bandits from that fort. Carver also brought with him expensive wine, which will come in handy later. How they got over the wall is easily, Aurelius watched them and identified a ridiculous amount of gaps in their security. The bandits lack discipline and mostly seem to act out of fear of a wizard stomping around the fort.
They possessed their first dimwitted guard, made him place the jar near the only privy, and then made him "ex-sanguinate" himself at his post. Then the waiting game. They waited a very very very long time, almost till sundown and the rise of LUND but in the end they were able to possess what they assumed was the leader, a gold circlet wearing big man who they took back up to the feasting hall. There, they learned some things - this guy was not the one in charge, and instead it was more that the wizard was in charge. The wizard lacked leadership skills, clout, charisma, whathave you. What he did have was a magical circlet that could cause intense pain and death that he controls on the leader, and the leader, possessed by Ildaberd annoyed him by saying he had some nice fancy (and not poisoned, I swear) wine stashed away. This caused some punishment, and it was so painful to Ildaberd himself he had to save to avoid being thrown out of the man's body, which would have fucked the whole scheme.
Otherwise, things went off okay. The wizard did go to the "stash" and greedily took the wine, which was a nice halfling vintage a decade old - they don't make wine anymore so it's rarity and deliciousness tipped the scales from smart to greedy in the bastard. The poison killed him, he failed the save but flicked the kill switch for the circlet, which didn't bother Ildaberd much, because while it hurt like hell, the leadership was dead. With the watchman discovered (and the two dead leaders discovered) Carver disguised himself, slipped in looted the wizard's corpse. He found a key which opened a room in the main keep, where the wizard slept and kept all of the loot, the fucker. While he barricaded himself in for the night (because loot important) Ildaberd used a mixture of this spell and complete and utter sociopathy to make a fuckin' horror movie happen, and by the dawn, all of the bandits had died and fled. And most of the ones that died had killed themselves after positioning itself in such a way that they would fall into a mass grave. Spooky!
With that out of the way and that was 60% of the session, resolving downtime, the bridge across the River was now safe and back under civilization's hands again, thank the gods. Ildaberd swore another Oath of Fealty to the Khulmar again and off he went, because one of the things learned and wanted to know more about was Nibbles. So it was back to Lester's Folly.
They used one of their gemstone wands set up for them, and, emerging into their first house, they found evidence their trap was working - a recently dead thief with a hand that was bloated and blacked from poison in front of their vault lying there. Since Lemmy was chillin' here, holding the fort down, they had him dispose of the corpse and stepped outside looking for Nibbles. First of course there was some religious issues - Dwarves in this setting do not like spiders and the Spider Cult is getting much much much more brazen about their imagery. Ildaberd calmed the situation and decided he needed to rebrand the cult somewhat. He ordered them to move into Riverfort and leave Lester's Folly, and then finally, he entered the local tavern and found Nibbles, prepped and ready for an adventuring session. They asked him about the tower. Nibbles ran away. There was a short chase through the city and they managed to capture him and have a quick conversation.
So here's what they learned -
- Yes, Nibbles was a slave to whoever ran the tower, and found it somewhat freeing since the tower mostly maintains itself and none of the wizards last long.
- Nibbles had seen many halflings disappear into Kharmlund, and some of those were important to him. The only lead he had is they were being taken to the "King of the Dwarves" and so he joined expeditions hoping someone would lead him there.
- The Arin-Vosdht conquest of the Halflings and their lands was not entirely a military one. They came nearby, built a tower and then used one of the great secrets of Byzan's military might - they issued a charter. Think of it like a spell, a ritual spell that requires: a tower, blood of the first Khulmar, and other things not known, and they essentially get to simply issue word of command to reality. Nibbles remembers fighting a long protracted guerilla war against the Empire, and at the exact same time he remembers losing in a really pointless "risk it all" field battle battle, his people clapped in irons and his lands destroyed. He has no idea how to do these things just that they were done to the Halflings, and it's likely true that they were done to other races conquered. Would the nobles of the human lands of Galdrou give up their privilege, power and status to become bland milksops that grow to a green foot? They did. Why did they? Nibbles believes that's why.
- He has no idea what the forges are, what their purpose is etc.
Nibbles was mollified that the party didn't want to kill them, and Ildaberd even hired him to help him with the tower and understanding it - as an equal.
The final event from this session is the party was visited by a wizard from the few-days-ride-from-here Citadel of the Scholars, who demanded that Ildaberd surrender the keys to the tower (keys?) and fuck off. Ildaberd refused, mostly, but the hot-headed wizard(the eighth such wizard) was not having it and said he would return with their army/militia and take the tower, before teleporting away.
What a session! Next time the party resolved to return to Kharmlund and do more dungeon crawling(I did confirm it would take a few sessions before the "mass battle" event would even happen.
- Klang
