tl;dr: The Dullgray River Rats hire a trio of dwarves and clear a shroud of ghouls from the Dullgray Temple.
Ocean, Level 3 Thief Tomoe the Belt, Level 3 Fighter Muffin St. Dymphna II, Level 2 Mage
There were still ghouls to clear out from their temple HQ. They hired some help from the local dwarven crime syndicate, the Anvilless (sounds cooler in Dwarven, Those Without Anvil). I rolled up 3 dwarves with the OSE NPC Generator and picked fitting names dwarven names from the Fantasy Name Generator: Gross, Thrav and Thrak.
Had a nice quiet-little-moments-before-the-storm moment where the dwarves asked Muffin St. Dymphna II about her religion and she explained why she doesn’t worship the Mage Trinity and they smoked some Axeweed. I rolled a random encounter as they entered the temple, so they ran into 4 ghouls right away. It became a fight over the hired dwarves’ heads.
There were fun decisions: the dwarven shield wall in the doorway fell as the bearded hired help fell to paralysis. In the end, the last of the ghouls ran for it with Ocean holding the last shield up, having failed their morale roll, right into the spotted lion, whose prey drive kicked in. Mrs. Cottonswald continued to charm the huge lion with meat the crew bought while out hiring the dwarves.
This might be my favorite dungeon-stocking that I have ever done. Just 3 monsters in an amazing Dyson Logos map. The monsters were reflections of Ioun City current events and history. Water Weirds are just so cool they deseserve their own blog post. If they group had tried to push through and kill it all in one go they would’ve likely perished. They had to reach out to factions and use money grabbed in one part of the temple to hire help to clear another. I didn’t know that they were going to do so but I’m thrilled they did.
Ye Olde 7th Sea Posse were playing Death in Space, going through the Mothership adventure, Haunting of Yspilon XIV, and one of the characters mentioned a Space Vampire. So, I quickly wrassled up a pic of the beat-up softcover that had been making its way around our ship’s crew.
I like the idea that tattered paperbacks are still out there in the science fiction void, stories being passed hand to hand, human to human.
tl;dr: The crew gets out of the abandoned river temple with a duke’s ransom and procures the the services of a River Acolyte to solve their Water Weird problem; also old Mrs. Cottonswald gives kitty-treats to a Spotted Lion at the mercy of the Monster Reaction Table.
We hadn’t gamed in a while and it was just great to see everyone’s faces. I didn’t realize how much I missed them. It was really nice to get together, catch up and play again.
Baska made up a Mage named Muffin St. Dymphna II, who is everyone’s hippy-dippy roommate from undergrad. As I described the abandoned temple that had been the previous Dullgray River Crew’s HQ, Baska mentioned that Muffin had partied there back in the day.
The crew worked well together as Tomoe recovered from nearly drowning. Ocean picked up the treasure while the Mages used their staffs (special power: In the hands of a mage, a normal saff can harm creatures that are immune to mundane attacks, from Carcass Crawler #1) to beat the creature into submission. But they couldn’t really kill it. They decided to count up their gold in a different room (8000 gold! with more in jewlery!) and left the temple for now. Gavin read oen of the books about the River Goddess they had found and discovered that “turning one’s well water into a fell serpent” was one of the River Goddess’ curses and the water needed to be calmed by a priest.
They hired Atbara, an elderly river priest who overlooked a shrine from times before the Ioun City Mercantile Consortium (ICMC) came to power. They paid him five gold and a ten gold tip and the old Acolyte was thrilled to get that much. They have unlocked the Shrine Acolytes of the Olde River Goddess as character options and plan to bring one with them as a retainer.
We had a few minutes left and discussed a bit about what to do for the next session and Anthony was excited to hire an animal trainer in hopes of taming the Spotted Lion. The discussion of where to hire someone led to Baska mentioning Mrs. Cottonswald, a local bad-ass cat-lady. We laughed while she shook kitty-treats at a monstrous lion that was gnawing on some kind of river rodent it had caught. I rolled her Charisma and asked Baska to roll the Monster Reaction table, 2d6 minus 1 (her CHA was not good). The lion was uninterested as Mrs. Cottonswald approached with a container of treats. She threw a few treats at it and it ate them.
“We’ve established the treats. We’ll try again tomorrow,” Mrs. Cottonswald said. I was shocked she had survived.
Next week the crew is going to clear the ghouls out of the temple so they can call it home.
tl;dr: Tamrin’s Outlaw Friends drove off 11 Crookhorns, felling almost half of them but at a cost.
This was after clarifying the map. Crookhorns had run all over the place. There were arrows hither and yon. It was a confusing mess.
Princess and Madame fell but held on (1 round for every point of Constitution felt more right than 0 = death). I’ll have the other characters say more and add more personality to the combat. I felt like I was giving too much energy to getting the procedures just right.
Princess used her Grimalkin ability to turn into a near-invisible blur of claws and teeth behind bloodshot-berserker-eyes before falling.
Spiro tried to backstab a Crookhorn but missed, resorting to a desperate head-butt before the battle ended. He spent much of the battle near-death.
Morain made herself a big target and took the brunt of the damage, bleeding frozen blood as she almost fell.
Ebbi rained death from atop the willow tree and saved both Princess and Madame Pusskin’s life when she rushed to find her mushroom-loving friend and get a second dose of Ghost Shroom. Princess gave Ebbi her shiniest marble as a thank-you for saving her friend.
In the end, the Crookhorns failed a morale save and ran. One of them protested, “But I was about to burn down this willow tree!” Still, they ran.
tl:dr: Ebbi makes a skeleton friend and then the group runs into an old enemy and a mob of Crookhorns…
During the week I asked if the group wanted to move north along the lake or take the more direct route through the forest. The forest-lovers seemed to take the day. Off we went.
We started a touch late and we were tired, so we ended a little early, getting a little less than an hour to game. It was short and that was okay. I could use the time to flesh out my thoughts on Hoarblight Keep. As usual, the encounter tables and hex details of Dolmenwood delivered. That said, looking for Getting Lost rules was a little frustrating, ping-ponging me back and forth between PDF’s in a way that would’ve been frustrating with a book too. For some reason the miro board I set up with lots of screen shots of the PDF was coming up really blurry.
Ebbi got nice spotlight time picking some Spirithame mushrooms (which we quickly renamed Ghost Shrooms after I couldn’t find the description and just winged it, saying they glowed with a ghostly blue light) and doing a successful foraging dance. Tamrin, Princess, Madame and Spiro looked like they were unhappy in the cold spring rain. Moraine was feeling the Faery Malaise of the area – Ebbi seemed in her element. While in the midst of a great day, Ebbi was a touch ahead of the group, looking for shelter, as they were hoping to end the travel day early amidst miserable pouring rain.
She ran right into Colly, a polished white animated skeleton with an armful of mushrooms and a strange rune on her skull. Ebbi and Colly quickly started talking mushrooms (Colly communicates with understandable teeth whistles) and became best friends right away.
Moraine, Colly and Ebby headed out while the rest of the crew set up camp, started a fire and sought to dry off under the cliff overhang Ebbi had found for them. I forget why I decided I had to roll a random encounter. Someone had rolled something and it seemed clear that they were about to run into something dangerous. They did.
Sir Blackchurch came crashing through the underbrush without a weapon, shield dented, brow cut, horns covered in someone else’s blood. “Crookshanks!” he exclaimed, “We need to fight together or we are doomed. They are sworn to Chaos itself!”
Moraine assessed, making sure it wasn’t fae trickery (the player asked me some questions and I answered – it did seem wildly unlikely but they soon realized they could trust what they were seeing) and handed the Breggle knight who had been taking Tamrin to be beheaded, who had been hunting all of them, who had been their mortal enemy her spear, took out her sword and banged it against her own shield, being able to hear the approaching Crookshanks.
Having heard the Crookshank’s hunting horn bellow, Spiro put on his jacket and took out his knives, Princess ran to help her friends, Madame drew her blade – saluted no one and followed Princess and Tamrin ran after his friends to do whatever bards do when Crookshanks attack.
We’ll start there in a few weeks.
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tl;dr: The group crept into the abandoned temple where the previous gang who ruled the streets of the Dullgray Riverfront neighborhood had their HQ and ran headlong into a water weird.
I grabbed a lovely Dyson Logos Map and wrote notes on it. I didn’t have much. There was a Spotted Lion outside on the river entrance. There were ghouls in the basement. I was going to put a water weird in the pools of water and almost balked when I read the Monster Manual entry.
I’m glad I stuck to it. Yes, it nearly killed half the party. Yes, it might still kill the entire party. Still, it is now one of my favorite monsters of all time.
Tomo the Belt (Fighter 2) and Ocean (Thief 2) got together with their friends Gavin (Mage 1) and Noose (Thief 1) to clear out the abandoned temple the previous gang who held the Dullgray Riverfront as their turf used as their HQ.
But wait! As folks were getting acquainted, Gavin the Mage (yes, named after the creator of the Mage and OSE, the game we were playing), mentioned that he stole scrolls from his master. Gavin’s player was going to just say the scrolls he bought were those scrolls but no, I dig that. I randomly rolled to see the level and then rolled the spells. Rolled to see how adeptly Gavin chose those spells – not so well. Angry Mage incoming…some day.
What levels are the spells, though? I jotted down a quick 2d6 table on my handy-dandy office whiteboard: 2 – 5, First Level Spell 6, Second Level Spell 7 – 8, Third Level Spell 9 – 10, Fourth Level Spell 11, Fifth Level Spell 12, Sixth Level Spell
Perfect? No, but it worked. Gavin started with some extra spells – Light, Water Breathing and Wizard Lock.
They entered on the river-side, where there was a little amphitheatre that the river was slowly eating. While they were looking at the body of a drowned guardsman from the Order of the Spindle (Ioun City’s constables) a spotted lion walked up with a deer in its jaws (rolled on the Monster Reaction Table and it was uninterested – made sense). The giant effing lion sniffed at them and began eating. The mastiff Tomo had bought strained against its leash (rolled on the Monster Reaction Table to see how the pooch reacted to the lion…Sparky wanted blood).
Two Conversations About Sparky
Conversation 1 “I want to buy a wardog.” “Dogs bark. We need to be stealthy.” “You find a mercenary company camping outside the city, more than willing to sell you a mastiff that was meant to be a guard dog but she refused to bark.” “I name her Sparky.”
Conversation 2 We talked about violence to animals. Everyone was okay with a pet dying in-game. I have dear friends who can play in the bloodiest of horror but violence to dogs, horses and cats is a no-no. I get it, seeing our real-life four-legged family sucks. I dont’ want anyone to have to relive that. But the green light was given. Pet death is on the table.
They made their way through the temple. Noose desecrated every shrine to the River Goddess and her Children she could find; we found out she had been sent to become a nun and returned with the scar on her neck that birthed her nickname. Eek! Eek! They found a word written on a wall in a language none of them knew, written in the same chalk that the warnings on the front door were written in. They found books – one on Morganti Blades (I’m reading Jhereg audiobooks on the way to work) and another on the angry incarnations of the River Goddess – how she often cursed places with river ghouls and water weirds.
Then I rolled a random encounter while they were searching a room. They heard a ghoul trigger a Magic Mouth spell in the hall. They got surprise and drove it down to 1 hit point. It threw its hands up and surrendered. Tomo grabbed his rope in one of his sacks (iron spikes, hammer, mirror, crowbar, 10 foot pole, more sacks, etc.) and tied the ghoul up. It offered to show them the treasure in the pools.
I rolled some quick dice behind the scenes and the Water Weird was in the third pool. The ghoul hauled out an unreal amount of treasure – jewlery and gold. The Water Weird attacked but they were ready for it thanks to the book’s foreshadowing. The group was ready to run when Gavin the Mage ran past them with his staff aglow. Jesse read the Mage power:
In the hands of a mage, a normal staff can harm creatures that are immune to mundane attacks.
Had to make a ruling on drowning rules. Decided it was d6 Con damage per round and then a Save vs. Death every round once Con hit zero. They seemed to defeat the monster and dragged their friends from its pool, where they had been drowning. Anthony described Tomo vomitting river water out of his lungs while laughing at Gavin’s mad charge at the Water Weird (a monster that I described as I remembered Larry Elmore drawing it on the cover of Dungeons of Dread, angry water in the shape of a cobra).
It reformed before their eyes and we’ll start there next week.
It felt like I had done a decent job of stocking the dungeon. I had stocked some real duds in the past year, so it was nice to whip up a good one. This was a fun way to flesh out the religion along the river before the Ioun Stones brought in Mages and their industry and their Arcane Trinity Church (more on them later).
tl;dr: Tamrin’s Outlaw Friends saved him in Lankshorn and headed north towards Hoarblight Keep (as you do).
If you want to play through Dolmenwood with no setting spoilers, you might not want to read this.
On their way towards Lankshorn the posse ran across a trio of Woodgrue Musicians, the Lumpfrisk Trio (Grunkle, Krungus and Wumpus) all playing their enchanting music to keep farmers at bay while they made a stew out of the veggies they stole from said farmers. Moraine, the only member of the group who didn’t fail their save, paid the farmer’s a fair bit of silver for their veggies and sent them on their way. Hearing how everyone’s character danced to the Woodgrue music was a lovely way to start the evening.
The trio shared their stew and were playing the song Tamrin wrote about the Lord of Nodding Castle. They had run across Tamrin in a cage-carriage. The crew found out that there was a knight, a squire, a merchant and the merchant’s caravan guards keeping Tamrin; they’d probably run into them in Lankshorn.
On the road outside of Lankshorn Moraine drew a line in the mud – beyond this point she’d only see Tamrin in freedom. Ebbi and Spiro found a deer carcass and dragged it into the road along with a dead tree, hoping to both block the carriage’s path and drew Night Worms. Ebbi noticed the tracks of a big wolf pack moving towards Lankshorn. That is odd. Asking the roots about it, the earth said (I rolled a d6 to see how many words the Roots could say: 3 words) “Shape Changed Witches.”
Moraine wondered if Princess Donut might use her considerable charm to go into town and scout it out. The good Princess liked the compliment and went into town with Madam Pusskin, Right Claw of King Pusskin, at her side. As Princess got to the local inn, she saw a Breggle Knight, Sir Craglow Blackchurch, and his squire, setting the local constabulary to guard Tamrin, who was in the carriage-cage. Sir Blackchurch just wanted some warm food. Hank was concerned about rumors of a wolf pack running around the town but in the end, listened to the knight.
Princess, armed with the head constable’s name (Hank) and a garbage can lid ensorcelled to look like Sir Blackchurch’s shield with the knight’s heraldry upon it (Silver Goat’s head/Black Church), told Hank that he was relieved of duty as per Sir Blackchurch’s orders, “You are free to go hunt down that dangerous wolf pack!” Confused, Hank went to find the wolves.
Princess and Madame drove the cart out of Lankshorn with Tamrin grinning within. Everything went fine until the Night Worms attacked the carriage’s horse, drawn to the road by Ebbi and Spiro’s deer carcass. NOTE: I rolled 3d20 to see how long it would be until Sir Blackchurch and Squire would notice the carriage was gone, thinking they could be right on their trail or quite a bit clueless. They were 20 rounds late.
The Night Worm was attacking a horse and everyone seemed uncomfortable with the cruelty to the horse. We agreed that the horse got away and the Night Worm that wasn’t interested in the deer carcass would instead attack them. Long story short, they drove one Night Worm off and the others dragged the deer back to their lair.
The plan was to head eastward but Tamrin was nervous about heading east, the direction they were taking him to be beheaded. Moraine, ever the fairy patriot, suggested they head northwest to Hoarblight Keep. Everyone shrugged and agreed.
Moraine had suggested the 13 Bandits go west to waylay the knight, who would soon be on his way. Surely the 13 Bandits and 13 wolves (who are really witches shape-shifted into wolves) would go forth and have their own adventures. Both of the groups of 13 were rolled entirely randomly.
And so the group headed north and west towards Hoarblight Keep. Princess could sense a terrible presence watching them all. They ran across a camp of goblins with a human baby, feeding it cooked worm. When one goblin said, “The Lord of the Pit will treat the baby well, right?” The rest of the goblins assured their friend that the Lord of the Pit LOVED children.
Trusting the goblins’ judgment, the group walked on without comment, never alerting the goblins to their presence.
They entered a border the next day that made Princess and Moraine feel malaise, as if they didn’t belong there but when they came to healthier woods and a small herd of deer happily grazing at dusk, Ebbi was confident they were in healthier lands. Spiro watched a trio of 20 foot pythons curl themselves around their campfire. Surely, a good omen for their journey to Hoarblight Keep.
We had agreed to just play 3 sessions but we renewed and will keep playing for a bit. The hex contents, overall situations on the move and random encounters very much give the feel of a lived-in fairy tale world.
I have a copy of this map in the notebook I carry that has notes and highlighter marks all over it.
For the first adventure I rolled up a rookie party and a higher level party and asked the group which one they wanted to burgle. Since the Mage’s player was out tonight, we went with the lower level party.
Rolling up a quick party was dead-easy. I pasted the parties into a doc and rolled up treasure they might’ve scored. I also rolled 2d6 to see how their adventure went and got a 7 – they took some shots but did fine, all healed up by the time they got back.
The Graymantles are led by a pair of dwarven siblings, Kheldrul and Vondaic Graymantle (thank you, Fantasy Name Generator) in charge of Hamen of the Lake, a Fighter, Egron, a Mage and Graviel, a Cleric. I decided that most Clerics will be bodyguards for Mages, trained at the local Church of the Arcane Trinity. I’ve got notes about that Trinity around here somewhere…
Tomo the Belt (Fighter 1) and Ocean (Thief 1) watched the Graymantles outside of the Four Javelins Inn (Upper and Ground) within the riverside area, Dullgray, that is their turf. I rolled the Monster Reaction Table (maybe my favorite table ever) to see how the inn-keeper felt about them and old Ludolf thought well enough but not enough to mess up his reputation among adventurer clientelle. The old man did not tell Ocean which rooms they were in and they decided not to mess up their neighbor’s business. Tomo tried to join the party but they weren’t buying a bragging warrior who didn’t have a weapon.
So, they followed they Graymantle Brothers as they took the group’s jewlery to get it appraised in the Dwarven neighborhood, Holdfast. They left the rest of the party at the 4 Javelins to guard the gold. Tomo and Ocean followed the brothers at a distance and the Thief rolled a Sneak (failed) and a Pick Pocket (success!) to steal the bag of jewlery. We discussed it, did we need two rolls? I proposed that if he was successful in his sneak, he’d get a +1 to the Pick Pocket (we’re using the d6 rules from Carcass Crawler #1). Ocean’s player wasn’t excited about that roll so I suggested that if he got a 6 on the Sneak, he’d get a +2 on the Pick Pocket. That was a chance he was willing to make. That roll set the tone.
They got 2200GP worth of jewlery from a barrow in that roll and promptly got drunk in celebration. During their hangovers, as they tested the jewlery by putting it on to see if it was magic. I had some fun describing the jewlery and what it said about the ancient king who wore it. The ring showed that he was highly regarded by his family. The armlet was in the shape of a snake, showing that he was dangerous in battle and the ancient iron crown with stones in it showed the king’s wisdom.
Yoretain Boneforged showed up with two other dwarves, who waited across the street, playing a dice game. I described her was a guy described his dwarven character some decades ago and I always liked it. She had a tattoo of a dragon that went down her nose so that her bright red facial hair (mustache and beard) looked like dragon-fire. I think the visitor-to-our-group’s name was Justin…not sure, it was some time ago.
She was a rep from the Anvilless, a dwarven criminal syndicate that ran a part of town folks called, The Holdfast, where dwarf crafts-folk lived and their children, rebelling against their parents’ ways, turned to violence and crime. They worked out a deal, where the Greymantle brothers could buy back their jewlery with some of their share of the gold coins from the barrow and not lose face to the rest of the adventuring party. They gained an ally with one of the city’s factions.
At some point, discussing how their predecessors went outside the city, chasing gold and experience in an outside-the-city delve, and never returned. We decided Tomo and Ocean had not yet moved into that headquarters but isntead, in the tradition of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, lived in a derelict building. Next game, we go into that building and clear it out – because obviously some monster crawled in from the river and made it their lair.
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We decided the city’s big money-maker is the polishing, charging and activation of Ioun Stones in the 3 arcane-industrial castles. Each castle is held by a different faction who, all together, sell the Ioun Stones through a mercantile consortium.
Other details: Long-term stone use causes some kind arcane mutations Adventuring is profitable because it keeps the gem mines clear Ioun mining brings out the strange monsters City Watch called something like Order of the Spindle; focused on defending trade
The group is made of a Mage (fresh out of Carcass Crawler #1), a Thief (with d6-based skills, also out of CC#1) and a Fighter (perhaps with the optional mechanic flourishes). They are known as the Dullgray River Rats, having grown up skipping rocks on the river – went their seperate ways for training and such.
Other classes and heritage options will open up through interactions with the setting. I’m picturing a tepid trinity of arcane saints as the main religion – the Saint of Wizards, the Sorcerer Saint and the Patron of Warlocks. Magic drugs for kicks and performance enhancement. Lots of scrolls hither and yon. Lots of magical treasure for the taking.
Going to write up tables for coming up with quick jobs (looking at you, Blades in the Dark and Swyvers) and encounters/treasure, looking at you, Dolmenwood. Jot down a few outside-the-city hexes and populate ’em. Daydream a bit about the political pressures in the city (oh shit, maybe a Hex Flower for that!). Write up some factions and see how things shake out.
Welcome to Ioun City.
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tl;dr: Tamrin’s Outlaw Friends arrived at the Jaunty Horn and got into a tussle with a trio of shape-shifting fairies who had been in the form of a Breggle Longhorn Knight and a pair of Thieves.
On the first night of spring the Jaunty Horn, a well known road-side inn on the Ditchway, was full of human and Breggle shepherds ready to run their herds to market. There was a Longhorn Breggle Knight whose heraldry showed that he was sworn to Lord Malbleat with a pair of thugs but they were keeping their heads down (more about them later). After Princess Donut led the Thirteen Thieves they were travelling with in some spirited dancing as they sang before the drinking began in earnest, the party set up shop near a fire-pit near the stables rather than crash in the inn’s common room.
I described the trio of Lichhounds, naming them after dogs in Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories – Wicked, Worse and Worst-Of-All because we’re animal-lovers and the dogs and their names seemed like an important detail. The inn was too busy for the inn-keeper to have time to welcome them or make much of an impression other than that she was built like a linebacker.
Did I forget about the NPC Princess Donut had recruited last game? Yes, I did but with a quick reminder from Aaron, Madam Pusskin, the King’s Own Claw, was back. I even rolled her class randomly to find out that she was a fighter.
Dream of Remembrance sang a beautiful song in High Elfish about the stars in the sky being out of sorts since the Cold Prince’s exile and Spiro (who everyone calls Inspirator) bleated out some Breggle poetry before they arranged watch shfits for the night. Something about talking about watch shifts makes me feel like a junior high kid all over again – in a good way.
I rolled a random encounter in the night, a few bramblings on patrol that gave Princess Donut a glowing green eye looking over until Worst-Of-All ran up and one of the inn-keeper’s kids yelled something in Drunish. The sleepy-eyed kid explained they were just on patrol and probably wouldn’t be a problem as the humanoid-shaped thorn-bushes headed back into the forest.
Moraine woke up the Thirteen Thieves and spoke openly about ambushing the group moving Tamrin. A half-awake shepherd overheard this and went to wake up the Breggle Knight and snitched.
Now I’ll explain what the table would soon figure out – the Breggle Knight and thugs were NOT a Breggle Knight and thugs. They were a trio of fairy shape-shifters that I pre-game rolled as the previous night’s random encounter. So, when the shepherd grabbed the not-a-knight and said that if he didn’t come out and do something he was going to alert Lord Malbleat that his knight had no honor, the shapeshifter came out to see if this could be ended quietly and without a ruckus.
It would not be ended quietly. Spiro brought the ruckus.
Before the fairy shape-shifter in the shape of a knight could do anything, Spiro, the Breggle Thief, goat-charged him and back-stabbed him, doing more than 2/3’s of the monster’s total hit points in damage. What had looked like the Breggle Knight began bleeding in a strange blue color and screeching in a manner that no Breggle would screech. The group finished off the creature, nicknamed, The Goopy, and they heard a further ruckus in the inn’s common room. Moraine went to deal with that and Princess checked out the knight’s stuff (chainmail, longsword and shield, Scroll of Protection Against Wyrm Breath, Arcane Scroll (Ventriloquism & Ioun Shard) and 1 mysterious potion and a ton of jewlery treasure that I forget to tell them about).
The shape-shifters had gotten into a tussle with the 13 Thieves, who weren’t going to let the pair go out and back up their knight friend and then DEFINITELY weren’t going to let them walk when it was clear they were travelling with a shapeshifter. Moraine walked in to the fairies taking a bad beating. One Charisma check and he successfully called a pause. The fairies talked to him in High Elfish and a few things became clear:
These were NOT nice creatures, but former assassins for the Hag Thorn-Rosie who had a job go poorly and overly violent; they ran rather than face the consequences. Despite their attempts to appeal to Moraine’s Cold Prince patriotism the elf gave the Thirteen Thieves the go-ahead to finish the job. Spiro was upset that he had killed the wrong person. Killing a longhorn knight is fine but some fairy…Spiro wasn’t sure that was the right thing at all. And Moraine was clearly sad and conflicted As they left, Moraine assured Spiro that no one in this world, nor fairy would miss these three.
Ebbi took a penny from the shape-shifter’s treasure (for some reason one of them was carrying around 10,000 copper pieces?!?) as a Hunter’s memento.
There are little moments that I really feel like I am not capturing. Yes, this is a goat-person, an elf, a cat-person and a moss-person in a darky fairy tale world. But the humanity that everyone brings to these strange characters is really cool. Ebbi’s reluctance to engage with large groups of people they don’t trust. Spiro’s reaction to violence that wasn’t against who he thought it was. Moraine’s sadness and turning the thieves’s knives against a creature of fairy, even if those fae are killers without pity. Even Princess Donut’s cat-like aloofness is balanced by a deep caring. I like these characters.
I rolled a trio of shape-stealers (DMB, 75) and decided that they had ambushed a group of adventurers. So, I rolled up the adventurers using the tables for doing so (DMB, 108-109) and got a Breggle Knight, a Breggle Thief, a Human Thief, a Human Enchanter and a Woodgrue Enchanter. I decided that they knight and thieves were easier to pose as.
I liked having a night-time encounter that was just a creepy thing sticking its head out of the woods and then going back in. Factions are on the move out there. Things are bubbling under the surface.
Next week we’ll start with some Woodgrue musicians, rocking out, oblivious to the world around them, and then into (through?) Lankshorn.
Githyanki Diaspora 
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