I had no idea what I wanted to exactly do tonight. I didn’t have any secclusia made up and hadn’t read any of the modules carefully enough to run them.

There was an old fantasy city that my buddy, Pete and I fleshed out years ago. It was a kind of fantasy-medieval New Orleans called Marsui with a Queen who had set up a system for monsters, demons and cultists to live in the city. I decided that Queen Moneille’s Law had just been over-turned in the city congress. This meant that their city-appointed watchers were pulled out and put back into the City Guard and a writ was posted declaring them monsters, declaring open season for licensed monster hunters to kick down their doors and destroy them.

Enter the Adventurer and Salvage Union. I started by calling it a guild but like the sound of union better.

I wanted a fast way to make up monsters and lots of random tables that would inspire.

Marsui Monster Creation Table

1) Wizard
2) Vampire
3) Golem
4) God Refugee

1) Fire
2) Shadow
3) Deep Sea
4) Lightning

1) Cemetary
2) Manor
3) Sewer
4) Tower

1) Poverty
2-3) Working
4) Leisure

I rolled 4d4 4 times and got the following

• Vampire, Deep Sea, Sewer, Leisure – I named it Chton and rolled up its money.
• Wizard, Lightning, Manor, Working – Named it Garred the Lightning Mage
• Golem, Deep Sea, Sewer, Poverty – Corral
• God Refugee, Fire, Sewer, Leisure – Pyre

For HD, I rolled 2d4 +2 but I think I will make it different for the different types in future games.

Monster’s Money Table

Leisure 4d20 x 100
Working 1d20 x 100
Poverty 1d20 x 10

I rolled 1d4 + 3 for Hit Dice for each monster and decided that Garred would have 3d4 +6 men at arms at his manor led by a 1st level Fighter.

City Random Encounter Table

1) Corrupt City Guard 1d8 0-level humans led by a 1st level Fighter
2) Toughs looking for their cut (1d4 0-level humans, 10% chance of a 1st level Specialist)
3) wizard’s creation gone amok (see Wizard’s Creation Table below)
4) Party of Adventures (1-2 coming back from their haul, 3-4 horning in on your haul, 5-6 setting up their own haul)
5) 2d20 0-level humans forming a mob to kill a monster in their neighborhood.
6) Monster on the run, looking to get out of here. 1-2 will pay 10d10 silver, 3-4 will offer money stashed outside of town, 5-6 will beg for help.

Wizard’s Creation Run Amok Table

1) Spiders
2) Flies
3) Octupi
4) Lobsters

1) Wolves
2) Deer
3) Possum
4) Monkeys

1) Swarm
2) 1 giant one
3) 1 humanoid, bi-pedal, creepy hands, a big mess
4) 1 herd

For some reason I also had a wizard-cursed monster table, which is what I used to make up Garred’s Pet.

Wizard-Cursed Animal

1) Alligator
2) Snake
3) Hawk
4) Ghoul

1) Fire
2) Shadow
3) Deep Sea
4) Lightning

I made a lightning snake.

Wilderness Random Encounter

1) Bandits, 1d10 + 3 0-level humans, 10% chance led by 1st level Fighter/Specialist/Cleric
2) Wizard Cursed Animal
3) Wizard Cursed village
4) Demi-human refugees, paranoid and scared
5) Adventurers on their way back from a haul 1, treasured, 2-5 wounded and in need of help, 6 on their way to a site
6) Back-story fodder from something a player had mentioned

The City Council had gotten rid of Moneille’s Law and had made it legal to hunt them. The union had existed already and was in a great position to take advantage of it. When entity’s are deemed monsters by law, the union often gets notified before anyone else knows. There were council-members who wanted to push the laws even further and make demi-humans, magic-users and even some religions monsters too.

The players all rolled up 3 characters.

I told them that wizards were always the union’s priority, so they would pick 3 to go after Garred the Sky-Mage. Their union rep informed them that the wizard had a manor out in the Overlook Ward. They asked if the city-appointed watcher was still around to answer a few questions. I thought that was smart.

Yeah, the watchers are absorbed into the city watch, so when they showed up, she was trying to get her squad in order. The rank-and-file guards didn’t like her and were giving her serious shit for having worked alongside monsters. She answered their questions and even passed along a bribe to the city guard patrolling in the area to check in on that street, a detail that would be important later.

Yeah, Garred is a paranoid jerk, always sure that some wizard was going to come take his shit. He hired a squad of men-at-arms led by a former soldier named Joshua, recently married who lived down the road from the manor. They paid a visit to the captain of the man-at-arm’s wife. She was pregnant and was overseeing the packing up of the house into crates. She said she was moving to the Pyramid Ward but that was clearly a lie as the goods were packed in dock-side shipping crates used to get stuff in ship’s hold with a ship’s name stenciled on the side.

It was interesting watching them ask around and investigate a bit with no mechanics to back that kind of thing up. I should have used the NPC Reaction Table and will do so next time.

They sent in a note to Captain Joshua, threatening the wife and when he road out like hell on a horse, that was when the fight started.

It was Mr. Aldriss the Specialist, Lafayette the Elf and Sooki the Cleric. I asked Jay why Mr. Aldriss did this for a living. He told me that it was all he was good at and he bored very easaily. I asked Joshua what Lafayette had heard about his faery otherworld homeworld from the elders in his enclave and I don’t remember what exactly he said but it brought out neat details about elves supposedly being here originally to elevate the humans to a better, elven way of being. I asked Witt what Sooki’s least favorite heresy was and he didn’t have an answer but it got him thinking and he mentioned some details about the religion, she worshipped Marsui itself. I didn’t want much of a back-story because I wasn’t sure who would live and who would die.

Key Moments:

• Mr. Aldriss’ sneak attack was dropping mofo’s left and right and dropped the wizard.
• Lafayette was not swayed by Garred’s Charm Person when he approached the servant’s entrance claiming to be a bard sent to entertain the troops at the behest of the captain’s wife; that would have changed everything.
• Sooki recruited several members of the city guard to help assault the manor. They all died but they kept rifles off of her while she entered. When the city guard sergeant tried to muscle in on the haul, Sooki quoted all kinds of union by-laws at him and feeling the pressure, he backed off.
• Sooki got dropped by a few men-at-arms but lived.

In the end, they gathered goods to sell and discussed it all with their union rep, Humberto. We all had a fun time and want to play again. That was neat and I want to make up more, more, more tables. I’d like to make a few detail tables for each type of monster. I think God Refugees will have cult members, wizard’s will have wizard-cursed beasts, vampires will have thralls and golems will have…something…maybe scholars/magic-users/engineers studying them.

Selling off a monster’s goods doesn’t earn them XP but even so, they are halfway to 1st level. They discussed keeping the wizard’s lab equipment and renting it out to magic-users rather than going for a quick buck. When real estate is on the line, the deal is the union gets to claim the real estate while everything on it is hauled by the adventurers. The union will send porters with a mule and a cart to move heavy stuff for sale.