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.
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: 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).
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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Githyanki Diaspora 
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