Into the Barrowmaze - Sessions 7.5 & 8
Some time ago, Barnave's player (A.) wanted to do a "quick 2h-ish session of shopping in Ironguard". As it always seems to be the case, this turned out to be a very important moment in the campaign, although not very interesting to tell. That will be shortly covered as Session Report #7.5.
Last sunday, him and Elina's player (Lu') played out the consequence that short game, and events took a slightly drastic turn.
Also, Rattlemayne (who made this cool and free Warhammer/ItO Hack) was kind enough to draw Barnave and his telepathic mutt!
(Quick) Session Report #7.5
• Barnave gets a haircut,
• He bumps into a street urchin that tells him to go meet a "Mr. Moreau" a little before midnight at the well behind the Inn,
• Decided to go to the Silver Standard mercenary & mercantile company to try and sell them information about the whereabouts of Bandit Queen Renata,
• Learns that the Silver Standard and Lord Ironguard are planning an operation to get rid of the bandits and that they would like to hear what he has to say very much, at a reunion tonight, agrees,
• Goes to check on his friends at the Temple of St. Ygg, where the local priest, Father Horace, asks him to go get some news from Helix because apparently it's been a week and nobody's heard anything from the place, which is usually in regular contact with Ironguard through merchant caravans, and agrees to help for a small fee, only after he's done with his business in town,
• And meets with Mr. Moreau in a shady basement after finding a bunch of thugs waiting for him at the RDV point. It turns out he's a Halfling Businessman from Bastion and would like he and his party, the Night Weasels, to steal a painting called The False Chanterelle from the Lord's castle - he can arrange for the heist to be easy, and they get to keep everything they want besides from the target.
Barnave accepts.
Session Report #8 - Barnave & Elina Ruin Everything
• Barnave arrives at the Temple just in time for the Silver Standard escort to greet Elina and him, and they get to go to the fancy castle, where they meet a ton of Important NPC (tm) who will totally play an important part in the rest of the campaign: Lord Kell Ironguard, his Captain, his Wizard, his Adviser and the Silver Standard Company's big boss - Herbert de Vaucanson, pictured below.
• During the meeting, Lord Ironguard is glad to learn that this adventuring party, the Nice Guys, are willing to take part in the fight against the bandits, and listens with a smile as Barnave explains how he and his friends came to learn of the bandits' hiding place, how they look like an actual army, etc.
For that, he thanks them, then explains that they will have to remain locked in their quarters as his guests until his spies can confirm that the intel is legit and that the "Nice Guys" aren't actually spies from the Bandit Queen. Being unarmed and surrounded by guards, the Nice Guys leaders are happy to oblige.
• During the night, someone slips a note under their door, containing instructions on how to get to the False Chanterelle - and also picks the lock. The whole thing smells like Mr. M anticipated what would happen and The Nice Guys, now back to their regular role as The Night Weasels, sneak around the castle.
• Eventually they find that the room they're looking for is just above the Lord's room, and is filled with weird stuff: a strange frog idol, a stone egg, a skeleton in ceremonial armor wielding a longsword, a jar with a huge wart in it, and the painting they were looking for! Which turns out to be a rather tasteless painting of a naked woman in chains in a dungeon, and doesn't look very valuable.
• They decide that the skeleton is a regular, non-magical, non-dangerous one and start looting the room, at which point the skeleton comes alive, grabs Barnave's arm and tries to cut it off with his sword. The PCs being unarmed, they panic and throw various oddities at the monster, hoping for a cool combination of magical effect to save their bacon. Elina pockets the stone egg and hears the voice of an ancient wizard inside it, and decides to keep it: it probably has great wisdom.
Then Barnave takes out the cursed scroll with the Death Sign on it from a few sessions ago and shows it to the skeleton.
The ancient, wise wizard goes "oh that idiot did not just do that, did he?"
And the skeleton starts cackling madly, blue flames burning in its eyes as the shadows of the room grow darker and an evil, ancient presence fills its hollow form. And that night, the players discovered how you make Greater Undead.
Then they jumped off the tower with the painting and the egg, in the castle moat.
• The now very cold and wet fearless leaders get to crawl through the sewers under Ironguard and reach the cellar under the castle, using a key they stole earlier during the heist to get back in, and meet a thief working for Mr. Moreau (he just happened to wait near the garbage chute where the party was supposed to deliver the painting, and did not expect them to come out of the sewers). They quickly exchange loot and learn that the castle is apparently under attack now.
• Going back up there, to the great hall, they can hear fighting through the castle - apparently some evil lich thing is slaying all the guards and servants and turning them into undead monsters, and Lord Ironguard is dead. Barnave and Elina look at each other and decide, wisely, that it is now time to go and pillage the treasury while all the guards are busy, before getting the hell out of this town.
Also, all these important people they met earlier? Yeah, they're dead now, or worse.
• Barnave somehow convinces a bunch of servants hiding in the kitchen that the best way to survive an undead attack is to get as close as possible to gold, since it is a metal they fear, which is why nobles love to wear gold jewelry. This gets them near the treasury and some more classic thievery grants them access to a dozen chests full of gold crowns. They each carry one on their back and sneak out of the castle, with Barnave sending a telepathic message to his dog to ask him to lead the rest of the group near the inner gate to meet them.
• Then they all steal a cart and horses, load all the gold onto it, explain the servants that they are not, in fact, going to share the loot with them and to go away (now that they've got their weapons back, smart convincing or politeness is no longer needed), and skip town after murdering a few guards that were waiting at the main door.
• So here they are. Elina, Barnave, Merle, Gunthark, Tom Lee and the Dog, on a cart full of gold, Ironguard is being slowly overrun by zombies, and Bogtown is probably still sour about the whole "setting a building on fire to create a distraction" thing they pulled off last time. So they decide to go back to Helix and see how things are holding up back then.
• The next day, on the road, they stop to listen to a peasant with a weird accent tell them how his friends are stuck under a tree and need assistance. It seems fishy but they decide to send the NPCs to deal with it. The NPCs get captured (the dog tells Barnave through telepathy) and the fella with the accent starts his spiel: "Alright people, this is a robbery, we've got your friends so give us the gold and-" and then Elina shoots him in the face. Then Barnave feels his telepathic link being severed as the bandits waiting in ambush murder every one of their friends that was still around (except for the two absent PCs) and the duo decides to get the hell away from here.
Except the bandits of Queen Renata aren't the kind that just take your friends hostage and ask nicely. They're also the kind that set up a bunch of guys with crossbows a little further up the road to make sure they get your stuff.
And Barnave gets shot in the chest, and falls off from the cart.
And Elina decides "hey, on the plus side, it means I get ALL the gold now!" and runs off on her own with the cart and the gold and none of her friends.
• When she arrives in Helix though, something's a little off.
Last sunday, him and Elina's player (Lu') played out the consequence that short game, and events took a slightly drastic turn.
Also, Rattlemayne (who made this cool and free Warhammer/ItO Hack) was kind enough to draw Barnave and his telepathic mutt!
Barnave's player loved it too!
(Quick) Session Report #7.5
• Barnave gets a haircut,
• He bumps into a street urchin that tells him to go meet a "Mr. Moreau" a little before midnight at the well behind the Inn,
• Decided to go to the Silver Standard mercenary & mercantile company to try and sell them information about the whereabouts of Bandit Queen Renata,
• Learns that the Silver Standard and Lord Ironguard are planning an operation to get rid of the bandits and that they would like to hear what he has to say very much, at a reunion tonight, agrees,
• Goes to check on his friends at the Temple of St. Ygg, where the local priest, Father Horace, asks him to go get some news from Helix because apparently it's been a week and nobody's heard anything from the place, which is usually in regular contact with Ironguard through merchant caravans, and agrees to help for a small fee, only after he's done with his business in town,
• And meets with Mr. Moreau in a shady basement after finding a bunch of thugs waiting for him at the RDV point. It turns out he's a Halfling Businessman from Bastion and would like he and his party, the Night Weasels, to steal a painting called The False Chanterelle from the Lord's castle - he can arrange for the heist to be easy, and they get to keep everything they want besides from the target.
Barnave accepts.
Session Report #8 - Barnave & Elina Ruin Everything
• Barnave arrives at the Temple just in time for the Silver Standard escort to greet Elina and him, and they get to go to the fancy castle, where they meet a ton of Important NPC (tm) who will totally play an important part in the rest of the campaign: Lord Kell Ironguard, his Captain, his Wizard, his Adviser and the Silver Standard Company's big boss - Herbert de Vaucanson, pictured below.
• During the meeting, Lord Ironguard is glad to learn that this adventuring party, the Nice Guys, are willing to take part in the fight against the bandits, and listens with a smile as Barnave explains how he and his friends came to learn of the bandits' hiding place, how they look like an actual army, etc.
For that, he thanks them, then explains that they will have to remain locked in their quarters as his guests until his spies can confirm that the intel is legit and that the "Nice Guys" aren't actually spies from the Bandit Queen. Being unarmed and surrounded by guards, the Nice Guys leaders are happy to oblige.
• During the night, someone slips a note under their door, containing instructions on how to get to the False Chanterelle - and also picks the lock. The whole thing smells like Mr. M anticipated what would happen and The Nice Guys, now back to their regular role as The Night Weasels, sneak around the castle.
• Eventually they find that the room they're looking for is just above the Lord's room, and is filled with weird stuff: a strange frog idol, a stone egg, a skeleton in ceremonial armor wielding a longsword, a jar with a huge wart in it, and the painting they were looking for! Which turns out to be a rather tasteless painting of a naked woman in chains in a dungeon, and doesn't look very valuable.
• They decide that the skeleton is a regular, non-magical, non-dangerous one and start looting the room, at which point the skeleton comes alive, grabs Barnave's arm and tries to cut it off with his sword. The PCs being unarmed, they panic and throw various oddities at the monster, hoping for a cool combination of magical effect to save their bacon. Elina pockets the stone egg and hears the voice of an ancient wizard inside it, and decides to keep it: it probably has great wisdom.
Then Barnave takes out the cursed scroll with the Death Sign on it from a few sessions ago and shows it to the skeleton.
The ancient, wise wizard goes "oh that idiot did not just do that, did he?"
And the skeleton starts cackling madly, blue flames burning in its eyes as the shadows of the room grow darker and an evil, ancient presence fills its hollow form. And that night, the players discovered how you make Greater Undead.
Then they jumped off the tower with the painting and the egg, in the castle moat.
• The now very cold and wet fearless leaders get to crawl through the sewers under Ironguard and reach the cellar under the castle, using a key they stole earlier during the heist to get back in, and meet a thief working for Mr. Moreau (he just happened to wait near the garbage chute where the party was supposed to deliver the painting, and did not expect them to come out of the sewers). They quickly exchange loot and learn that the castle is apparently under attack now.
• Going back up there, to the great hall, they can hear fighting through the castle - apparently some evil lich thing is slaying all the guards and servants and turning them into undead monsters, and Lord Ironguard is dead. Barnave and Elina look at each other and decide, wisely, that it is now time to go and pillage the treasury while all the guards are busy, before getting the hell out of this town.
Also, all these important people they met earlier? Yeah, they're dead now, or worse.
• Barnave somehow convinces a bunch of servants hiding in the kitchen that the best way to survive an undead attack is to get as close as possible to gold, since it is a metal they fear, which is why nobles love to wear gold jewelry. This gets them near the treasury and some more classic thievery grants them access to a dozen chests full of gold crowns. They each carry one on their back and sneak out of the castle, with Barnave sending a telepathic message to his dog to ask him to lead the rest of the group near the inner gate to meet them.
• Then they all steal a cart and horses, load all the gold onto it, explain the servants that they are not, in fact, going to share the loot with them and to go away (now that they've got their weapons back, smart convincing or politeness is no longer needed), and skip town after murdering a few guards that were waiting at the main door.
• So here they are. Elina, Barnave, Merle, Gunthark, Tom Lee and the Dog, on a cart full of gold, Ironguard is being slowly overrun by zombies, and Bogtown is probably still sour about the whole "setting a building on fire to create a distraction" thing they pulled off last time. So they decide to go back to Helix and see how things are holding up back then.
• The next day, on the road, they stop to listen to a peasant with a weird accent tell them how his friends are stuck under a tree and need assistance. It seems fishy but they decide to send the NPCs to deal with it. The NPCs get captured (the dog tells Barnave through telepathy) and the fella with the accent starts his spiel: "Alright people, this is a robbery, we've got your friends so give us the gold and-" and then Elina shoots him in the face. Then Barnave feels his telepathic link being severed as the bandits waiting in ambush murder every one of their friends that was still around (except for the two absent PCs) and the duo decides to get the hell away from here.
Except the bandits of Queen Renata aren't the kind that just take your friends hostage and ask nicely. They're also the kind that set up a bunch of guys with crossbows a little further up the road to make sure they get your stuff.
And Barnave gets shot in the chest, and falls off from the cart.
And Elina decides "hey, on the plus side, it means I get ALL the gold now!" and runs off on her own with the cart and the gold and none of her friends.
• When she arrives in Helix though, something's a little off.
Where is everyone?
After some investigating, it turns out some sort of Death Cult came through here and murdered everyone. It's as if the Barrowmaze really was hiding some really bad stuff and nobody was here to prevent it because they were busy setting Inns on fire. Elina, non-plussed by the events, decides to hide most of her money here, keep a horse and go into hiding for a while, somewhere without an undead invasion or a Death Cult.
And so this is how the first part of the campaign ends: with everything being much worse than it was at first, but the PCs are rich.
Well, not that rich: in the six months trip to Bastion that we're skipping, out of the 50k crowns that Elina and Barnave got, 10 thousand were given to the Bandit Queen for a safe escort out of the territory, 10 thousand were lost along the way to various long-journey issues, another 10 to pay off the players' debt and start things fresh in the Big City, and the rest was lost to the smugglers to get in and the few taxes that nobody can avoid. Leaving Elina and Barnave with 7500 each in New Pounds (£), which is still enough to start their own Enterprise(s) in Bastion.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• Besides a few combats, not a lot of dice rolling happened in contrast to the quantity of things that happened this session. Sure, some save here and there, but mostly things followed the whims of the Luck Dice and whatever events I had planned that the players stumbled into (it was a shame really that they would choose to destroy Ironguard the same session where they found out about how Helix was no longer a safe place to use as HQ).
• We all felt quite bummed out with how things turned out after the castle escape: to paraphrase the players, it was like scoring treasure was like them getting a big birthday cake, and then the world threw that cake on the ground and stomped on it with mud-caked shoes. Bandits are a threat that can be negociated with, but the players got greedy after their luck streak and the madness of having so much gold at hand made them lose their mind, kinda. The context also heavily downplayed the discovery of what had happened to Helix while they were gone. I still abide by my choice of letting things follow their planned conclusions when not influenced by player decisions, even though it led to a very chaotic and almost senseless story of greed and blood instead of something more structured, but hey, that's also what makes Fantasy Adventure Games fun, I think: the story is the product of play, and this way you can't tell what it'll look like.
• So on the one hand, almost everyone interesting in the region is dead, but on the other hand, the players got out on top, and now they've got the perfect reason to go to Bastion, which feels like "Act II" of the campaign for us. It's also noteworthy that 8 sessions is about as long as we've gone for a long while now, with only my very old AD&D campaigns being true "year long campaigns". I'm hoping the switch in focus (you're in Bastion now!) and new opportunities (lotsa money!) brought by the session will keep the energy and enthusiasm high for the group.
My Homework for Next Time
• Read Chris McDowall's Blog again. The whole thing is gold.
• Use every advice-oriented article to create content.
• Maybe also prepare stuff in the shape of an actual "adventure module" that I can put around for sale on PWYW after I try it out on my players. There's not a lot of Into the Odd stuff around and I've been considering writing for others than my players and myself for a long while now.
• Feed my Picture & Sounds Folder a Ton of Weird Stuff.
To Be Continued!
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