Arden Vul - Session 10
The party
Skeggi Arnbjorgsson, the Elf Thief, covered in burn scars. On bedrest.
Idunn Redbraid, clanless Dwarf 'scout' (fighter/thief).
Chrysaphius "Crys" Attaliates, Archontean Magic-User from the Order of Thoth.
Kaliban, the Thorcin Fighter, former child gladiator. On bedrest.
Haldir Magsys, Archontean 'squire' (thief).
Lucina Caudex, Archotnean cleric of Heschius Ban.
Grax the Axe, Dwarven fighting man of the Malachite clan. Brother of Gragur and Gormulgan.
Gragur "the Dagger", Dwarven 'gopher' and brother to Grax and Gormulgan.
Gormulgan "the Normal Man", Dwarven assassin and brother to Grax and Gragur.
Extras
Freydis, the Wiskin Cleric of Thor (hireling).
Prosper the Doughty, Archontean Paladin of Mitra, wielder of a powerful magical blade and his two torch-bearers.
Summary
Intermission
Skeggi sends a letter to Indunn Redbraid, his thief companion about their predicament. Indunn begins assembling a new party in Gosterwick as Skeggi and Kaliban heal.
Several events transpire around them while Skeggi and Kaliban are stuck in bed:
- Bellringer, the party's goblin friend, came to give his condolences on their recent defeat and to share that his king would like to help with getting their revenge on the halflings.
- Bellringer also announced that he is training to become a mystic (in his case, a Fighter/M-U/Cleric). He is available for work and can current cast a cantrip.
- The proprietor of the Inn of the Lost, Thegan Whitemane, becomes increasingly agitated and begins asking if anyone knows what happened to be Beastmen.
- The Goblin-Friend party is cancelled but a group of goblins come and do the ceremony in the inn room, granting the title to Skeggi, Kaliban, and Prosper (against his will)
- Prosper healed himself over the next few days using his paladin powers.
- Prosper is berated by a cleric of his order (Drusus, who the party met earlier) and is told he needs to repent his crimes by helping her with a quest: Finding a lost shrine deep below. Prosper will be assembling a crew for a few weeks and extended invitations to the party to join him as junior members.
- Freydis, the party's cleric hireling, quits due to mistreatment and joins Prosper's group as a junior member instead.
The new party
The date: 2993 AEP, also known as the 8th year of Constans XXV. 10th day of Lyan.
After picking up a few rumors, the party heads out in the dead of night, fording the river and taking a back route to the cliffs of Arden Vul. As they approached by torchlight, they walk into a group of 4 albino baboons, who are almost as surprised to see the party as they are.
But not quite enough, as the baboons charge the party. They attack, hammering the party's front line. Quickly the back of the party wheels around and backstabs the lead baboon, slaying it. The rest of the baboons cower in fear. The party executes the remaining ones.
With several of their members bloodied, they approach where they were told to light a signal lantern. A wicker basket is lowered from 700 ft above and the party rides up, two by two, and are welcomed into a rough stone chamber by two Set guardsmen and their most senior team members, Skeggi and Kaliban.
Skeggi take the opportunity to go back to town, coin in hand, and begins his training with the Benevolent Brotherhood. Due to good timing, his training will only take a week.
The rest of the party made their way to the Forum of Set, where they are questioned by Set guardsman with large, strange goggles. They are each asked their name, profession, and why they come to the Forum:
Idunn Redbraid, Scout: To trade
Crys Attaliates, Wizard: To trade
Grax the Axe, Fighting Man: Fight those halflings
Gragur "The Dagger", Gopher: Fight those haldlings
Gormulgan. Unemployed: Seeing cool stuff
Kaliban, Gladiator: Look for weapons
Haldir Magsys, Squire: To trade
Lucina Caudex, Knight: To trade
The party makes it to the Forum and discusses their next move. Idunn reveals herself as a former bandit and they discuss strategies for making the lives of the halflings hell: Disrupting their supply lines, leaving traps around, and other things.
My take
Due to a big magic xp boost, Skeggi is the first character who qualifies for leveling up. It's only take him a week (using blue bard's rules to roll a d4 instead of making a judgement on how long training takes). He has enough xp to hit level 3 (which is breaking some rules as he should probably have not gained any xp after reaching the level 1 limit) but I allowed it, especially given everything that's happened so far.
This was also the last session before a two week break, which was quite needed. I didn't think about the game too much after this session, so this report is a little late. I'll talk more about where my head is in the next report.
Both sad and exciting to have a mostly new group of adventurers. We discussed how we want to handle new recruits, since if they continue to gather pcs at this speeds, they could just out-attrition the halflings if they wanted.
What I decided on is that it'll take longer and longer to recruit new batches of PCs and there will be a point far in the in-game future where the Halls will no longer be accessible. I want the game scale to be ad&d length, but there must be eventual consequences to killing parties over and over again, if that were to eventually happen. I am thinking likely the scale of decades.
That baboon fight was rather unlikely and I almost scrapped it. I'm glad no one died because that is not how I wanted to start this new group off. I'm glad their morale went the way it did.
The interview with the guards was a fun way of getting details from the new pcs.
Cantrips
I did end up making a decision on cantrips, although we haven't messed with it too much. It's based off the rules that Blue Bard uses in Castle of the Silver Prince, also mashed with other rules I found on the internet but I don't remember the sources.
Arcane spellcasters can cast a number of cantrips per day as their max health. They start with 3 memorized (1 useful cantrip and 2 random ones). Acquiring new cantrips is trivial, any standard magic-user library has a huge tome containing all of them. Cantrips can never cause damage or interupt spell-casting. They are mostly for flavor but may be useful in certain circumstances.
I am hoping this makes magic-users a little more fun at lower levels. I know they are better later on but the gulf between level 1 cleric and level 1 magic-user is huge, even with cutting down a clerics spell list.
I will also be having level 0 magic-user trainees learn cantrips if it comes up, like with the case of Bellringer. I rolled stats for him and they ended up being really nice so I decided on a fun class combo for him, given Arden Vul goblins can already be cleric/magic-users. He'll continue to function as a hobgoblin for now with 1-3 cantrips. When he hits 2500 xp, he'll graduate to level 1 magic-user/cleric/figher with a slight hp increase.
Thanks for reading!