Arden Vul - Sessions 11 and 12
The party
Skeggi Arnbjorgsson, the Elf Thief, covered in burn scars. Training.
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.
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
Prosper the Doughty, Archontean Paladin of Mitra, wielder of a powerful magical blade.
Summary
The date: 2993 AEP, also known as the 8th year of Constans XXV. 10th day of Lyan.
I'm a little behind on writing blog posts, so y'all are getting abridged versions of sessions 11 and 12 today.
Session 11:
We begin in the Forum of Set, the trading area and slave market inside of Arden Vul, controlled by the Cult of Set.
- Crys introduced herself to Balthazar the Blue, the leader of a mid-level adventuring party. His party healed the recent baboon injuries and Crys and Balthazar traded a spell, Crys receiving Pol's Endless Sneezing.
- The party headed to the caves north of the Forum of Set after receiving a few jobs from the Cult: Clear out the north caves of monsters and retrieve the escaped slaves that are ruining their reputation, also in the north caves.
- They encountered a brass dragonfly automaton who introduced himself as 'Kerbog Khan'. Kerbog told the party that he's been watching them and is pleased with their disruption of the Beastmen and is always willing to trade information, teleportation, or some items for likewise plus a gift of blood from the party to seal the deal.
- The party searched the caves, eventually finding a secret door with 4 thick salamander humanoids behind it. The humanoids slammed the door shut after the party backed out.
- The party arrived at a lair of subterranean lizards, who were in the middle of a screaming match with a duo of teenaged owlbears. Indunn snuck in and stole 5 eggs from one nest. The party was chased by one lizard but the party was able to distract it by tossing an egg and fleeing.
- The party waiting to see if they could sneak back into the lair but heard lizards coming and headed back towards the entrance of the caves.
- The party learns they can sell the eggs to the Arena for 250 gold each.
Session 12:
- Interlude: Skeggi arrived at the Benevolent Brotherhood, the local branch of the almost-legitimate Thieves’ Guild and met the Big Brothers and began his training. He learned there is a bounty on the Halflings and that the Brotherhood refuse to associate with them.
- Skeggi also learned a few local thieves were hired to escort a magic-user into the top of Arden Vul but they haven't been heard from in a week.
- Back with the main party, Indunn and Crys headed to the arena and negotiated a deal with the wranglers to sell the eggs.
- One of the wranglers, a goblin named Ashsweeper, pulled them aside and gave them some special information, since they are Goblin-Friends. The wranglers use a special mead from the Beastmen in order to sedate the monsters in-between matches. They haven't received any for a week and will start having problems with monsters in a another week or two. Indunn and Crys said they could figure out how to manufacture the drug for them.
- They return to the Inn of the Lost and meeting with Kaliban and crew.
- Kaliban asked Prosper, who is still staying with them, if he could receive Prosper's sword when he dies. Prosper said yes if Kaliban converted to Mitra.
- Kaliban agreed and Prosper brought him to Drusus, who agreed to conduct the ceremony privately.
- She lead Kaliban to her room, arranged black candles and a circle of blood, and conducted the hour long ceremony. Afterwards, she told Kaliban that he was now officially a sworn subject of the Elder Being Rimmiq-Isfet, demon-god (?) of salamanders and chaos.
- She revealed her whole plan to him: She is looking for a lost shrine to the being underground and planned to make Prosper a fallen paladin. She encouraged Kaliban to continue to shame him and break his spirit so he would be easier to manipulate.
IMPORTANT SIDE-BAR:
The Inn of the Lost is under the effect of an Anti-Magic Shell. I didn't remember this until all of this had come out, but the player did. We negotiated and I decided that she said all of this without realizing the spell had gone off.
- Kaliban returned to the common room and shouted everything he had learned. Propser grabbed his sword and headed to Drusus' room with the marital members of the party following, as well as Justin the Nose, Thegan Whiteman's lieutenant.
- In a few short minutes, Drusus and her acolytes were executed. Prosper left while the party helped Justin the Nose dispose the bodies in exchange for allowing them to loot the room.
- The party acquired a magic staff shaped like a snake coiled around a pole, scale mail +1, and an amulet.
- The party talked to Prosper at the bar who was doing surprisingly okay. He said he was ready to destroy some more evil, and asked the party if they wanted to accompany him to kill the undead that were haunting the Beastmen.
- The party rested and headed through the goblin warrens to the secret door near the Halflings, but headed south towards the Beastmen instead.
My take
These were the first two sessions after a couple week long break. I've reorganized how I prep for sessions, using this post guide. They tell me what they want to do by Wednesday, I give them more information (I've started just giving out numbers for selling treasure and things like that, doing it all in the session takes too much time) and prep the areas they will be doing onto.
Based on this post, I started keying Arden Vul in a similar style to Weird Writer. It made such a huge difference for the caves north of the Forum of Set and it also gives me a venue to update the key after the players have ransacked the place or if I misread something during a session. It's now the source of truth instead of the book and it feels waaaaaay better to run in session. Plus it forces me to think about how rooms connect and what can be seen or smelled and I think it made those caves feel way more alive.
I also used tabula to extract encounter tables. It saves a little bit of time but it isn't perfect, I still had to copy and paste a little bit.
I have also changed how treasure xp is given out. I am treating the 'civilized' areas inside Arden Vul as safe zones, so treasure safely stored there rewards xp. We hadn't given out any treasure xp yet and it was starting to suck, both for keeping track of everything and also it meant that any purchases the party made was being taken out of their potential xp. It's all done now though and we'll keep giving it out per session (at least if they get back to safe spots).
I also made a judgement on magic item xp: Technically characters should stop accruing xp when they reach their current level cap, but magic item xp really fucks with this, given Arden Vul gives many chances to receive items with 2500-5000 magic item xp easily. Lucina received at least 7000 for the Staff of the Serpent that Drusus had. So i decreed that magic item xp can go past the level cap but the character stops accruing any xp until they train (likely multiple times) and their share will be given out to the rest of the party.
The anti-magic shell snafu was a little annoying but worked out fine. It was a fun resolution and bringing Prosper in for some brutality is always a good time.
I did reveal that I am running Mitra's version of lawful good like Gygax would: Surrendering criminals are executed. Criminals are often executed on the front steps of his temples. Kaliban mentioned actually wanted to join the church given this information, which is fun.
I'm also trying to run Prosper at his proper wisdom (15) when he is not drunk. He is not a fool, he's just impulsive and makes poor decisions when he drinks, which is often.
I've mostly toned down how much prep I am doing and how much I am working on the game. I might have weeks (like this one) where I can dedicate more time to keying dungeons and updating spreadsheets, but I have so many other projects that need my attention. On those weeks, I will be writing a blog post and doing a couple hours prep before the sessions but that's it. It feels a lot more manageable than just thinking about the game all the time.
As is the case anytime I run with by reading the book at the table, the goblin wrangler's request got a little messed up (they don't use the mead from the Beastmen for sedating, that was me mixing up something else) but it's an easy adaption to make.
Thanks for reading!