Campaign Journal: A Not-So Idyll Isle

Full house for the session:

• Jax - Barbarian
• Fulvus - Halfling
• Rondel - Elf
• Frederick - Thief
• Orzu - Gnome
• Slick - Thief 

We opened with Slick, Orzu, and Jax returning to port with their shipload of goods and evidence of servant-manikin trade to Chirath. 

In the meantime, Frederick, Fulvus, and Rondel were in the dwarven archives with Snorri Barrelbranch and a number of other archivists. They had located ledgers documenting dates and names associated with the original Barrier lens crafting, as well as the factions who had commissioned the work. 

As they pored over the volumes, Rondel's elf eyes caught movement among the shelves and folios. An individual, camouflaged against the background, momentarily visible as their camo adjusted to their shifting position. Rondel let off an arrow, followed by Fulvus, alerted to the commotion. The intruder expired, their hue-shifting skin fading with them. 

Everyone was looking over the body, when a cry let loose from Snorri and his assistants. The archivist clutched at a wound, yelling that the ledger was stolen. A second, similarly attributed intruder fled the archives, book in hand. Rondel got a shot off, but the interloper fled. The party followed the cries and commotion, finally reaching the docks just as the intruder dove into the water, being pursued by a hail of spears and arrows. 

Just as the pirate gallery rolled in. Look what we got! Who cares? We gotta go - the ledger's been stolen! Rondel cast locate object, sensing the book moving away to the west before fading out of range.

The PCs all hopped onto Xandra Ironhide's smaller galley, back-rowing out into the open. This boat only rowed and sailed. No fancy steam propulsion on this one. A sail was seen disappearing into a fog bank - That's our prey.

source

D66 Wands

Back with more D66 mischief. This time - magic wands!

source

Roll up a wand's power, what it is constructed of, and any fancy embellishments to give it that "special something."

The Wands Are Here

Source

And for more D66 goodness, feel free to peruse my "Baker's Dozen of D66 Lists."

Shadowdark: Bloggah's Blog Part 7: The Road to Scorn

Oop – new file on the the tablet. Let's see what it holds. And why does my tablet smell like rotted cabbage?

***

Time to leave Hounds Head. The guys are done with the forest for the time being. Don't blame them. The town is buttoning up for winter anyhow. I drop my loose silver with the kin, no reason to have it loading me down. Everyone loads their packs – goodbye for now.

It's Columbo, Dremont, Burns and Gunrey, and me.

South of town, we run into a dozen mercs. Yellow Falcon banner. Their captain, a halfing called Millicent Stout, says they are headed to Hounds to winter there and do some work for Ivanoff. Columbo offers to sell her the map to the northman barrow, might as well unload that bit of cursed parchment. He's not too keen with math, but we each finally get fifteen silver out of the deal. Millicent gives us some news of Scorn, where to watch our step and all that. Burns, the stabby kid, asks about their corps, and she gives him a coin to show the guard, maybe get him some honest training.

On the way past, a goblin cousin laboring under a towering pack tosses me a crystal hook. Might be useful he says. I tell him where to find the kin, and he thanks me and stomps off after the rest of the “Falcons.”

I noodle with it while we walk, do some oogabooga at it. Seems it can be stuck to a wall and hang there. Fancy coathook. For really heavy coats.

The road's quiet. That's good. We come upon a tree with some hanging dead. Looks likes they were stripped and gutted, nothing left but for the crows. This place it so welcoming.

source

They Met at a Tavern 5: Raiding the Wine-seller with Shadowdark

Time for another Meetup one-shot at the brewery. I've been meaning to run Shadowdark, since I've been playing in Tim's Komor campaign, so here we go. Had a full table, with folks grabbing pre-gens or bringing their own cannon fodder/characters:

• Seana: Burl, dwarf fighter (bald)
• Brian: Theo, human priest (ridged cap)
• Selwyn: Roman: human thief (fur-lined hood)
• Claire: Poker: halfling thief (beret)
• Dakota: Borl: human wizard (gem-encrusted helmet)

As per usual, started off with some random headgear and a few quick RP questions. I also bumped everyone to 2nd level for a bit of resiliency. I had a few options for adventure, and we settled on a city adventure, since that held more opportunities for thievery.

So the party was lodging on the cheap in the dock district of Chirath... Brother Theo visited the local temple to his faith (nature-oriented, neutral, silver pinecone holy symbol) looking for some charity and/or a task. Father Anselmo greeted the acolyte, and reported that through conversations with colleagues of other temples, foul necromancy was afoot in the city. Unfortunately, the suspected necromancer was a well-regarded businessman. Perhaps a party of 'independent contractors' from out of town could rid the city of this troublesome necromancer. Payment in goodwill and whatever they could lift.

Time to go wine-tasting.

source

The party paid a visit to "Saint Sephaton's Wine Garden." They were seated by greeter Gaz Hamati.  Looking at their meagre coin, they ordered the house red. The servers brought out glasses of wine and some bread and cheese. The PCs looked around at the other clientele, some of whom had bottles of better vintages brought to their tables. 

Proprietor Vito Mitras made his way around the tables, making sure everyone was satisfied. Time to sneak. The two thieves made their way to the 'facilities.' Poker did the halfling disappearing thing and created a distraction of knocking over some glasses. Roman crept upstairs, and Poker downstairs. Roman found Mitras' quarters and rooted through the desk until he found a coin purse and a secret compartment with a hidden ledger. Poker, in the meantime, made it downstairs into the wine seller. Although distracted by the cheese wheels and hanging prosciutto, an underlying scent of death indicated something amiss. After some poking about, she found the secret door to the catacombs. She made use of it to hide as an employee came down to collect some refreshments. Back up, and a bit of subterfuge by the two PCs to get back to the table. Let's pay the tab and see what we found.

Review: A Trio of Card Decks

Time to take a look at a few bits of Kickstarter loot that have been knocking around in my office:

First off, Crawl Cards: Overland, from BPB Games. I pledged at the $10 level for a POD discount coupon for the physical cards plus pdf. The supplement is a deck of 50 cards, each with six hexes. Hexes are color/graphic coded for terrain, along with features associates with one or more hexes (structures, settlements, monsters, unique terrain, etc.). Each card also has a brief description on the back for one or two unique features found within the six-hex area. The cards are designed for 5e, but are generally system agnostic in their descriptions.

Let's pull one. 

Card GO-07: "Blood Soaked Vale" The six hexes include three mountainous terrain, one swamp, on grassland, and two ruins/settlements (the hexes of interest).

Ooo. A mystery and the grumpy dead. Always a good start. Since the cards are meant to be used in sandbox style adventuring, the designers recommend drawing three cards and picking one that best fits as an adjacent region or continuation of a narration. 

(Draws three...)

The cards are titled "A Darker Path," "Radical Freedom," and "Rasekuhe." Cards 2 and 3 describe dwarven anarchists and a couple of farming and ranching communities, so the themes aren't particularly consistent with the original card.