The 8th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty
The last session wrapped up with Hiddlebatch’s apparent kidnapping. Felicitously, this left Quimarel and Tamarie alone in the Kech’s room, so in a certain light -- a very dim light -- their Plan could be considered a success. This session began with Hiddlebatch’s player justifying her decisions by claiming it was the will of Khurgorbaeyag that all this had happened, and Hiddlebatch was only trying to act in the best interests of its god.
Then the session proper starts, and Quimarel immediately begins searching the room. ‘Cause, I mean, you gotta search the room, right? It’s not D&D until you’ve searched the room (and looted it). Besides, they now finally have the opportunity to figure out what these creepy robed figures are up to without being bitten by foreigners. The first thing she finds is… a crude map of the Royal Intelligence Corps building, exactly the sort of thing they had spent a ridiculous amount of time searching the library for the previous day.
Hiddlebatch OOC: Aha! My plan was victorious!
GM: Yes, you found a map. By waiting for someone else to make one, and then having your friend stumble across it while your enemies are busy knocking you unconscious and kidnapping you. Great plan.
Hiddlebatch OOC: It’s called a sacrifice for the team.
The map is marked with potential points of entry, notation of guard schedules, and other glosses one would need if one were planning to burgle a place. Or, at least that’s what it probably means, because none of them can read the Kech written alphabet, but they figure it’s clear from the context. They also find some documents, which they likewise cannot read. They then turn to the two locked chests in which the Kech apparently keep their belongings.
Tamarie settles down to pick the locks, and Quimarel goes to stand guard outside. She successfully picks the first lock, but forgets to check for a trap beforehand -- of course there’s a trap -- because she is but a humble mutant tailor and not used to such skullduggery. As is pointed out at the table, checking for traps is actually the rogue’s job, and the only person with rogue levels is currently standing guard in the hallway. So she’s stabbed with a poison needle, botches her Fortitude save, and takes two Dexterity damage.
The trunk contains several robes of the style they’ve seen the Kech wearing, and the players notice that the fabric is so thick and heavy that natives of this climate would not even consider wearing them except in the dead of winter. They also find some more indecipherable documents, and a few small leather bags, which each contain a handful of small carved & polished emeralds, presumably what the Kech have been using to pay their bills (and their bribes). Tamarie, as a businesswoman, has some decent appraisal skills she picked up from her more high-class tailoring jobs, and estimates that the gems are worth about 50 gold apiece. There are forty-six of them in total, which means they just found 2300 gold. They are excited.
Quimarel comes in to see what the fuss is about, and after Tamarie informs her of the poison-but-then-gems situation, she goes to check the other chest for traps.
GM: What did you roll?
Quimarel OOC: 14.
GM: You don’t… find any traps…
Quimarel OOC: I hate when you do that!
Tamarie has as one of her Tainted traits -- which I think I forgot to mention in the prologue -- a minor mental quirk of relentless optimism in all situations. So she accepts at face value that, while the other lock was trapped, this one is perfectly safe, and commences to picking it. She rolls a 1, managing to not only activate the needle trap, but to get her lockpick stuck in the lock at such an angle that she can’t get the chest open at all. And she’ll need to replace that lockpick. (I have no idea why a tailor has thieves’ tools, but it’s written in her equipment…) Tamarie takes an additional five Dexterity damage from her new poisoning, and the team’s official sleight-of-hand expert is now working with a negative modifier.
Tamarie is reduced to tripping over her own feet, her head spinning. Quimarel takes a moment to decide that since the chest is physically larger than she is, she can’t possibly carry it home inconspicuously, so they begin to make their way out of the inn. Quimarel helping Tamarie navigate the stairs.
Quimarel: Let’s get you home, drunkie.
On their way out, they decide to collect their ad-hoc substitute bartender. Quimarel grabs her arm as she passes. “Let’s go, Foxglove.”
“But this guy said he’d give me an extra tip -- “
“Let’s go.” They are not here on business, after all.
“You’re messing up my nails… they’re not dry yet!”
“Don’t sass me.”
They head back to the Squirting Squid, where they find that Makpov is feeling much better now that Quimarel’s herbal concoctions had taken effect. (Quimarel bought Craft[herbal remedies] at character creation for exactly this reason.) Quimarel also casts Cure Light Wounds on herself and Tamarie, and Detect Magic on the emeralds. They are not magical, but they are still gems, so that’s cool.
They then make the decision to call it a night, since they just got beat up by “freaky sloth people”, and go check out that abandoned well in the morning. They make plans to get some armor and alchemical bombs ready for their Subtle Infiltration Plan, which they cheerfully describe as a “full frontal assault”. (The voice in my head that narrates their plans has gone from “Baldrick” to “Jägermonster” -- “I iz bein’ sottil”) Winking, nudging, and “heh, heh, you said ‘full frontal’” ensues around the table.
There is some brief discussion of subtlety: Quimarel wants to know if she can use one of the cloaks to disguise herself as some sort of very small Kech. Deciding that claiming a glandular disorder is not likely to fly, she then considers standing on another halfling’s shoulders as well, which would be very difficult to do while climbing down an abandoned well shaft. They abandon “subtle” and go back to “frontal assault”.
Quimarel: So we’ll sleep now, and in the morning we’ll go get our hobgoblin… racist… priest… thing. Um. Tamarie, you want to stay here in the Squid for the night?
Tamarie: My actual bedroom is, like, two minutes away.
Quimarel: Can you walk there okay? Actually, maybe we should wait for that poison to wear off before you try to assemble bombs.
GM: That’s going to be about a week.
Quimarel OOC: Well, until her modifier isn’t in the negatives, then.
GM: That’s three days.
Makpov OOC: Do you need to roll Dexterity to make bombs?
GM: I think it’s just an Alchemy check, actually… you just need it to throw them accurately.
Quimarel: I’ll do the bomb-throwing.
Tamarie OOC: Actually… um… [indicates “Throw Anything” feat on her character sheet]
GM: You’d have to take an improvised weapon penalty, so she still has the better modifier.
Quimarel OOC: What if I used a sling?
GM: … okay, that might work.
⁂
Hiddlebatch is in some sort of underground cavern, manacles around its legs and wings, in a chain-gang formation with about a half-dozen unfamiliar sleeping goblins. A Kech is standing guard over the chain gang, looking bored. Over in the corner, there is a pile of pickaxes. Hiddlebatch subtly casts Cure Light Wounds on itself, and looks around the cavern. Most of it is stone and earth that looks recently excavated, but here and there it can see walls and bits of very old-looking buildings that appear to have been buried here, Hiddlebatch considers how to get out of the chains, and remembers her Tainted mutation that allows her to use Ethereal Jaunt… kind of. At this point, the table breaks down into a discussion of the word “ethereal” -- ¾ of the players are grad students in the English department, so unusual words are exciting, and I’d forgotten that “ethereal” is one of those words you don’t often see outside of D&D. (“You know, like the luminiferous æther.”)
The Ethereal Jaunt thing was a lucky roll on H’s player’s part -- how the Tainted tables work is as follows:
- There are three categories: Minor, Medium, and Major
- Each has 100 different options with different levels of usefulness/inconvenience.
- During character creation, a player can choose as many Tainted traits as they want, but for each one they choose, they have to randomly roll one in the same category, so picking up Major mutations (like functional wings) puts you at risk of getting seriously crippling mutations along with them. Hiddlebatch got the Ethereal Jaunt trick as the random result that came with its wings.
- This is crazy good luck, as that’s one of the better options, and some of the others were things like:
- You can only eat the flesh of sapient creatures (Int 5+).
- You cannot touch wood -- you pass right through it.
- Your tongue is a separate, worm-like creature with its own agenda & opinions.
- Cannot speak -- produce only birdsong when you try.
- Incapable of using proper nouns in speech or writing, including the names of your companions, the town where you live, &c.
- Birds HATE you.
The Ethereal Jaunt trick is written up like this:
You can cast Ethereal Jaunt once per week. Except you don't go to the Ethereal Plane, but a different, previously unheard-of, overlapping plane. Things live there. They're hungry. Each time you do it, 10% chance something tries to eat you. GM is encouraged to generate a stack of random monsters with varied CRs for this purpose.I currently have a document on my computer entitled “Abominations for [Hiddlebatch’s Player]” -- it’s a handful of randomized monsters from the Pathfinder Monster Generator. Hiddlebatch is currently very blasé about the risks involved, a situation which will likely change the first time it inadvertently leads some horrible abomination back into the Material Plane.
Hiddlebatch is looking around the room and strategizing, trying to figure out the best use of its four rounds of incorporeality. Since Hiddlebatch’s player is also glaring at a little map I’ve handed her and strategizing, we switch back over to the others waking up around this time...
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