Hey Bret -
We had the session this week and I thought I'd share how it went.
To start the session I first had to narrate how two party members who had been absent the prior session could be present at the party.
This included the sorcerer who had remained with a fortune teller the night before engage in a séance with her that allowed him to speak with his dead lover who he had accidentally killed in a wild magic accident. She told him she was in a better place, did not blame him for her passing, that she did not want to be brought back to the darkness of the world but instead the members of their tribe who had been killed since he left needed to be avenged. He promised to do so and then went to find out where the rest of the party had gone.
The barbarian had slipped away the night before to accompany the Archivist Militant who he had known in Palisades and who had stolen the pocket watch with the missing copy of the Mallus Deus inside it that had become corrupted by the influence of Lolth. They had determined they needed to destroy the watch since the party was not taking the threat of it serious enough, and had been met by a dwarf who knew of a celestial temple where Lolth's magic could be weakened and perhaps the artifact destroyed. The original intent was to resolve this as a mini-session between sessions but life intervened and the players weren't able to make it work before the main session. So to keep the story moving forward, the magical boat they were traveling on up river came under attack while the barbarian was asleep and he was thrown overboard into the river before he could react. He pulled himself out of the river after much effort to see an indistinct horde led by a Black Abishai leaving the scene with the pocket watch. Unable to pursue due to the distance and rushing river between him and the horde, he encountered the dwarf who suggested they return to Orossads to find the rest of the party so they could return and help find and stop the assailant horde as well as finally destroy the pocket watch. He returned to the city after the better part of the day traveling overland to get there, and the dwarf and he shared the news with Juomo, Josiah Stone, and Sariah who told him the party had gone to Lady Meissa's that night. He and the sorcerer were reunited, the dwarf remained behind in order to work with Juomo on determining where the horde had gone so when the party returned they could act on attempting to destroy the artifact.
The barbarian and sorcerer then travelled to the party where they arrived just after the orcs who were disembarking from their battle wagon. The orcs behaved like entitled frat bros, insulting everyone they saw and behaving entitled as they entered the party. The barbarian and sorcerer also followed in time to watch the party fighter and artificer engage in a show of strength and agility they had been hired to perform. In the prior session the two had been able to get word out they were the new hot act in town, passed the screening by Lady Meissa's concierge and been hired to be entertainment at the party. The two PCs rolled insanely well, describing their act such that they gained significant favor from other party goers and a nod of approval from Lady Meissa herself.
The fighter was the PC who had history with the orcs and she recognized the tattoo on one of their faces as belonging to the tribe that had destroyed hers and the sorcerer's nomadic group. She was able to signal to the sorcerer that they needed to talk and were able to have a funny disguised conversation using charades so the sorcerer now knew this as well. This set him off and he decided to attempt to get them to trust him so he could find out where the main group of orcs were so they could go get their revenge. But the plot became too complicated and it was lost in a scooby doo routine of attempts to win their approval while forgetting why he was interacting with them in the first place. Good times, though. The result was the sorcerer ended up telling the orcs that some members of the party were also there looking for the book, and that they could help find it. The orc leader huddled with the other orcs and then agreed to work with the party. By which he made it clear meant the party should take on the risk of trying to find it and the orcs would hang out in case they were "needed". Openly implying they meant to take advantage of the party and betray them when it suited them. The orcs were pretty arrogant.
The paladin, meanwhile, had decided he was going to let his semi-noble background work to his advantage here and made comments loudly that showed he had good taste and a refined upbringing that got him the attention of Bastion, the disguised Cambion paramour of Lady Meissa who was by her side. Bastion approached him where the paladin announced himself by his actual name and the name of his father. The paladin didn't know this, but his father who had tried to kill him and whom he now hates is also a high level member of the cult of Graz'zt. So when his name was mentioned, Bastion used the phrase the Kyrenikoi use in salutation, "For the first good". The paladin didn't know the correct way to respond so he blew it off, saying he was traveling to find his own way in the world. But he did recognized this phrase from discovered letters the party had found elsewhere and knew were associated with the Kyrenikoi. Bastion, seeing the paladin was not a member of the cult, played it off and introduced him to Lady Meissa, noting both his heritage and subtly affirming to her that the paladin was not an insider.
Lady Meissa invited the paladin to talk with her where they came to share their appreciation of fine food. The paladin asked if dinner would soon be ready and she invited him to visit the kitchen with her. The paladin used the opportunity to get into the residence while the rest of the party was still outside in the courtyards mingling before the meal was announced. He slipped away but noticed one of the orcs sneaking around in the house at the same time. The orc slipped up stairs and the paladin followed just in time to find the orc being confronted by the darkly mysterious figure of Candido, another of Lady Meissa's associates the party had been warned of. Candido overpowered the orc with magic, forcing him to tell the truth as to why he was sneaking around which turned out to be the orcs were there searching for the book as well as what caused the powerful dark magic pulse they had all felt. Candido physically forced the orc down the stairs and out into the courtyard, disrupting the party by announcing to Lady Meissa and the other guests what the orcs true motives were.
The orc leader in turn announced that in fact there were other guests present who were the one searching for the book. He called out the party members the sorcerer had identified then turned the sorcerer in as well.
Lady Meissa then made the proposal that the two groups provide further pre-dinner entertainment for the rest of the guests by battling out their differences. The paladin, fighter, and artificer where not identified as being part of this group and were being treated like the other guests. The rogue, bard, barbarian, and sorcerer where implicated. The orc party included eight members, some of which were basic low level orcs but three of which were pretty tough with close to 100 HP each and abilities intended to make the fight tough for seven level 6 PCs. Four level 6 PCs? It looked dire, actually. The party won the coin toss and chose to start in the garden area. The paladin turned to Lady Meissa and asked that he be allowed to join the four as the odds were against them. After she confirmed he understood it was a battle to the death he attempted to barter with her saying he thought if the party killed an equal number of orcs to the number of party members it should be the end of the competition. She mocked him for being insolent and trying to tell her how to run her parties, and that he forgot he was a guest. He was welcome to risk his life in combat but should also consider how much he wanted to risk it in forgetting who he was talking to as well. He was chastised but given his weapons back as were the other combatants, and the combat began.
The artificer had made friends with a lady minotaur and her gnome Gen Z streamer lover, so the three of them had chosen to start the entertainment watching the orcs. I gave the player a quick sketch of where they orcs were standing so she knew what her PC could see in case she decided to attempt to share that information with the party members. The fighter remained on the balcony near Lady Meissa and Bastion trying not to break cover.
The party came up with a plan where they would set up defenses and bait the orcs to come to them through a bottle neck area. It worked very, very well as the barbarian took the role of being the blockade at the bottle neck while also having a few beads from a beads of fireball necklace remaining. He used one of the beads to kill a few of the minion orcs while accidentally also killing the gnome lover of the minotaur on the balcony. Turned out the minotaur was already more interested in the artificer than the gnome so when the artificer decided to start using her magic to attack the orcs from the balcony, she was happy to run interference for her and keep the other guests from seeing what she was doing.
The party finished off the last of the orcs, with the final lo level orc who was hanging on with 1 HP confirming they were members of the Atakar before the sorcerer finished him off. Lady Meissa and Bastion applauded the group’s success, and revealed they had known both the orcs and the group were seeking the book so they had intentionally invited the orcs to put them in each others path to see what they did. Lady Meissa told the party she did not know where the book was, either, but that she knew who could help. She then lead the party to an exterior shrine to Graz’zt where she was able to beseech him for help. The statue of Graz’zt in the shrine animated and spoke, telling the party that the copy of the book they currently sought was dangerous as it had become corrupted by Lolth and was also in possession of a rogue group of the Kyrenikoi who had decided to align with a black dragon seeking the attention and approval of Tiamat. This group had the pocket watch/book AND had discovered the North Key (a bit of lore in game that means something to the players), and they are making their way to the Thorn Court in Alle Alora to use the book and the North Key to seize the power they offer for themselves.
Lady Meissa provided the party with a box of cyphers as a sign of good will before the party used the rogue’s teleportation scroll to leave and arrive outside the Thorn Court.
The next session will be the rogue player's last. So I made a lot of moves to ensure this final session was all about her backstory. The session will be a show down between the party and the approaching Kyrenikoi who include an adult black dragon, a black abishai, numerous cultists and a shadar-kai. There is a legend involved in this story about the elven goddess Hanali Celanil having chosen to take mortal form and forget herself in order to test the Eladrin who were cut off from the Seldarine. Finding them worthy of the Seldarine again, she would awaken to rediscover her true divine nature when she sits upon the Rosewood Throne and is pricked by it at which time the Eladrin believe she would break their banishment and they would once again enter into the cycle of elven reincarnation other elves enjoy. The Winter Eladrin Rogue player had been entrusted with the safety of her niece and commanded to flee when Alle Alora came under attack. And she had come to believe the reason her village was attacked and her father had given her this command was that her niece is the North Key which she discovered is what the Kyrenikoi are calling the disguised goddess. The Kyrenikoi believe that spilling the blood of the North Key on the throne will instead add her divine essence to the rituals involved in forcing the abyssal convergence that would allow the adherents to a fiendish entity to open a portal to that entities layer of the abyss where the demon lord could then come through and begin to attempt to conquer the material plane.
What the player does not realize is her niece was not the North Key but the blood heir to the family the father was protecting. Instead, the PC is the goddess. The Kyrenikoi figured this out when the PC, in a mini session, rescued her abducted family and the black abashai encountered her as well as the paladin. The Black Abashai and the Black Dragon ARE working on behalf of Tiamat, but it's also an arrangement with Graz'zt. Lady Meissa had been told to aid the party to get them to the Thorn Court so the Kyrenikoi could then more easily capture the Eladrin, reveal she is the North Key, and attempt to kill her in ritual sacrifice to fulfill Graz'zt goal of both twarting other rival demon lords attempting to use the abyssal convergence themselves while capitalizing on it himself. So the player's final game should involve her finding out her PC is a goddess with self-imposed amnesia who may or may not be able to end the division between Eladrin and other elven kind. Or, die and be the reason Graz'zt emerges onto the Material Plane...
So, lessons learned: I had hoped the party would act fairly quickly to initiate events at the party that moved the plot forward but that was a pipe dream on my part. I had set a real world time when, if the party was not making progress I would take DM initiative to force the story to progress which is why the paladin saw the orc sneaking around just in time to see the orc discovered by Candido and Candido force the confrontation. I had not written that up or planned for it. i had been racing through ideas for about 10 minutes before I came up with it trying to figure out how I could get a gun in the scene, so to speak. The preparation before the session became valuable because I had established Candido as a dangerous, mysterious figure but his nature was unknown. So I was able to have him zone of truth, dominate monster, and manhandle the orc without any real explanation needed. It just established the lore about him was accurate. Before that I had been hoping the sorcerer would incite conflict with the orcs, or the fighter would, or one of the other PCs would initiate something to happen. My players are so cautious though, so it has become part of the reality of the game that I know I need to be ready to throw a bomb into the scene to keep things exciting, and this session proved no different. So, by the time the action kicked off, I needed to keep the pacing of the fight quick and focused on their choices which in turn meant the only externalities that came into play were their relationships they had developed with the minotaur, gnome, and orcs. I didn't include traps or other cool effects because there just wasn't time. And I couldn't pause the action to let this fight breath because I have a hard stop to wrap up the rogue's story in the next session so I had to get them through this to Alle Alore for the next session.
I heard feedback the players liked the session, the combat was fulfilling, and it ended on fun notes for everyone. One of the players told me later they may have overestimated the orcs and could have rushed them rather than ambush them. So I gave her a little insight into the abilities the orcs could have used had they been able to gang up on a PC which would have almost certainly been fatal to anyone caught in the middle of three or four of them. Their leaders had the ability to incite an attack as a reaction from any orc in 120 feet of them, for example, the orcs all had the ability to move an additional 30 feet towards a hostile creature so they could move very quickly to outnumber someone, and otherwise would have been much more deadly had the party not created the bottleneck strategy. I was proud of them.
Anyway, thanks for the good ideas and the chance to bounce thoughts off you.
Coda: Legends
Where From: Alle Alora, feywild village of the winter Eladrin and the name of the March of the Fair Seelie Court (the
more or less good elven kind of the feywild) which it oversees.
A March is the land surrounding a village governed by a Marquis or Marquise appointed by the Seele Court
on the border of the realm and given as a fief to the Marquis/Marquise by the highest royalty of a region.
The Seele Court is the royal house of the fair fey ruled over by Queen Tatania, a high elven queen of
immense power. It is not too different from the red queen’s court in Alice in Wonderland given Tatania is
unpredictable. “Good” isn’t exactly the best word to describe her, but she also isn’t evil.
Alle Alora is on the border between the dark fey and the fair fey in the White Dales which is the Iceland area of the feywild.
Artica’s Uncle Quiric is the Marquis of Alle Alora. Being given responsibility for a March is both an honor and
much more challenging than a fiefdom in the interior of a realm as defending it means protecting the realm
from invasion from the dark fey realms as well.
The keep which serves as the protected center of Alle Alora, and home to the Marquis of Alle Alora, is known
as The Thorn Court as the Marquis and Marquise of Alle Alora sit upon thrones of woven dormant rosewood
when at court.
There is a legend that the Rosewood Thrones will bloom when Hanali Celanil (a goddess of the elven pantheon known as the Seldarine) chooses to be incarnated and reborn into the material realm as an eladrin who has forgotten who she is. When she sits upon the throne, the prick of its thorns will awaken her memories, her divine blood restoring the throne and bringing the roses into spring bloom, and the eladrin of the feywild will be allowed to return to high elf status and the cycle of reincarnation by the Seldarine. This legend is old and considered a “fairytale” like we consider Cinderella.
