[Night of May 21/22 – Anomin vs. Calliope and Interrogations]
[This game uses the Hero System Fifth Revised Edition (FREd) roleplaying game. Game sessions happen once a week. This session happened January 22, 2024.]
[This adventure takes place on the continent of Terik, two years after the appearance of the Sudden Sea. The PCs are refugees seeking a better life through adventuring.]
Player Characters
Sorvia of Stavros – female human ranger, local to County Modon (village of Stavros in particular)
Tharduk Lavabreath – male dwarf glassmaker from the Northern Dwarven Kingdom, had a glass shop in County Modon that is now underwater, literally
Kadruth Worldbender – male dwarf priest, serving He Who Protects, from the Northern Dwarven Kingdom
Anomin – female human shapeshifter, from lots of places, most recently County Modon
Islo Redgrass – male elf ranger, local to County Modon (village of Stavros in particular)
Via Roll20
Inserrant – female human musician, player of zills (finger cymbals) and singer
Spring
Yggsday, May 21, 56 I.C.
Night
In the barn in Pedino, Anomin shook off the last of the paralytic poison from the trap protecting the wooden box in the hayloft. She took the heliograph out of the box and stashed it on her person before transforming back into her crow form.
Anomin flew back to the house the teens reported to, attempting to be quiet, but she landed heavily [rolled terrible on her Stealth check]. Luckily no one seemed to have heard her. She fluttered down to an open window and snuck inside.
Having better luck indoors, Anomin landed silently on the floor. She then first transformed back into a human and then into her cougar form. Now that she could see clearly [neither her crow nor human forms can see in the dark], she realized she was in Calliope’s bedroom with Calliope asleep in the bed.
Anomin moved as silently as the big cat she was over to the door. The door knob proved to be a challenge to open with no thumbs [she spent 3 Hero Points to improve her roll from complete failure to just a success]. The knob unexpectedly squeaked when Anomin turned it, waking up Calliope. Anomin hunkered down as Calliope looked around in the darkness.
After a tense moment, Calliope started quietly getting out of bed, carrying a large dagger. In response, Anomin attempted to crawl under the bed, but Calliope kept the dagger between her and Anomin, apparently able to track the cougar's movements.
With no better option, Anomin swatted at Calliope with her claws retracted to avoid murdering the woman. Anomin hit her hard in the ribs, probably breaking one or two, and stunned Calliope. Calliope shook off the stun and tried to catch her breath, one hand holding her injured side.
Anomin followed up with a pulled punch to Calliope’s vitals, knocking the woman unconscious but breaking no additional bones.
Anomin immediately took advantage of Calliope being unconscious to go search the rest of the small house, especially the floor in the corner of the living room. It took Anomin some time [5 minutes and another Hero Point] to locate the well concealed compartment and lift the floor boards covering it. Inside was the journal she had seen Calliope making notes in.
Anomin pushed the journal around a bit with her paws until she could get a bite on it and lift it out. She then padded back to the bedroom window and awkwardly and noisily pushed it the rest of the way open before jumping out through it.
Anomin padded quietly to the edge of Pedino with only one barking dog any the wiser to her presence. Once past the edge of the village, Anomin set the journal down and returned to her human form. She secured the book on her person and then shifted back into crow form for the long flight back to the caravan.
In the Caravan Camp
The captured and tied-up bandits, 2 human women and 1 human man, were sat down on the edge of the camp. Tharduk and Kadruth stood aside to discuss how they were going to question the captives. While they did this, Inserrant started singing and playing her zills, ostensibly to entertain the caravan guards, but really to hide her casting her Mind Control spell on the captives, giving them the command to “Tell the Dwarves everything.”
Once Tharduk and Kadruth approached the captives, the captives were completely ready to spill the beans on anything the dwarves asked about. The dwarves learned:
- They do work at the nearby farm to the northwest as cover and for food.
- They are part of the Green Hand.
- They use a heliograph to forward information in the morning to guys at the Watch Rock, so the ambush people know what to expect.
- The Watch Rock is a formation in the hills to the south of the County Road, next to a rock that looks like some guy's nose.
- The leader of their team was not here now.
That piece of information prompted Islo and Sorvia to immediately go looking for their leader.
The captives continued to tell the dwarves everything:
- They gave the 5 names of people they know in the Green Hand, including themselves and their leader, Nikos.
- They gave a complete description of the other person and where to find them - at the hill fort where ambush guys are from.
- The hill fort holds 40 to 50 people.
- They provided a description of the fort and its whereabouts.
Tharduk was also able to pick out [using the Conversation skill] that in addition to the hill fort, the Green Hand have their own town hidden in the hills south of the County Road, past the Keramidi cross road. Kadruth asked why the captives were working with bandits and learned the entire Green Hand were once farmers in areas of County Modon that are now under the Sudden Sea. As they fled the rising waters, merchants kept swindling them or used thugs to outright steal from them with no repercussions. Eventually they had enough and formed the Green Hand with the intent of raiding the merchants in kind.
Tharduk and Kadruth indicated they were done questioning the captives to Inserrant, who used her high levels of Mind Control to muddle the captives’ memories of the questioning. The captives were now convinced that Kadruth used some unspeakable dwarven torture devices on them, so horrible that cannot stand to think about it or remember details.
Out in the Grasses Surrounding the Camp
Islo and Sorvia went back to the blind and followed the tracks of the captives when they approached the blind. It wasn’t hard as they seemed very confident they would not be seen. Following the tracks along their approach, they found where a fourth set of tracks split off from the group. These tracks were a little harder to follow, indicating that their leader had some skill.
At a certain point, the leader had stopped, possibly when the trap in the blind had gone off. He seemed to be serious about not being seen nor tracked after this point. They lost the tracks for a bit and spread out to reacquire them. Islo found a spot where the leader stopped for a bit. It was near the edge of the camp, close to where the captives were questioned, possibly close enough to hear what was said. After this the tracks moved away from the camp and Islo and Sorvia lost them again. The two rangers spread out again, but had no luck picking up the trail again. Failing to reacquire, they returned to camp.
Back in Camp
Kadruth cast his Force Wall spell and placed it around the captives to hold them in. When the rangers returned to the camp, the group shared information.
Third Watch
Anomin finally returned to the caravan. She was able to locate the campsite due to the camp fires. She shared the information she had acquired and produced the journal for Kadruth to look at. While Tharduk brought Anomin up to date on the captives and what they had spilled, Kadruth looked over the journal. It was in some form of code, but he was fairly certain the first column was a notation of date and time, suggesting the journal was a message log. He will need some time to attempt a decipher.
Anomin, having been up most of the night, went to sleep and Kadruth covered her watch.
End of session
Commentary
[I think I mentioned that I was awarding Hero Points to the players for turning in their session notes. If I hadn’t mentioned that, I was doing so. This helped me greatly when it came time to write the blog entries as they recorded things important to them and their characters that I might have missed. It also meant I could spend more time running the game and less time writing down what was happening. I believe the complete rules for the use of Hero Points is in the Pulp Hero genre book from Hero Games.]
Sudden Sea Adventures
Sudden Sea Landing Page - Links to all the write-ups for this campaign
Last session: Session 17
Next session: Session 19
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