[Night of May 23 – Clouds gather over Mouzaki]
[This game uses the Hero System Fifth Revised Edition (FREd) roleplaying game. Game sessions happen once a week. This session happened February 12, 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
Moonday, May 23, 56 I.C.
Noon
Anomin flew out of Mouzaki in crow form to find Inserrant and verify she was OK. After searching for a while, Anomin located Inserrant at the adventurers favorite drinking place in the refugee camps. Inserrant explained she spent the night keeping the thousands of refugees from outright rioting. Anomin told Inserrant that the prisoners were in the hands of the Count and the adventurers were waiting on payment before leaving the town. She advised Inserrant to lay low and be ready to leave.
After updating Inserrant, Anomin flew back to the rest of the adventurers at the Blue Pig inside Mouzaki. By the time she arrived, Tharduk was done writing up his report. It was factual and covered most of what the adventurers had learned about the bandits, but left out some details. [My notes are not specific as to what he left out, but I believe it was the existence of the bandit town. Unfortunately, I have no player notes on this session so I am forced to embroider my skimpy notes with my memory.]
1:00 PM
The adventurers left the Blue Pig. Islo, Sorvia, and Tharduk headed to the sheriff's office while Anomin and Kadruth went to the Post Office to look for delivery contracts to Nomi and Galanti.
When Islo, Sorvia, and Tharduk arrived at the Sheriff’s Office they found it very busy. Sergeant Greenpike was busy-gruff and waved them through to Sheriff Raptis’ office, stating he was waiting on them.
Sitting with Sheriff Raptis was another man, modestly dressed, but Tharduk could tell the material his clothes were made of was the highest quality. Sheriff Raptis introduced the other man as Lord Loukas, who “advises the Count on security”. They were both interested in the additional information the adventurers had about the bandits.
The adventurers loosely described what information they had, which led to negotiating the reward for the information. Once that was settled, Tharduk presented the report he had written up, which included names and descriptions of Green Hand operatives in Pedino and the farms north of the crossroads, the location of a fort in the hills north of the County Road, and the likely occupants of the fort. Then Tharduk brought up that the adventurers had a coded message book from Pedino and the heliograph used there.
In the end the adventurers were paid 200 gc of the intelligence on how the bandits operated and their locations and an additional 50gc for the message books and heliograph, all of this on top of the 200 gc bounty for Paraskevi and the 2 gc for the other bandit. Payment was in the form of 9 tradebars worth 50gc each and 2 loose gold coins. [Tradebars are sort of like bearer bonds in that they can be taken to most merchant guild locations and be converted into coins or goods of equal value. They are much more portable than the equivalent value in coins, making them ideal for merchants and adventurers.]
After the meeting, Sorvia and Tharduk headed over to the Merchant’s Guild while Islo made his way back to the Blue Pig.
At the Post Office, Kadruth and Anomin spoke with the Bounty Clerk and asked if there were any jobs delivering mail to Nomi or Galanti. The clerk told them there were contracts for both. The delivery to Nomi pays 2gc and is due June 7 and the delivery to Galanti pays 8gc and is due June 21. Both pay 10% up front with chits to be redeemed upon delivery. Kadruth accepted both contracts and signed for the group, listing out the names of the rest of the adventurers. With contracts fresh in hand, the two made their way back to the Blue Pig.
Sorvia and Tharduk arrived at the Merchant’s Guild. The guild guards would not allow Sorvia entrance past the public room as she was not a guild member. Sorvia accepted this and told Tharduk she would head over to the Blue Pig and wait there.
Tharduk met with a guild representative. He explained that he and his traveling companions were leaving town for a month or so and he needed someone to receive some commissioned equipment and hold it until they returned. This was a standard service the guild performed for its members and so Tharduk and the guild representative filled out the paperwork necessary for the guild to receive the armor and daggers the adventurers had commissioned out of the Nemean Lion pelt and claws.
Tharduk left the Merchant’s Guild and headed over to the armorer and weaponsmith to explain to each that the Merchant’s Guild would accept delivery for the finished works and make final payments when the items were complete. He then returned to the Blue Pig, feeling the effects of being awake since the previous morning.
When Sorvia arrived at the Blue Pig, she found her two apprentices there. They should have been keeping low at the Ranger Camp nearly 10 miles away but instead were having a conspiratorial conversation with a horse tied up in front of the Blue Pig. When Sorvia asked what they were doing, they claimed to be bringing Anomin up to date on things. Sorvia pointed to Anomin inside the Blue Pig and said “Anomin’s over there. That’s just a horse.” She then escorted the two embarrassed apprentices into the Blue Pig to wait.
2:00 PM
Once all the adventurers in town were back at the Blue Pig, they discussed options. There were angry mobs at the town gates who would probably recognize and attack the adventurers if they tried to walk through the gates. Something more subtle was needed. They left the Blue Pig as a group and started walking the inside of the town walls until they reached a point equidistant from the two gates. The guards there were spread thin and spent most of their time looking towards the town gates in case the mobs broke in. [I rolled a terrible Perception roll for the guards.] The adventurers took advantage of this and a couple castings of Kadruth’s Force Wall spell shaped into stairs to sneak over the town wall and into the enormous refugee camp surrounding the town.
The adventurers took a round-about way to get to their preferred drinking place and picked up Inserrant. They then quietly left the Mouzaki area, heading south. Once out of sight of Mouzaki, they turned east and made their way to the Ranger Camp.
4:00 PM
The adventurers arrived at the ranger camp. There they quickly explained the situation back in Mouzaki to the retired rangers before finally getting to sleep.
End of session
Commentary
[I had to pause the campaign here. The players unknowingly set in motion things that will lead to some form of civil war in County Modon and I need to map that out before I can have the PCs interact with it. In my mind, the situation in the County was always unstable and in precarious balance. The Count had basically usurped one of his own barons and with a passel of de-landed barons in tow, each one seeking compensation for their losses to the Sudden Sea. The barons whose lands are still above water know that the Count is being pressured to divvy up (or take entirely) their lands to share out to court favorites. They’ve spent the last year thinking hard about this and some have “made plans”. On top of this, the Grand Duchy of Mercia, the County’s neighbor to the southwest, is interested in adding the remains of the County to its possessions and is pursuing its own machinations. I now need to figure out what the next month or two of political maneuvering and rebellion looks like before resuming play.]
[In the meantime, we have been playing through Book 4 of The Shattered Star Adventure Path. I’m not certain how much of it I’m going to write about here. The writing for this one seems a bit weak, especially on the PC motivation front. We might be saving the world or maybe we just stumbled into a divine grudge match fueled by the next shard’s curse. We’ll see.]
Sudden Sea Adventures
Sudden Sea Landing Page - Links to all the write-ups for this campaign
Last session: Session 20
Next session: Session 22 [Not Yet Scheduled]
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