This week's session was a bit lack-luster. First, we had about two hours of making characters at the start. Donald needed to make a new character to replace his dead one. Meanwhile, Eric F. rejoined us after about a year away. Then, at the end of the session, the players spent something like an hour shopping. There was only an hour or two of real gameplay in between.
It was also a very crowded session, with almost anyone who possibly could have been there being there.
Archibald (Eric), Squirrel-guy Wizard
Brand (Dave P.), Dwarf Fighter
Katarina (Mary), Human Cleric of Pelor
LC (Kevin), Elf Swashbuckler
Oliver Gray (Chris), Human Barbarian
Pren (Dave S.), Human Bowman
Xiomara (Donald), Human Druid
Session: #29
Date: 10/18/08
Modules: Loose ends from
Tides of Dread
The adventure opened with the expedition against Baaragrauth, the elemental dragon eel. The players arranged with the Olmen to conduct their ritual to steal away the powers originally stolen from Tlaloc at dawn, so that the players could be ready to pounce upon Baaragrauth just as he weakened.
The players prepped carefully for this assault, taking along a few new heroes and using their spells to augment the abilities of the other characters.
Before dawn the players were in Baaragrauth's cavern and discussing matters with him. Suddenly, the Olmen ritual finished and Baaragrauth was stripped of his elemental powers. He was still a mighty dragon eel, however. The players pounced on him at once.
Due to a combination of their preparation, their increased numbers, and some well-placed flame strikes, the players were able to kill Baaragrauth with little trouble. They then brought Baaragrauth's 101 slaves (including two members of the Scarlet Brotherhood that they'd turned over to him) back to Farshore, to be saved.
Time passed ... The players were told to stay near to Farshore as Lavinia was decoding her brother's diary, which hinted at the source of the fearsome Black Pearls that the players had now seen twice.
Then, one day, a door suddenly appeared in the side of a Farshore building where there had never been one before. A note was attached to the building with the names of the seven PCs.
I should probably step back and explain what I was doing here. The week before the game I got a review copy of
The Stone Bard Inn, a new dungeon-tile-like system by Three Sages Games. Its high points are that the maps are erasable and that they're modeled with a 3-D graphics program. It's a big inn, and it was totally inappropriate for Farshore because of that size.
So, I thought, where could I introduce an inn of that size? Thinking of my
Stormbringer campaign I thought about the idea of a plane-jumping bar, but how could I do that without repeating the exact idea from the earlier campaign? Fortunately the TSR multiverse offered the precise answer: Sigil.
Sigil is the city at the center of the multiverse, part of the Planescape campaign. I've never read any of those books, but there was enough material available
on the internet for me to be comfortable presenting a simple inn in the city. It also worked out really well because of the demonic interest that the players had become increasingly aware of.
So, stepping through the door, the players found themselves in The Stone Bard Inn, a bar in the city of Sigil. They were greeted by the devil who ran the bar, who just wanted to tip them off that demons were seriously showing an interest in the party. He figured that if he told the players, they'd be better prepared against demons, and so would do damage to the devil's own adversaries.
Unfortunately, there was also a demon lying in wait for the players at the bar, yet another in a long string that have molested them since they arrived on the Isle of Dread and defiled Demogorgon's temple. It was a Chasme, from my ever-present companion of late,
Fiendish Codex I. Again, the players made pretty short work of it thanks to their high numbers.
(And as for the tiles: the players seemed generally impressed. I'd be damned pleased to have the set if I had such a bar as a regular part of my campaign.)
Afterward I discovered another great reason for the visit to Sigil: the players hadn't had access to a town of any size for buying and selling things since they were 5th level or so.
Now, I'd been mocking the fact for some months that Donald had been "hoarding" the party loot, just writing down all the stuff that no one specifically wanted. Meanwhile the players kept complaining to me that they didn't get much money. Well, in Sigil Donald finally split everything up. It came to a total of 84,000 gp of stuff(!). The players thus spent the last couple of hours of the day buying and selling.
I was most amused by who listened to the warning about being under demonic observation and who ignored it. Brand, for example, picked up some sort of angelic item, which seemed like a good selection; LC meanwhile sold off her evil outsider bane bow, but used the money to true resurrect her sister, the first LC of the campaign (who was killed in the TPK that occurred in the first week or two).
Next Up: We finally move on to the 6th adventure in the series.