Building Bhakashal – High Level Faction Play

Image by Don Maitz.

One of the advantages of Bhakashal is extensive play testing. For the last 5 years multiple play groups have been testing out the system, players have shaped the direction of their campaigns, and I have adjusted based on experience. Few systems have had this much playtesting.

My after-school groups are continuing this year, two of my groups have been adventuring in Bhakashal for 4+ years, so they have hit what used to be known as “name level”, when you hit that point, you can become part of Bhakashal nobility.

This play shift to “domain play” is a split from regular faction based play, instead of reacting to the various in-game factions, PCs become influential enough to shape factional goals, they direct their faction rather than being directed.

Each of the groups had to complete a significant task for their faction in order to join its nobility. My Saturday group (Patron: Quin Faal the Iolite, House Quannar) chose to try and unify the two branches (City and Raosk) of the Bhakashal Thieves Guild (the Brass Blade Spider’s Guild).

My Friday group (Patron: Kamerli the Ivory, House Jin) spent the last gaming year finding a book with instructions to create magical circles and slaying 4 mind flayers in order to inscribe one of those magic circles, one that can teleport things from the Bhakashal underworld to the city.

Uniting the guilds concentrates power in House Quannar (one of the Noble Houses of Bhakashal) as they previously only controlled the city branch, adding the Raosk branch makes House Quannar very influential.

Creating the teleport circle brings great power to House Jin, as they will have an exclusive conduit to bring back new monsters and treasure, flora and fauna to their House directly, gaining them resources no other House has.

Since both groups completed their tasks (taking a gaming year each) they have fulfilled the two requirements to transition to Bhakashal nobility, they have hit the minimum level (7^th or above) and they have completed an important task for their House.

When they return to the gaming table things will look very different, now THEY have a role in directing what their Noble House does, and they inherit all of the alliances and enmities of their House. Rival Houses will decide to take action to neutralize or take advantage of the new state of affairs.

Adding to the delicious confusion, the patron of my Saturday group, Quin Faal the Iolite, has been captured and imprisoned on a faraway island in a magical maze, thanks to the PCs in my Thursday group, so just when House Quannar has united the guilds, the Bhakashal noble responsible is gone. How will this reflect on the party, just after they complete this important task for the House and become nobility, their patron disappears! Rivals within the faction may accuse them of betrayal. Houses that benefited from the previous arrangement might seek them out too.

Suddenly the players have split focus, they have to think about rival factions and rivalries within their own faction, and they have to think about how they want to grow their power within the faction. And their actions have changed the game world directly. In this way regular campaign play in Bhakashal changes the game world as you play. Bhakashal provides the referee with suggestions on “big tasks” that can influence the setting. My Saturday group capitalized on one of the rumors from the Bhakashal rumor table (related to the thieves’ guild). My Friday group came up with their task on their own, but even that was an extension of what they had seen in the game, Houses were always competing for resources, particularly parts of magical creatures to be used in making spells and magic items.

That drive, taken from the Bhakashal class role tables, was expanded by the idea of connecting the overworld to the underworld. The setting provides the inspiration, the players direct the actions, and the game world is permanently transformed.

Importantly, these tasks were not planned from the beginning, there were no, “BBEGs” or pre-planned, “campaign arcs” that unified what happened at the table, Bhakashal works more organically, tasks are based on need (factional needs) generated by tables. 

Over time, choosing and pursuing those tasks produces consequences that drive play, and suggest larger schemes and connections. None of it was preplanned or designed by me or the players. Everything emerged from play and setting conceits.

True sandbox play works, and this year will produce completely new experiences as my players explore what it means to operate as Bhakashal nobility, fleshing out domain level play in an engaging way, something that early D&D editions did not explore successfully, given that many campaigns didn't last that long.

Building Bhakashal - Session Report

Building Bhakashal – Session Report

Strap in, this is a long one.

My Thursday group started back in September, they were originally booked for 6 sessions to learn how to play and run the game, but they decided to keep me on for the year. We had our penultimate session last night.

They started the campaign as agents of Quin Faal the Iolite, a powerful Bhakashal Lord at House Quannar. Faal is the patron for two of my groups. One of Faal’s closest allies in the House (Bamal the Boastful) betrayed him, stole a powerful magic sword from him and fled. Faal sent the party to retrieve him. They met Bamal and decided instead to throw in with him and betray their patron.

I have no idea what inspires players to do this sort of thing, but they ran with it. For the last year they have been secretly helping Bamal with two tasks as part of his machinations against Faal, while avoiding discovery by their patron. 

First, the island where Bamal hides has a small dungeon complex hidden in the forest. The complex is a maze, and it had four “anchors”, rooms where magically bound monsters that represent the elements are kept. It ends up the maze is a magical prison which uses the magical elemental essences of the bound monsters to create a magical cage. Bamal was studying the maze when the party arrived on the island and accidentally freed the four monsters that were anchoring the magic of the place, a shocker, a firedrake, a hoar fox and a carrion crawler (lightning, fire, frost and earth).

The party released the monsters, so one of their tasks was to replace them with other elemental avatars. That has occupied multiple sessions, as they needed to bring back live creatures to use in the maze.

The second task related to swords.  Bamal planned to capture Quin Faal and imprison him in the maze complex, but to do so he was going to enlist the aid of a Marilith Demon (a type 5 demon). Quin Faal had obtained the demon’s amulet and was keeping it in the warlock’s tower of House Quannar. Bamal knows the exact location of the amulet. He plans on summoning the demon, offering her the location of the amulet and giving her 6 magical swords as a gift for her to go into the tower, regain the amulet, and bring Quin Faal back to the island maze prison where Bamal plans to entrap him.

Over the past year of play the party has retrieved three powerful magical swords, Bamal has found two, so they have 5 of the 6 swords needed.

Bamal used divination magic to find the location of another powerful sword, in the lair of a pair of White dragons living in a mountain cave on a small island nearby. The party went to the dragons and attempted to deceive them. The spun a story about there being an underground complex on their island that they couldn’t enter, with a massive treasure hoard. They asked the dragons to use their breath weapons on the entrance to the complex to freeze it then they can shatter it and gain access. They claimed they only wanted the magic sword, the rest of the loot would be for the dragons.

The dragons, who had lived on this island and hunted on nearby islands in the long chain for a hundred years, were aware of the island that the PCs were describing and decided to fly there and access the complex without the PCs. This was a useful reminder to the players that intelligent monsters are a bit more of a challenge.

Fortunately for the PCs one of them had a two potions of Polymorph Self she had been sitting on for months, and another had the spell. They polymorphed all three of the PCs into birds that flew faster than a dragon and beat the dragons to the island.

They created an illusion of an entrance to a dungeon complex in front of the caves that they and Bamal lived in on the island. They sat in wait with Bamal and the two Bhakashal Warlocks they had converted to their cause, Kanai Grith the Hessonite and Bham Veen the Mercurial, as well as the Mercenary Reit Layl and the Phantasmist, Boylea the Silver. Reit was the captain of the Wyvern, Boylea was the ship spell-caster, while transporting the party the Wyvern went down, the two have stuck with the party as Layl looks for a new ship.

The dragons saw the “complex” entrance from the air and landed a short distance away. The party, concealed by illusion, gained surprise on the dragons.

Then it all fell apart.

Kanai Grith and Bham Veen both had Evard’s Black Tentacles as a memorized spell, they decided to double cast the spell upon the dragons. They had done this a while back to great success and the party was anticipating the same.

Both warlocks failed their casting rolls, and their spells fizzled.

Ref – “Standing close to each other, you both take out a tentacle from your pouch and wrap it around your fingers, clutching it like a pair of brass knuckles, you cover that hand with the outstretched palm of your other hand, and recite the words of the incantation, staring at the general area of the dragons to target the spell’s effects. You move your cupped hands in a circle, as if stirring a pot, and whisper the words of the incantation in unison. When you finish you pull your hands apart, but instead of tentacles emerging from the ground around the dragons, the tentacle in your hands bursts into blue flame and falls to ashes, pushing your hands away from the hands of your fellow caster. It was as if the spells were cast to the same place and bounced off each other.”

Bamal cast Fire Shield on himself, anticipating a breath weapon attack.

The PC warlock cast Reduce towards one of the dragons, but it made its save so the spell was ineffective. While this was all going on the party PC fighter and Reit went into the caves to retrieve two of the powerful magic swords that the PCs had collected for Bamal, hoping to use them against the dragons. That was a last-minute decision that saved their bacon.

That was the end of the surprise round, and the dragons were unharmed.

Then we rolled initiative.

The dragons only saw the illusory entrance to the complex and magical effects emerging from that entrance, they had no idea the party was there. But they did see a pencil thin beam of energy shoot from the complex entrance, and there was a disturbance in the air around them (the miscast Evard’s spells).

Initiative was rolled.

The party PC warlock went first and cast Dimension Door to get behind the dragon, she took the party thief with her.

Then the dragons attacked.

They did what you would expect, they used their breath weapons against the complex entrance hoping to either destroy it outright or make it possible to shatter the entrance and stop the magical effects coming at them, and so they could get in. One dragon was adult and 6 HD, the other was old and 7 HD, so that’s 30 HP and 42 HP respectively.

 This instantly slayed the NPC illusionist Boylea the Silver and the NPC warlock Bham Veen the Mercurial, while reducing Bamal the Boastful to 2 hp. Bamal got lucky as he had the Fire Shield up and running. The two fighters emerged from the cave with their swords, to see two dead party members frozen solid, their patron apparently on fire LOL, and two other party members weren’t anywhere to be seen. They panicked and charged the dragons.

The first dragon used Charm Person and charmed the party PC fighter, convinced her to stop and attack Reit. She was planning to use the PC fighter as a bargaining chip to get the rest of the party to capitulate.

The other dragon breathed frost on to the ship captain, he made his save and dodged the worst of it.

At this point the PC thief who was brought along with the Dimension Door finally got to act, she pulled a “Crom” and backstabbed the dragon. 10HP damage, x3 for a backstab and the dragon died on the spot.

REF - “You leap forward and drive your sword into the dragons back between its wings, the sword bites deep and strikes the dragon’s heart, running it through and slaying the beast instantly.”

She had just one-shot a dragon!

That rendered them all speechless for a minute.

The PC magic-user tried to use Reduce again but failed the casting! We go multiple sessions with no failed castings, and in this session we had 3 for the PCs side.

Madness.

However, slaying the other dragon broke the charm and the fighter was released. They needed to capture one of the dragons to use in the maze complex, so she dropped her sword and changed to her Rod of Smiting as a weapon. She charged forward and struck a solid blow in an attempt to subdue the beast. I performed the calculation, ratioing the damage she did against the total HP of the dragon, and this yielded a 16% chance that the dragon would be subdued.

She rolled the dice… a 16 on the nose.

There was a lot of screaming at that.

On the nose.

REF – “Your head cleared of that buzz of enchantment magic, you drop your sword and run towards the drake, it is transfixed on its dead companion for a moment, and in that moment you bring your Rod of Smiting down in a sky-to-Earth blow that smashes the beast on the side of it’s head. The dragon stumbles two steps to the side, shakes it’s head, and collapses to the ground, flattening it’s body and burying it’s head in the grass, obedient.”

Dragon subdual is an old school mechanic that the players adored.

The dragon was subdued.

They led the dragon to the maze and Bamal magically imprisoned it, providing the third of four elemental “anchors” for the complex. The last component is a sandman (for the “earth” monster) and the magical prison will be complete.

They then went back to the dragon’s lair and looted it, obtaining a few magic items, a lot of coin, and a powerful intelligent magic sword (the real prize), Dakam the Crimson. They came back to the island. They now had 6 powerful magic swords to give to the demon, a +4 Defender, a +3 Vorpal Sword, the intelligent sword Koslanth the Righteous, a Sword +2 Nine Lives Stealer, a +3 Blade of Skarak and the final weapon, Dakam The Crimson.

All they need to do now is to capture and contain a sandman and the magical maze prison would be complete. Next session, assuming they get the maze up and running, Bamal will summon the demon, reveal to her where Quin Faal is hiding her amulet and give her the magic swords in exchange for bringing back Quin Faal to the maze so Bamal can imprison him there.

 

Observations

This session was so awesome. They lost 2 party members to the dragons but managed to slay one and subdue and capture the other. They learned that dragons are killable but very deadly, but for a low initiative roll the party PC magic-user and PC thief would have been killed as they would have been hit by dragon breath weapon and neither had the HP to survive even if they made their save.

One dice roll was the difference between life and a TPK

They lost a treasured party member, Boylea the Silver was a party favorite, a phantasmist that didn’t do big damage but saved their bacon a few times, they loved interacting with her, we did a lot of RP with Boylea, she even sketched portraits of the PCs (all illusionists in Bhakashal are artists) and taught them a few card and dice games (you don’t spend time as a shipboard caster without learning how to gamble!)

This whole campaign sprung from the PCs going off script and deciding to betray their patron. I didn’t suggest the idea, but I didn’t push back against it either. Spontaneous decisions like these are the lifeblood of an exciting, immersive sandbox style game.

The cherry on top is that the patron they are betraying (Quin Faal the Iolite) is the patron for another gaming groups of mine, so if this plot is successful, Faal will cease to be a patron for this group, something that will have an impact on the shared world that all of my groups play in. My Saturday group (Quin Faal’s other group) has just recently merged the two branches of the Bhakashal Brass Blade Guild (thieves guild) by slaying the previous guildmaster of the Raosk branch.

Player decisions impact the game world.

But perhaps the most awesome aspect of all of this is that our table is a “no fudging zone”, I don’t run a story focused game where I tweak results to “serve the story”, instead we roll everything in the open. When they were rolling initiative they KNEW that if the dragons went first they were done. They knew how much damage they could do.

You can’t script that kind of excitement.

When the two NPC spell casters failed their casting rolls (both had casting odds in the high 80’s, when they failed back-to-back there was much shouting) they were reminded that I don’t fudge things to save favored NPCs and help out the party. If I rolled behind a screen and fudged regularly they would think I made both of the casters fail their rolls for “dramatic effect”, instead they got the dramatic effect KNOWING that it wasn’t something I did, it happened because the dice made it happen.

So much digital ink spilled on the problems with “binary pass-fail” mechanics in games like D&D, but those pass-fail mechanics create the dramatic reversals and successes that get my players screaming at the table. When that 16% chance was rolled with a 16, while standing in front of a dragon that would have killed the PC in one shot with a breath weapon attack.

She charged something that can one shot her and brought it to heel with a single blow.

EPIC, and BTB first edition AD&D.

The player of the thief was another good example. Her family has been experiencing challenges this year, and the game has been a real life-line of distraction. When she tried the backstab I wasn’t expecting her to kill the thing in one shot, and I knew that it would turn around and either rip her to shreds (she didn’t have great HP) or breath frost on her and that would be that.

But as I remind myself regularly at the table, the key to running a sandbox game is to trust the process. Don’t interfere when you are tempted, instead let it play out and respond to that. It’s radically freeing as a referee. I used to get hung up on whether or not to change something because it was “bad” for some reason, now I just let the game happen and we roll with it.

And this one was a corker.

Building Bhakashal – Sandbox Style Open World Gaming

I’ve been running sandbox style open world games for about 15 years now, and I’ve noticed that there are a lot of misunderstandings about how this style of game works. I thought I would say a few words about them here.

Sandbox style open world games have two primary features:

1 – Agency: The players can do whatever they want

2 – Consequentialism: The referee’s adjudicates the game world’s reactions to the PCs actions

The hardest part of running games like this is that the referee doesn’t control what happens, the players do. They direct the action, not the referee. It took me a while to unlearn the habits that made it difficult to allow player freedom of this kind.

What are some of the misunderstandings around sandbox style play?

Here are my top 10.

1.        It’s completely random, every session requires the referee to improvise something new

Every time the players interact with the game world they create reactions, they gain allies and enemies, and their actions have ripple effects that impact future games. So, when you sit down at the table it isn’t a “blank slate”, instead the previous actions of the party will have created opportunities and challenges for them in the current session.

2.       It’s “zero prep”

Though sandbox style gaming is less prep, no gaming style is “zero prep”. The referee has to keep track of what happens in every session so they will know what the context is for later sessions. In addition, the referee will still have to prepare encounters and environments for the players. If the players decide to go to the Temple of Sogog the Dark then the referee will have to prep the Temple of Sogog the Dark. It is also extremely helpful to have a setting of some sort to draw upon, whether you run a sandbox style game or not, and you will have to familiarize yourself with that setting.

3.     You will be caught flat-footed and unable to run sessions because your players pivot in an unexpected direction

One important rule of sandbox style gaming is this: you only have to make it to the end of the session. If the players make an unexpected decision, like going to the Temple of Sogog the Dark, then you have a few options:

a.        They have to get to the Temple of Sogog the Dark, that takes time, and will often get you to the end of the session

b.       The referee has any number of “consequences” from earlier play to draw upon, say a disgruntled former enemy that escaped death at the hands of the PCs can show up before they get to the Temple

c.        The referee can start to describe the Temple when the PCs arrive there, revealing only what is needed for immediate play. When the session is over they can create the Temple for exploration in the next session. The ref will have to record the decisions that they make so they can incorporate them into the actual Temple when they create it. I’ve done this so many times I’ve lost count. PCs tend to move slowly when exploring new areas, aware of the dangers that unwary adventurers can face. Just jot notes on what you tell the players so you can keep things consistent.

d.       As an option of last resort, you are welcome to say to the players, “I wasn’t expecting you to do X, I don’t have anything prepped for that and I don’t think I can improv this right now, let’s break and we can pick up next session.” There’s no shame in calling a session early as you aren’t in the head space to improvise. I will add that in 15 years of active sandbox play I’ve never had to do this. But it is an option.

4.     You can’t use modules or preprepared materials

Sandbox style gaming calls upon the referee to pivot and follow whatever the players choose to do, but that doesn’t rule out using modules or any other pre-prepared materials. Sandbox style gaming just means that the players can choose to leave the module/adventure at any time they like. I regularly sprinkle pre prepared modules into our campaigns, and they work well.

5.     Because there isn’t an overarching, planned out plot, and the referee isn’t telling the players what to do, the players will get bored

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, having an overall planned out plot allows the referee to drive the game forward, and it can certainly be a hook to draw in players, you don’t need this to interest players in the game. Players are invested in sandbox style games because they maximize agency and consequentialism. Player actions and the consequences of those actions drive the game, so they have an immediate and visceral stake in what happens at the table.

6.     Because the game is not planned out by the referee, the players will get stuck

I was initially worried about this, since I didn’t have a plan, maybe the players wouldn’t know what to do. However, the game world doesn’t just sit there, inviolate, while the players stand around doing nothing. Just existing in the game world is dangerous, this isn’t Papers and Paycheques after all. Monsters lurk all around, nefarious factions work in the background, old enemies resurface. Even if the players had no idea what to do something in the environment would prompt them to action sooner or later. I haven’t found this to be an issue; players always manage to come up with something to do!

7.     Improvisation is hard, so the referee might not be able to come up with a response to player actions

Improvisation is a skill, so this is a real concern, but there are some straightforward solutions. First, if the referee can’t decide between options, they can simply roll dice to choose between them. Second, if the referee can’t come up with an option, they can listen to the table talk amongst players and riff off of that. I’ve “stolen” the explanations that players have floated at the table more times than I would care to admit, inspiration can come from anywhere! This concern transcends sandbox style play, every style of play will have to respond to player actions, so it isn’t really a concern specific to the playstyle.

8.     Improvised sandbox games won’t have the depth or atmosphere that pre-planned adventures have

I used to worry about this one a lot, if I’m riffing off player actions at the table, as opposed to keeping the players on track to go through a well-prepared adventure, won’t they miss out on something? What I’ve discovered is that players often miss the “cool” aspects of your adventure and end up engaging with the things you find the least interesting or important. The sheer number of encounters that end up “on the cutting room floor” due to player decisions is wild.

Not only that, but you can still (as mentioned above) use published modules and adventures with all the detail and atmosphere you like in a sandbox style game.

9.     Players will waste too much time deciding what to do if they aren’t actively directed

This particular concern is group specific. There will be groups who like to debate options and are indecisive, as well as groups who are decisive and focused. But in either case, if the players can’t make up their minds the consequentialism of sandbox style gaming and the dangers inherent in the setting will get things going soon enough.

10 . Because the referee hasn’t created an engaging overall plot, “BBEG” and deep planned out connections to the various player backstories, the game will be less engaging

One of the greatest tragedies of modern TTRPG gaming is the idea that the campaign has to be connected up to the tragic backstories of each player in order to have them invested in the game.

In my experience, a sandbox style game that stresses agency and consequentialism the players are deeply engaged, as they are dealing with the consequences of THEIR ACTIONS. Yes, a big plot element (“THE END OF THE WORLD”) can create engagement, but allowing players to drive the action creates it’s own powerful form of engagement. It also creates immersion, as it mimics the real world, where actions have consequences.

I’m sure there are more, but these represent the most common complaints I’ve seen about sandbox style gaming. I'll make another post about the advantages and disadvantages of the playstyle. 

 Building Bhakashal - Session Report

It's been a while since I updated with a session report. Session reports get next to no engagement, so I stopped with regular reports a while back. Having said that, we had a session that helps to show what happens when you play in a factionalized setting, so I thought I would share.

Since September of last year my Sat group has been gunning for a big dog, the Guildmaster of the Raosk branch of the Bhakashal Brass Blade Spider's (Thieves) Guild. In Bhakashal if you want to advance to become nobility you need to achieve a sufficient level AND to complete an important task for the faction you want to join. In this case the party was trying to either kidnap or slay the existing Guildmaster of the Raosk branch of the Brass Blade Spider's Guild and replace them with someone allied with the city branch. There are two branches of the Guild, one in the city and one in the Raosk. They have been split for years, and reuniting them under one leader has been a long sought goal of the city branch of the guild, that has connections with the Noble House of the party's patron. 

If they pull this off, it will be their ticket to becoming Lords and Warlocks of House Quannar.

Unfortunately, they made enough noise in the process that the guildmaster found out they were coming. I handle these sorts of things with rolls. The party started by asking questions about the guildmaster, known as the “Red Arachne”, that didn't trigger an immediate reaction, but they kept asking indiscriminately. Then they attempted to gain the confidence of one of the Red Arachne’s close associates (the merchant Maur Hogelin) by having the party mercenary (fighter) and spartan (monk) try to get jobs as Hogelin's bodyguards. That didn't work out as well as they had hoped. 

They raised suspicions, how was I to model the Red Arachne’s response? I decided that the Guildmaster would have the party tailed for a while, to see if they were worth concern or not, and determine who they were aligned with. Every threat in the setting is worth investigating as there are many factions in play, and any group of PCs could potentially be aligned with powerful foes.

Every session I would roll a chance that a PC would make the tail in the crowd, the assumption being if they were being followed there was a chance that one of the PCs might notice the same NPC appearing nearby on multiple occasions. The odds were pretty low, 1 in 20. Two sessions ago they spotted someone in the crowd that they had seen several times before, unfortunately they were fleeing and couldn’t stop to investigate. 

Every session I also rolled to see if the trackers would attack. At some point the Arachne would decide that the party’s machinations merited a response. I know that many DM's like to schedule out these things rather than rolling, but for me, not knowing makes it exciting. The idea was as the party did more and more notable things under the Red Arachne's noses, the odds of a response increased.

That response happened in this Saturday’s session. 

The party was waiting in the city for Maur Hogelin to return, they had received the approval of their patron to bring Hogelin in on their machinations, and use his connection to the Arachne to get access to the Guildmaster. Hogelin was back in 3 days, so they had 3 days to kill. They could have left the city for a spell, but decided to stay and take care of some housekeeping tasks.  

I rolled a 1 on a d20, that meant the trackers would reveal themselves, tasked with bloodying the party’s nose to warn them off, and grabbing a PC to question. They ambushed the group while traversing an alley on the way to the market (the alley in question is circled in red). The Bhakashal open air market (to the left in the picture) is substantively big, and they had a few things to purchase.  

As an aside, in Bhakashal, like in AD&D, dragons can be subdued. Essentially if you assert dominance by beating them in a fight, they treat you like a pack leader, until a time that you show weakness, abuse them needlessly, or put them in danger while avoiding it yourself, then you roll to see if they flee or attack. Dragons are also intelligent, so they very quickly determine if they are being dominated and abused by someone weak, and will take bloody vengeance when the opportunity arises.  Young dragons make good pets for Brave mid-to-high level NPCs who maintain discipline, as long as they aren't abused and the owner appears powerful, they will serve reliably. 

The trackers of the Red Arachne were a trio of 7th level chitin (insect folk) mercenaries, they had brought two young red dragons (2 hp per die, 9hd creatures, so 18 hp total) with them to slap down the party. They shouted to the party from the rooftop, there were 2 trackers there, each holding back a young red dragon, a third was hidden away at one end of the alley. 

They shouted down, “You search for the Red Arachne, you court death!” 

Then they released the dragons, they plunged into the alley from above, initiative was rolled. The  party Seer (priest) decided to cast a 4th level spell with a long casting time. The Garudin (bird-folk) Slayer (ranger) flew up to try and wound the dragon’s wing on a last second pass. The party Mercenary (fighter) prepared to meet a dragon with his bardiche. The dragons decided to not get that close, and did a strafing run, both spewing fire. The Seer failed both saves and was burnt down to his bones by twin infernos. The Slayer was moving so only had one save to make, and made it. Making a save doesn't mean no damage, it means half damage, and if he was reduced to below half his total HP he would have to land...  

The mercenary, on the ground, made both of two saves and took damage. One of the trackers up above threw a javelin of lightning that arrived next. That missed, hitting a nearby wall explosively.

One dragon pursued the slayer, the other looped up to come back for another dive. The slayer was faster than the dragon, and decided to head over the tents of the nearby market, gambling that the dragon wouldn’t pursue him there. The mercenary ran to the charred body of the Seer to retrieve any magic items that had survived the breath weapon attacks. 

It was a bold move. 

Then the dragon who had looped up landed on the mercenary’s back, claw, claw, bite. After attacking and lifting the mercenary off his feet it dropped the mercenary and flew up to loop around again and finish him off. The mercenary rose and staggered down the alley, bloody and bruised, and smashed full shoulder in the door to a building in the alley. He ran inside before the dragon could loop back around and was safe from breath weapon or physical attack. 

He ran through the room to the next door and through a hallway to the other side of the building. No one met him. He emerged with the dragon nowhere to be seen on the North side of the building on the right, on the street that led directly to the market. Unbeknownst to him, one of the three trackers was behind him in pursuit. 

The Slayer was now over the market at a height of around 60 feet (the yellow line follows him from the alley to the market), garudin flying overhead were not at all unusual, but when the young red dragon barreled out from the nearby buildings and over the market there were screams.

The dragon pushed hard and caught up to the Slayer (Bhakashal has aerial pursuit rules), landing on his back and grabbing him with claws, pulling up and veering towards the city wall. The purple line traces their trajectory together. The Slayer stabbed up at the dragon but couldn’t get past its armor. They just cleared the wall. Several arrows flew in their direction from soldiers on the wall. Two bounced off the dragon’s scales, a third just missed the slayer. Both of his hands were free, but his wings were damaged.

He drank a potion of stone giant strength he kept on his belt and stabbed again, this time piercing the dragon’s hide and doing enough damage that it began an uncontrolled dive. The slayer asked if he could direct the dragon's course towards the river and try to spin them around so the dragon was underneath him. He had just imbibed a potion of stone giant strength, and Bhakashal has a system for resolving “feats”, it uses multiple saves based on task difficulty.

We decided that the slayer had to make two saves, one to target the river, the other to spin the dragon around. The dragon was sub-adult, 20’ long, and unable to fly at this point, so the PC hauled on alternating arms to twist it mid flight, hoping to flip it over as it plunged. He made both saves, and crashed into the river with the dragon beneath him taking the brunt. I ruled that each successful save halved his damage from the fall, the damage was 10d6, so it could have easily been fatal if not for the saves.

The dragon’s appearance led to screams and the attention of the ward patrol, the bloodied mercenary ran down the street to the marketplace, stumbling out just as the ward patrol arrived. This happened during the early evening at a busy time in the Bhakashal market, a Ward patrol is rarely far away, particularly when the crowd starts to make noise. A justiciar showed up, grilled the mercenary, and the patrol pursued the dragon, having seen it go over the wall. 

The party Seer was dead, the slayer and the mercenary, the party tanks, were beaten and bloodied. The slayer couldn’t fly. The city watch claimed the fallen dragon, and only close questioning by the Justiciar convinced him they were the victims and thus should not be punished for this breaching of the peace. 

They also now know that the head of the Brass Blade Spider’s Guild knows who they are and can have them trailed or attacked at any time. They had split the party, leaving their warlock, a Spartan (monk) and a Thaumaturge (thief/magic-user) behind for this trip to the market, and it was almost a TPK for those who were there. They were lucky the mercenaries gave up the chance for surprise in order to announce their doom at the hands of the Red Arachne.

This is, BTW, a VERY Bhakashal thing to do, announcing your patron before slaying someone on behalf of that patron is entirely in setting behavior!

Taking the fight to the market was a smart idea, it made the trackers leave to avoid tangling with the patrol. In this case the player realized that his foes might not want to have to deal with the interest of a Noble House in their affairs. My players are good at reading the factional implications of their hijinks.  

The city provides a backdrop for this sort of combat, open rather than constrained by dungeon walls, on land, water and air, in urban and wilderness spaces, and involving ward patrols and Justiciars (local law enforcement). 

The dynamics of a fight in the city are very different.

Also, they left the Seer’s body behind, which means either the Ward Patrol will find the body and someone from that Ward might decide to investigate further, or their enemy may arrange to access the remains and have necromantic magic used to learn the party’s secrets. Bhakashal is a factionalized environment with divination magic, you leave bodies behind at your peril!

One of the advantages to rolling for things like this is that I don't know when they are going to happen, so I don't accidentally telegraph what's going to happen. I genuinely believe that this makes the campaign more immersive. When everyone at the table is surprised, when I don't have to worry about giving away what will happen BECAUSE I DON'T EVEN KNOW, the game feels real. The world feels independent of the PCs and out of my direct control as well. 

In my experience, this is one of the best sources of immersion in the game, and it has paid off handsomely. 

The player of the slain Seer did not have another active PC (3 of the 5 players run multiple PCs), so he decided to roll up a Bhakashal Beastial (druid) as his next PC. Beastials have a lot of power in Bhakashal as it's a tropical setting surrounded by wilderness where the city is completely grown over with foliage. 

Beastials are badass in Bhakashal!

RIP to Haeral Vorek, Seer of Vekka, god of the waters, consumed by a conflagration of dragon fire while pursuing the downfall of The Red Arachne!

Building Bhakashal - Session Report

Image by Tooth Wu - Artstation - https://www.artstation.com/tooth

My Thursday group did not meet this week as the players all had a school commitment.

My Saturday group meets biweekly, and this was their week off.

My Friday group has been poking around the Bhakashal underworld on a quest, they have to slay 4 illithids and use their blood to inscribe a teleportation circle.

Easy peasy.

They had spent several sessions gathering intelligence and planning their attacks. Previous Session Reports:

1 - https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/11/building-bhakashal-session-report-my.html

2 - https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/12/building-bhakashal-session-report_6.html

3 - https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2025/01/bhakashal-session-reports-three-of-my.html

They had their first encounter with an illithid last session and it didn’t go well, they found out that mind flayers have magic resistance, and that wasn’t to their liking. They almost abandoned the project, but a reaction roll from a mind flayer changed things. The first flayer they tried to kill, Sogogg Brot, stopped them cold. I rolled for encounter reaction when he caught the party warlock, and it came out relatively positive.

I interpreted the roll, Brot reacted positively to their scheme to kill four mind flayers as he had a number of rivals he wanted removed, and they all knew him and his agents. A group of “useful idiots” from the overworld were perfect for his purposes. If they succeeded he would have four fewer rivals, if they failed there would be 5 more dead overworlders.

Win win for Sogogg Brot.

To start, he decided to give the PCs an advantage and see if they could pull off a kill, if so, he promised them more aid with the second attempt.

The advantage the flayer gave them was knowledge.

There was an Illithid, Yigeth, who was young and particularly violent and cruel. He had tried to overthrow a more powerful flayer and was beaten. His punishment was to do the lowest of the low tasks in Illithid society, "harvesting". He would round up “lowlies”, e.g., non-illithids who labored for the mind flayers in their city. Those he gathered were either directly made into slaves or they were taken to have their brains eaten! Yigeth was muscular and walked around bare-chested with a long kilt, his body openly tattooed. He would sometimes terrorize laborers but not harvest them, just for the cruel fun of it. Others were beaten and dragged away to a terrible fate, all in front of the others to maintain fear and control.

A real piece of work, and their first target. 

DM as Sogogg Brot – “Yigeth wanders the tent cities of the laborers, strutting about with several of his bodyguards, he will terrorize the laborers until he finds a group he wants, then he will have them netted and beaten. While he does this he wanders through the busy camps of the laborers, hundreds of them all around. They leave him alone as they fear his power, so here he is unlikely to be scanning minds, giving you a unique opportunity.”

Essentially, Brot gave them an advantage, their target was more likely to be surprised if they attacked him in public in an area with few if any other mind flayers around. Yigeth fit the bill. 

So they decided to go for it.

They disguised themselves as itinerant laborers who were in the camp looking for work, they pitched a tent and slept there while waiting for the flayer to show. In the last session he showed up and was terrorizing the locals.

The party cast various spells on themselves from inside the tent, the flayer was several hundred feet away, working his way through the crowds with his Ettercap henchmen. They figured they can’t cast spells at the creature, but they can cast on themselves. They buffed up the strength of several party members when the Necromancer cast Strength upon them (Necromancers get a few alteration spells, ones that alter the body, which makes sense as they can animate the dead). The party warlock cast The Terrifying Arms of Brugg the Cruel on the party Myrmidon as he was their best fighter.

He had 4 arms to attack with now.

He then downed a Potion of Frost Giant Strength, and the party Myrmidon and Spider approached the flayer and his guards. There was a huge crowd all around them, so they got fairly close without event, even though one of the flayers guards was scanning the crowd. They got very little resistance when they did these culling runs, as the flayer scared everyone, so they were on the lookout but not super vigilant.

When they got close enough I decided that a surprise roll was necessary. Only one of the guards was looking in their direction, so they had a chance as he might look away for any number of reasons.

We rolled, and unfortunately the dice did not cooperate.

So, when they bolted forward to attack, the henchman that was scanning the crowds spotted them and shouted out.

Things moved fast.

We rolled initiative, and the luck gods smiled this time, they got to act first.

The party Warlock cast Power Word Stun on one of the guards, took him out directly. The party Necromancer finished the poor fella off while he was stunned.

The party Spider tried to backstab one of the other guards, but rolled terribly, no luck.

The party Gyre (essentially an earth bender) had a rapid fire succession of rocks fly at another one of the Ettercaps and finished him off. Recall that this is a party of 7-8^th level PCs, they can do decent damage when the situation is right.

Then the party Myrmidon attacked the flayer.

He had 4 arms, so he got 2 attacks, he was wielding a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. With the Potion of Frost Giant Strength adding to his numbers, he was +4 to hit and +11 to damage with the sword, +3 to hit and + 10 to damage with the dagger.

He rolled one regular hit and one critical hit. The regular hit was a rolled 2 + 10 for 12 points of damage, for the crit he took double damage, rolled a 3, doubled to 6, added a bonus of +11 for 17 points of damage,  totalled to 29 hp damage.

I roll for monster HP on the spot, flayers are 8HD creatures, I rolled 34 hp.

Ref – “The flayer turns as its henchman shouts, too late though, as your blades arrive before it can react, your dagger slices through its side, spraying a vile ichor into the air, your sword drives through it’s shoulder and out the other side, its whole body shudders as you pull the sword back, twisting it as you wrench it out.”

In Bhakashal the first hit you take that reduces you below half your HP gets a Jack turned over, and you are then -1 on all rolls, -3” to movement and a 1 point AC penalty. The

The flayer responded with a psionic blast. Given the way the party was laid out, the blast hit the Myrmidon, the Spider and the Necromancer. The Spider and the Necromancer failed their saves and panicked, fleeing the scene screaming in total horror.

The Myrmidon shrugged it off.

That was all in round 1.

We rolled initiative at that point:

Warlock – 3

Gyre – 6

Myrmidon – 5

Mind Flayer - 2

Then we ended the session.

When we get back next week the mind flayer gets one attack before they get to respond. Barring terrible luck, at least one of them should survive the next psionic blast and be able to slay the thing, it only has 5hp left and any one of them could end it with one shot. Hell, even the party warlock could shoot his crossbow and finish off the creature.

Given the way they are spread out only two of them could be hit by the blast, meaning that their odds of winning are pretty good. If so, they will have to get the body and get out of there before any other flayers show up. I will also have to roll to see if any of the laborers around them get involved, I will weight the roll such that they are more likely to help, they all loathe the flayers, hell, this sort of thing could inspire a revolt!

Alternatively, the locals are pretty beat down, so they might just slink away, and there is always that ONE GUY in the crowd who thinks that he can curry favor with his oppressors by turning over wanted men…

But that’s for the dice to decide. One way or another, they have made their presence known, and in a place like this that’s not good. If they manage to slay the creature and Sogogg Brot sees that they can deliver, he will give them another advantage to use for their next target, who will be better protected, particularly now that the party has made themselves famous by slaying a flayer in public.

After several sessions of intel gathering and planning, things are about to get real.

Big fun.