Building Bhakashal – Session Report – Intelligence Gathering
My Friday game resumed this week. We took a long hiatus
after last year because my players all had commitments in September and
October. This is my longest playing group; they have been at it for 4 years
now. They are all 7th – 8th level in experience.
Before I get to the session report, I should do a brief
recap.
When you hit 8th level in Bhakashal, you are on
the cusp of being able to become a patron, at 9th level you
transition to domain play and become a Bhakashal Lord, Warlock, High Priest,
etc. and start taking direct part in city politics. But to get in you need to
do more than just get to 9th level, you have to do something big for
the faction to get their attention, to convince them you are a worth addition
to the faction’s upper echelons.
They decided last year to enter the Bhakashal underworld to
find their big thing. Once there they would establish an outpost for their
Noble House and trade with the locals. Then they got there and found their
first underworld city, filled with Togmu, Malu, and strange spider people. They
formed a friendship with a local merchant, sharing their idea of opening up
trade, and asking if there were any in the city who would be interested.
One thing led to another, and they decided that they didn’t
want to establish a regular trade, they wanted to do something bigger. There
were monsters here that had never been seen in the upper world, so they would
capture and kill these monsters and take them back to the city, where they
could be used to create new spells and magic items.
This was a far, far more important advantage to bring to
their House.
But then someone got clever and asked if it was possible to
create a teleportation gate of some kind, AD&D has teleportation magic, and
this would allow them to bring back monsters faster than the several month long
journey it had taken to get there.
Bhakashal is an open ended sandbox style setting, so the
answer isn’t “yes” or “no”, it’s, “how do you want to do that?”
How to make a magic teleportation circle?
They took a few sessions figuring that out, but essentially
they had to find someone who had the knowledge, and eventually, after gathering
as much information as they could in the city and getting nowhere, their party
priest used a high-level divination spell on a scroll to ask the higher powers
where they could find what they needed. They had been saving this scroll all
year, so it was a big deal to use it.
But it paid off.
The spell told them of a powerful warlock who lived in the
underworld, he had a collection of tomes that included one that detailed
circles of this kind. Find him, find their solution. That led to a two-week
journey, where, ironically, they lost the party priest to a trio of carrion
crawlers led by a hunting party of underworld Malu hunters.
They eventually found the wizard, who was a blind Yalan
(snake man) who had given up his sight for various magical powers. His
companion was a giant, intelligent slug. The slug “saw” for the warlock, and in
exchange it was taken care of. The party decided to be friendly to the guy and
it ended up he was pretty lonely in the underworld, so he agreed to help them
out in finding the information they needed, in exchange for them agreeing to
stay for 2 weeks and keep him company.
That gave them access to the tome that had the details on
how to make a teleportation circle. There were a number of mundane components,
and a design they had to make exactly right, but part of the process of
creating the magical ink used to mark the circle was to slay four mind flayers,
drain all of their blood, and mix it with the ink and several other ingredients
(including Volt blood and ground up phase spider brains).
So that sent them off to look for an Illithid city in the
underworld. Several more weeks journey, where they lost one of the two party
warlocks to a trio of Umber Hulks, led them to the Illithid city. Dhargana, the
illithid city, was located in an immense cave, the cave had columns of stone in
a huge empty space, each column was hollowed in places to form huge caves. There
was one gigantic column that held the majority of the city, and many smaller
columns that held private estates. The mind flayers city existed to house the infrastructure,
servants and slaves they needed to support their bodies while they explored alternate
planes and realities with their minds.
At that point they had to make some decisions, as
infiltrating a city of mind reading illithids wasn’t going to be easy. The city
did have other races there, Vorunn (spider-folk), Emberi (humans), Togmu (frog-folk)
and Malu (fish-folk) were also in the city, but the majority of Emberi were
servants, laborers and slaves, and the Malu and Togmu were fishermen, hunters
and mercenaries. The party would stand out as
a motley collection of overworlders (they had, for example, a Rakasta),
so they decided to set themselves up posing as a renegade alchemist and his
retinue, fleeing from an enemy in the overworld, wanting to set up shop in the
Illithid city.
This was possible as the party has a Myrmidon, in Bhakashal,
Myrmidon’s are fighter/alchemists, whose limited spells all work on potions.
They also have a spell that allows them to combine the relevant components on
the spot to make a potion. The Myrmidon carried a number of potions with him and
could make more with various ingredients he had collected on their journey or
harvested fresh.
That is where we broke for the summer, with the party having
just dropped coin to pay for a large tent from which to run their potion making
business, and plans to figure out how to waylay an illithid or two…
Cue to today’s game.
We did some recap then dove right in. They decided to do
business for a few weeks and see what they could learn talking to their
customers. When you do stuff like this in game you can either abstract it
totally (set then roll the odds of discovering something important), or you can
role play it out at the table. The former can be handy, but also dull, the
latter can be too time consuming.
Bhakashal’s random encounter system works for this sort of
thing perfectly.
You roll for random encounters 4 times a day, at different
odds, from morning to night, 1 in 12, 1 in 10, 1 in 8 and 1 in 6. With these
odds, on any given day there is a roughly 40% chance you will have an
encounter. Over two weeks, that means, on average 5.6 encounters.
We rolled 8.
For each encounter, as the PCs were at the tent most of the
time (they had a sleeping area in the back), the encounter had to happen there.
If anyone went out and did anything, then we would roll to see where it
happened if the party was not all in the same place.
Note also that the party dealt with the public more than 8
times, as vendors they would see discussion and business with many people, but
only 8 of these are “encounters” e.g.,
we role play them out at the table. The other visits are abstracted, and I can
generate the “revenue” from those visits, if any, abstractly with a roll.
Encounter 1 – Day 2
Malu fishermen came in wanting something a potion of Sweet
Water, during the conversation:
– “The squid-heads, they meditate all the time, that and eat
brains!”
Fact this is based on: The illithids spend most of their
time lost in their minds, they return to reality to eat brains and conduct
affairs
Encounter 2 – Day 4
Thieves tried to enter the tent from the rear and
encountered party members in their private section, all were sleeping but one,
the party phantasmist. He heard them moving around then cutting the tent, he
cast an illusion over the sleeping party members of a gigantic, coiled snake
that covered the space taken up by 3 sleeping bodies. I rolled a reaction, and
the thieves made off.
Encounter 3 Day 7
A group of Malu city guards came by the tent, they started
off being vaguely threatening, making comments about outsiders and such, then
they said they had heard they were hiding a monster in the back. The party
showed the guards the empty space willingly, showing no evidence whatsoever
that a giant snake had been there, and they left.
Encounter 4, Day 10
A pair of Malu hunters came in to sell animal parts to be
used by the alchemist, but the price offered offended the Malu (the party gets
a big negative mod to encounter reactions as outsiders) so they got angry and
attacked. The party Spartan (monk) took them down weaponless and they fled. I
rolled again every day to see if they came back with friends!
Encounter 5, also Day 10
A Togmu fisherman/hunter came in looking for pure salt, as
the salt he normally uses to kill certain vermin infesting his catch is “dirty”
and causes other problems. During conversation:
“Squidders are homebodies for sure, except for Sogogg, that
crazy tentacle head is leaving on Haitam, probably hunting with the Fish-heads
again!”
Fact this is based on: The illithids rarely leave the city,
with few notable exceptions, one being Sogogg Brot, an Illithid that has spent
time running with the Malu hunters in the caves
Encounter 6, Day 12
A Vorunn necromancer came into the shop, she needed a Potion
of Longevity for experiments, during the conversation,
“No, the old-ones would never eat my brain, they only
consume the minds of the lowest, I am more valuable to them intact”
Fact this is based on: The illithids eat the brains of
slaves, servants and laborers at their leisure, otherwise they eat brains of
criminals (anyone breaking a significant law is just taken to an Illithid and
their brain is consumed) and random creatures captured in the caves.
Encounter 7
One of the party members spent the day travelling the city,
and while doing so he had an encounter with a passing NPC, the PC was looking
at animals that were being sold as “guard dogs” and he encountered a trio of
Ettercaps, in the underworld Ettercaps interact with other groups, they are
primarily hunters. The Ettercaps noticed him looking at their unique silk gear
(nets, bolas, battle sashes), and started a brawl with him. Fortunately, it was
the party monk, and he managed to drop them all in different ways.
Encounter 8
A Malu merchant came to the tent looking for a Potion of
Healing. The player asked me if they could look at the monster parts they had
collected to see if they had ingredients for that potion, and I told them it
was so poorly lit they would need an artificial light source, so they lit a
lamp.
During the discussion:
-
“Close your curtain, that
fire is blinding”
Fact this is based on: The whole city is low-lit with softly
glowing striated rock and flights of luminescent insects that swarm and fly
through the air, as a result all of the regular inhabitants are used to
extremely dim light and are light-and fire avoidant, and you rarely see fires
anywhere.
If we had rolled one more encounter the city guards were
going to return to ask about the monk, as he had been involved in two
altercations now, both of which were seen by others.
They talked about their intel and decided to try and nail
the Illithid leaving the city, he would no doubt be with
guards/monsters/henchmen for protection (Illithids don’t travel alone), but
less protected than he would be on his estate.
Then one of them brought up that they didn’t really know
what mind flayers could DO, e.g. their powers, just some things about what they
were doing, e.g., their activities.
So, to the market they headed, the plan was to pinch a
servant/slave and interrogate them, surely the slaves and servants would have
seen the illithids use their powers before, likely on one of their peers. They
would know things.
How do you model ambushing a target in a crowded
marketplace?
I told the party to come up with a plan. They said they
would spend the time walking around the market and looking for opportunities to
waylay someone in an area where they wouldn’t automatically be seen.
OK, I decided to model this too.
Every turn they had a 1 in 8 chance of finding a servant or
slave in a situation where they could talk to them unseen while in the busy
market. Also, every turn there was a 1 in 12 chance of an encounter. We rolled
them simultaneously.
After an hour (6 rolls of a d8 and a d12), the d8 came up.
“You see an illithid noble riding by on his Xixia with his
retinue, four burly Malu bodyguards, a large, leashed lizard of bright green
hue with multifaceted yellow eyes, and a trail of Emberi slaves, each carrying
a large bag on their backs. At the end of the line is a Saan, the first you
have seen here, who is spotting the overstuffed bags for spillage as they move
along. At once he is distracted by something between two large tents, and bolts
in towards it. You have an opportunity and spring into motion, running towards
the Emberi between the tents”
Now, a word about magic in Bhakashal.
The party warlock has memorized Power Word Stun as
one of his spells. In Bhakashal, a warlock can memorize any level of spell.
When cast, there is a chance of spell failure, and of harm to the caster. The
warlock had been using this spell a decent amount, as it wasn’t lethal, and it
worked well.
So when he rushed in, with the party Gyre behind him (Gyre’s
in Bhakashal are raw magic users, benders, they can manipulate their particular
dominion, the party had an earth gyre, essentially an Earth bender), he decided
to cast Power Word Stun on the poor hapless fellow, rather than risk
tussling with him and getting hurt or him getting away.
He rolled his casting odds, 82% chance of success.
95 was rolled.
The spell failed.
Failed spells have a 5% chance per level of harming the
caster, 7th level spell, 45% chance.
22 was rolled.
The warlock uttered the words of the spell and was stunned
into unconsciousness on the spot for nine rounds.
This is why I love probability-based mechanics; he knew this
was going to happen, but he never knows when, and each time it does
happen, there is such a gap in between
that it spooks him.
I find the balance perfect.
The Gyre saved the day, when the Warlock was trying to stun
the guy, the Gyre manipulated the dust and dirt
on the ground to either side of them and made a thin dome to protect
them from view. In the already low light environment between buildings, it was already
dark, but this would stop those who were used to low light from seeing
anything.
I rolled to see what the slave would do; he cowered in fear.
The Gyre then cast a second spell; this time he used his
ability to bend a metal bar into a binding for the slaves hands.
He told him that they weren’t going to hurt them, the slave
looked on in confusion.
The party Gyre spoke to him in Togmu, all of the slaves knew
some Togmu through their dealings with hunters and farmers, and he told him
that they were looking to find out what the “Squidders” could do, as they
wanted to harm them.
This produced a very positive reaction, the slave detested
the illithids, so the slave asked, “If I tell you all I know, will you let me free?”
The party was sceptical, they felt he would go back to his
master and tell him of the threat, hoping to curry favor.
“If I go back to him he will read my mind, know of you, slay
me for leaving his presence and then be on to you, I have no desire to die, let
me flee, I can leave the city and take my chances in the caves.”
They debated this and decided on taking the information.
This guy was an illithid slave for a year now, so he had seen them doing things
many times. I counted up the “facts” about illithids from their description,
and rolled for four of them that the slave would know. I figured the illithids
would freely use their powers around slaves, so it wasn’t unreasonable that
they would know things, they rolled the following:
1. “They can
read minds, but not all the time, only when they focus” (ESP)
2. “They are
not strong, but they can subtly manipulate your mind when you try and strike
them, minimizing the blow” Flayers have decent Hit Dice, Hit points are not all
physical, it’s left to the referee to interpret, this is my interpretation.
3. “They can
overpower your mind” - Domination ability
4. “They can
slip out of space then slip back” – Probability travel
Importantly, the slave had no knowledge of their magic
resistance, so the party does not know that.
They gave the slave some coin and a dagger to defend himself
and let him leave, knowing every second he was with them the odds of the
Illithid noticing he was gone and would come after him increased. They then
waited for the party warlock to wake and fled back to their tent.
They formulated a plan; they would try and ambush Sogogg
Brot when he left the city in two days.
They still have to find him to track him when he leaves, and
they don’t know what sort of party he will be leaving with, but they figure one
flayer outside the city is far easier to bag than one on it’s estate or in full
public view.
We stopped there.
It was a largely information gathering session, but in
addition to gaining information, they tend to build anticipation, the players
are thinking about their adversaries, the threats they face, and how to cheat
death. Because we integrate information gathering into the encounter system, it
combines both bookkeeping and role play in an entertaining way
Next session will be down to business I think.
