Building Bhakashal - Session Report

Today was the first day of our week-long AD&D summer camp. The players in this camp have been gaming with me in my after school program for two years. After 2 years (160 hours) of play, the party are all 7th level, so they are fairly formidable against lower level foes

The party consists of: 

Magic-user (human) - Dhaklan the Ryne

Fighter (human) - Borak Blackhand

Cleric of Bast (human) - Jek Rallah

Ranger (aaracockra) - Creeg Mar

Fighter (lizard man) - Golgan Torg

The adventure started where we left off in the regular game from the after school program, they completed a quest to retrieve a Staff of Power for their patron, Quin Faal the Iolite. They decided to go to the tavern and have a meal to celebrate their success

While in the tavern, Borak wandered the room until he found a card game going on, and he asked to join. Now, as it happens, I purchased a set of “poker dice” a few years ago, they have 9,10,J,Q,K,A on the respective sides. You roll five of them to represent a hand of cards, then you bet on these hands, then whomever is still in, trades in cards once, everyone bets again, and you see who has the best poker hand. So for the next 15 minutes or so we played poker. The fighter was flush from their last adventure so he bet high, driving out some of the other players

I’m a big fan of “games within games”, they really bring the session to life, create some depth to the game world, and allow the players to RP without any big agenda or plan being fulfilled, and even to gather information. They went to meet Quin Faal the next morning.

They met Faal in his tower, with his stone giant bodyguard at his side. His next job for the party was a retrieval, he found a map years ago, to a fabled “Forbidden City”, where the warlock Horan was rumored to live. Horan is said to have found the city several years ago. He then set to using the tomes of old magic found in the city’s remains, creating strange hybrid creatures, some amalgams of humanoid creatures. Horan found tomes that revealed the secret to making living creatures in vats, and some believe he has been building an army

Several weeks ago Faal had one of his groups report back from a job with another map, the twin to the one he had, this one was a map OF the Forbidden City. With the map, Faal wants the party to go to the city and raid Horan’s library, bringing back these old magic tomes

The party had a 4 day journey across the ocean to get to the location. So we roll for random encounters every 6 hours on the sea. Evening of day 1 just before midnight, a ship came upon the horizon through the rain. They were ready to fight, when they realized it was a merchant ship, and they had surprise, so they could attack or just sail on. They decided to make  their presence known by sounding a bell and waving a flag. The ship returned the signal and gradually came closer. Their ballistae were armed and aimed, so were the party’s (they were on the Manticore’s Spike)

The party asked if they had goods for sale, they said no, their goods were all spoken for, they then asked if they had anything “not” spoken for. I took the hint, rolled the dice and one of the merchants mentioned that a “passenger” dealt in “medicine” . The party asked, and spent some gold purchasing sleep powder, if dissolved in wine and drank puts you to sleep for 6 hours, if used to coat a dagger or arrowhead, for 2 rounds will cause any target struck to sleep for 1d4+1 rounds

They sailed on, no further encounters to the coast. They trek through the jungle for 2 days, no encounters there either. There was some grumbling, “no encounters, really”, but I roll in the open, so there it was. They were a bit overwhelmed by the description of the jungle. I decided the trees were abnormally tall and had mostly large dark purple leaves, making the area vaguely wine colored, and the insects were bird sized. They arrived at the Forbidden city, they decided to do a walkaround the periphery to match up the map with what they can see. 

Smart lads.

They are told that there are NO trails here, so they have to hack through the jungle in places, and it’s very slow, so 4 hours to go around the whole city, as they insisted on searching the area around the city for around 200’ or so. That produced four random encounter rolls, but none came up. They identified a cave to the west that they suspected led to the city, they found a tree, vines, and a trail. They missed a lower cave in the precipice wall, which allowed easier rappelling down  

They decided on the switchback trail, 500’ to the bottom. They were vulnerable and they knew it, they passed the checks for the trail to collapse, and when they passed the treeline and entered the forest, they were attacked. In this version of the module, the mongrelmen are called “patchwork”, they are composite creatures, made up of humanoid parts. Essentially Horan takes pieces of a body and puts them in different vats, then grows the body from each, but it is distorted, with parts being disproportionate sizes. He is experimenting to get a closer match. They do what Horan commands, and are essentially used against intruders who appear in the city, the patchwork  roam it and will attack them, sending them to Horan for experimentation if they defeat them

The patchwork use blowdarts and only hit one party member, who makes his save. Then 7 drop from the trees and attack, regular initiative, they attack first in most cases, but attack with big clubs and only one hits, for minor damage. 

Now, a brief aside. The system we use has crits,  and the party are 7th level. This means the fighters are… formidable. The patchwork are 3hd, so max 24 hp, rolled at the table. They had their attacks, then the party had theirs.  Borak Blackhand attacks with his lucern hammer, +6 to hit (magic, strength and proficiency bonus), he rolls a critical, and chooses double damage. He rolls 2d4 for 6, doubled to 12, plus a +6 damage bonus, for 18 hp damage, I roll the HP for the patchwork, it’s 15, done

“The creature swings its club overhead and misses you by a margin, as it is overreached you swing your hammer, it smashes into the creature’s chest and sends it sprawling. It doesn’t move.”

Golgan swings his longsword, rolls a regular hit, d8+4, gets a 10. The patchwork rolls 9 hp.

“The creature swings the club like a bat, and you duck beneath, then your sword has free access to it’s midsection, and you run the creature through”

Two down.

Borun fires off 4 magic missiles, one of the patchwork takes all four, Borun likes to be emphatic, he rolls 4, 3, 5, 2 for damage, 14 hp, the patchwork rolls 12 hp, it falls down dead. “Borun touches his forehead and draws out four shimmering purple spikes, whipping them at one of the creatures. “

“It jumps as if shocked by lightning each time the spike strikes it, then it convulses, and falls to the ground dead”

Three down. 

Jek Rallah prayed to Bast and reached out to touch the one which missed him, his hand closed on the arm of the patchwork, and suddenly its skin became ashen, as if drained of life, and a ripple of this spread along the arm to the body as it shrieked

That was a Cause serious wounds, 2d8 +1 damage, rolled for 11 hp, rolled HP for the patchwork was 9, and it went down. At that point it was a morale roll. They failed and bolted. The party debated what to do, they were still under cover in the woods. They decided to cast speak with dead.

I roll for wandering monsters, nothing

The priest of Bast takes out a dried and rune covered big cat skull (panther) with two rubies for eyes, he makes a pile of a bird’s nest, snake skin and mouse fur and lights it afire, holding the skull in the smoke, then letting it go, it hovers there in the smoke, and speaks

“Ask”

Jek - “Where is Horan”

The skull speaks, “In building with big walls past onion towers”

Jek - “Do you work for Horan”

Skull - “Yes”

Jek - “What work does Horan do”

Skull - “Makes patchwork and yuan ti”

The party gasped at this, they hadn’t realized he was MAKING yuan-ti, just working with them. That creeped them out.

Jek - “What is Horan’s most dangerous ally?”

“A dragon”, the skull’s jaw hissed

Jek - “How does Horan control the dragon”

Silence, the dead patchwork did not know.

Jek - “Where can you usually find Horan”

Skull - “Home”

Jek - “Where are his books”

Skull - “Home”

With that, the fire beneath the skull blew out with a sudden wind, and the skull collapsed to the ground.

Armed with this knowledge, they decided to track the departed patchwork, as they could be going back for reinforcements, or that they could be going to Horan to warn him. So Creeg is an aarakocra ranger, and he tracks them back to their area. The party then finds a dark alley and watches them.

The patchwork send out four of them into the city, the party figures they are going to warn Horan, so they track them and settle on the roof of a pair of facing buildings. When the patchwork appear they leap down on them, knowing a miss is d6 damage from the fall

This gives you +2 to hit and double damage for a critical if you roll one. They dive down, Borak, Jek and Golgan. Each one lands their hit, and each one does enough damage to kill. Golgan scores a critical and chooses an extra attack, he uses that to just about finish off another. Then Dhaklan fires off another magic missile barrage, this time doing 11 damage, and the wounded one drops

That finishes off all 4, the party then takes them and stashes the body in a deserted building. They figure the less clues for Horan the better. I roll for wandering monsters, nothing.

They go exploring. They follow the map between buildings and see the bandit’s camp. In this iteration of the module, the patchwork police the city streets, the bandits grab stragglers from passing caravans to give to Horan for his experiments. The party decides to go on the roof and watch and listen. Given their proximity, I allowed a 1 in 6 chance per hour they would hear something. There was also a 1 in 12 chance per hour that they would be spotted. The first hour they heard nothing. Hour two they did. They were not spotted.

Two bandits went off to the side to talk, close enough to the party to be heard. I rolled a d6/2 to see how many “interesting” things I would have them talk about, I got 6 for 3. I made up three on the spot based on the bandit’s role, working to bring him captives from passing caravans

1. Horan never comes out anymore, he has been in his house for months

2. He also sends us out often without an apprentice to help

3. The patchwork and the yuan-ti are terrifying and unnatural, and being around them is unnerving

The party mulled on that and decided that it would be smart to ally with the bandits, they had what appeared to be a spell caster in their midst, and they disliked Horan, or at least some of the men did. They waited until a patrol went out, then they approached them from the alley. No surprise was rolled, so they confronted each other, as the bandits reached for swords, the party called out to them, “Wait, we seek an audience”.

“With who, Horan?”

“No, with your leader”

At this point it was an encounter reaction roll, given what they heard, I gave it a small bonus. They came out as just above neutral, so they took the party back to their camp to speak to their leader, Rogwhan the Brutal, and his right hand, spellbinder (shaman) Seake Caimbrin. The party proceeded to ask the bandits for aid in overthrowing Horan, and asking them for information on his forces. This was an interesting situation, Horan was their employer, and very powerful, but they were also at least a bit reluctant to engage him. So how would they take this? Encounter reaction rolls govern it, but with modifiers. The party discussed how they had slain around 9 patchwork, and were able to fight yuan-ti. The bandits told the party that Horan had about 50 yuan-ti, and around double that in patchwork

The bandits number 50. The conversation continued, the party asked what Horan had other than the patchwork and the yuan-ti. They knew about the dragon, but they wanted to see if the bandit’s would tell them or not.

“The dragon”

“What kind of dragon”

“A pan lung”

Dhaklan asked the bandits how Horan commanded it. I rolled to see if any of them knew. I figured it should be possible, but not very likely, so I rolled it as a 2 in 6 chance someone in the bandit camp knew. It came up. So, one of the bandits came forward and told a story, that he was out by the lake several months ago hunting, and he came upon a huge cluster of reeds with bullywugs standing around as if watching over it. When he reported this to  Rogwhan  and Seake they figured this must be the dragon’s egg. The bullywugs will spear the egg if the dragon comes near, and thus Horan commands the dragon. The party decide that they need to get command of that egg, to bargain with the dragon and get its aid against Horan. 

With this plan in place, I roll an encounter reaction from Rogwhan and Seake to see if they decide to throw in with the party, they are TERRIFIED of Horan, so I decide that this gives a negative modifier, but the plan, and the chance at freedom if they secure the egg, is tempting. So I give that a small positive modifier, and a CHA modifier for Jek, who is speaking for the party. The result is moderate positive, so they tell the party that if they can get the egg under their control, and get the dragon on board, they are willing to throw in with them.

That is where we ended it for today. 

Information gathering, stealth, planning, parley, the boys ROCKED this session. They understand that Horan is dangerous, and that they need as much power as they can get to take him on. They know we have three days ahead of us, so there is no rush, and they are building alliances.

Little do they know a 6 member party has been sent here by a warlock at a rival Noble House to retrieve the books as well. They are to move in, let the party engage Horan, and then sweep in and either slay them or steal the books from them

They are:

Brother Arcal the Azure, 6th level rakasta Monk

Jaskar Irontail - 6/6 Fighter/Thief

Ghar Khol the reaver - 6/6 Thief/Magic-user

Luxifal the Cerulean - 4/4 Illusionist/Magic-User

Dornas Clug “The Viper” - 5th level Thief

Kohliss the Syne - 7th level Magic-User

Kohliss has gone up against another one of my groups and single handedly kicked their asses, so even though several members of this party are lower level, they are still formidable.

But that’s for later…