Building Bhakashal - Session Report - One Shot Game

I ran a 1 shot adventure for the dads that play in our father/son game, there was a Seer (priest), a Warlock (magic-user) and two Mercenaries (fighters) ranging in level from 4^th to 6^th. Their task was a simple one. An up-and-coming Bhakashal Warlock (Kamerli the Ivory) from House Quannar had been collaborating with a Warlock from outside the city (Bhomar the Bronze), but Bhomar had stopped communicating recently, something was up.

This collaboration was outside of Kamerli’s Noble house, and he did not want it known, so he hired the PCs, who were not from his House, to travel to Bhomar’s tower and discover what had happened. The conceit was that their last successful venture had them talked about and Kamerli decided to recruit them for his own use.

They headed out on their giant lizards into the marshlands and the early morning heat. They took the road for the majority of the trip, travelling by the road is faster, and somewhat safer, as it’s patrolled, but it is still dangerous travelling anywhere in the marshlands. The only encounters they had were with a House patrol, which resulted in a bit of back and forth, a some palmed coins to get the patrol to move on, a small herd of giant lizards. An encounter reaction roll had the lizards ignoring them, so they continued on.

They then entered the Cairan Forest. There were a pair of Cifal in the forest that waited beside the trail to pick off unwary travelers. We rolled for surprise and the party surprised them. I interpreted this as the party hearing a strange buzzing noise ahead of them, the warlock sent his familiar, a blood hawk, ahead to investigate, and they discovered the creatures. They decided to set up a trap.

The party Seer cast Glyph of Warding on two trees then the party stood behind the trees and started to make noise. The Cifal came to investigate, and immediately moved to attack, triggering the two glyphs. The party wisely chose fire glyphs, the creatures were damaged, and a morale roll had them fleeing.

It was a clever plan; I’ve seen groups rush in with regular weapons to fight creatures like this and they get slaughtered. Cifal are stupid but dangerous, and they played on that.

They continued forward, using the blood hawk to scout ahead, and they discovered the tower, there were 4 armed Saan (lizard folk) on the roof of the tower playing cards, but that was all they could tell. After a discussion they came up with a plan, create a distraction to draw them out, then sneak in and find Bhomar, assuming they were holding him hostage.

One of the hardest things as a ref is to not say anything when they speculate and you know they are wrong, or for that matter right.

They waited until night, risking two more random encounter rolls, and a patrol from the tower, and after midnight the party warlock cast dancing lights in the forest to make it look like there was some sort of fire starting.

As a referee I know what is happening, but the NPCs don’t, in order to emulate that, I roll to see what they will do. In this case, the bandits who had taken over the tower were suspicious, they were really off the beaten path here, there had been no recent lightning strikes, so the odds of a fire starting up spontaneously were zero. This meant someone set the fire, and potentially as a distraction. I came up with a set of options, and the rolled result was to send out a group of bandits to investigate but post a bandit at all windows and doors just in case this is some sort of distraction and someone was going to try to gain entrance to the tower.

The PCs approached a 2^nd floor window, they were climbing in when they saw a bandit charging them with a scimitar! They dropped back down, and the party proceeded to hug the wall and move around to a first floor door. Rooftop crossbowmen shot at them, the bandit with the scimitar screamed “SOUTH SIDE”, to let everyone inside and outside the tower know there were intruders on the south side.

So at this point, things have went south, their advantage, surprise and stealth, was lost, and the whole bandit crew knew where they were. How players approach the situation when things go south is, quite frankly, a good measure of their skill at the table. I was keen to see how they were going to figure this out.

By this point the bandits had sent out a group of 5 and one sergeant to investigate the “fire” in the woods, when they got there they discovered that it gave off no heat, then they heard “SOUTH SIDE” and ran to join the others.

The jig was up.

The party moved to the east side door and started smashing it with a mace. The player running the mercenary smashing the door asked for a critical effect. In Bhakashal you can specify a critical effect for your attack that isn’t listed in the books, but everyone has to agree to it. They wanted to smash the door such that the critical blow would send splinters and wood dust flying towards those inside, temporarily distracting them. They asked for a segment of delay, I said sure.

They rolled the critical and were successful. 1 segment delay allowed the mace-wielding mercenary to drop and for the rest of the party to let loose without risking hitting him. We rolled for initiative, and I rolled absolutely terribly. There were two crossbowmen and a Thaumaturge inside. A Thaumaturge is a Bhakashal thief/magic-user that only uses scrolls. The Thaumaturge had a scroll out and was reading from it, the PCs shot one of the crossbowmen dead, then the other, and the party warlock’s Magic Missile struck the Thaumaturge in mid cast.

As a side note, Magic Missile as a spell casting disruptor is one of my absolute favorite applications of the spell, huge range, auto-hit, no save, and it disrupts spell casting for any spell of any level.

That’s boss.

Then the party Seer (priest) cast Hold Person on the Thaumaturge, and that was it. They ran in and tied her up so she couldn’t cast when the spell wore off. At this point, all of the bandits had left the tower, knowing the party was coming around to the side door. They were hoping that the Thaumaturge (one “Maglane the Malachite”) would have stopped them in their tracks. Now, the bandit leader, a Saan named Rojmi Yin, announced that he had them surrounded, and they should surrender

The party shot back that they had his warlock and that they would kill her if he didn’t back off. I rolled to see how he would react.

He replied, “She knew the risks, I’ll kill you all if I have to”. 

So, at this point they kind of panicked. They were trapped, potentially outnumbered, and felt they had no bargaining power. People make a lot of noise about “no win scenarios”, but I’m neutral on this. The PCs maneuvered themselves into this situation, they had to figure out a solution. I’m not helping them out, I’ll talk out stuff and answer rules questions, but they have to do something.

They were in the tower kitchen, they decided to bolt to the next room.

There was a life-sized stone statue of a warrior in this room, that was obviously a sitting area, and on the far side a door that led to the outside, there were two bandits there, when the party emerged they threw oil flasks to the ground that shattered, spreading oil all over the floor.

Then they tossed in a lit torch.

The bandit’s plan was to start a fire in a wizards tower, since it was made of stone they had a bit of time, the party would either be flushed out, or the smoke would take them down. They would then throw water on the fire to put it out, pulling out the bodies. The players were all looking at each other. They had a few options, they could travel up the tower to escape the fire and most of the smoke, but eventually the bandits would come in. They could burst out the other door fighting, hoping to get lucky. They could cast a spell on the way out the door.

Then the player running the party Seer (priest) noted that he had a Resist Fire spell, he read the description and realized a Resist Fire would make the fire harmless for them.

Watching the look on his face as he realized he had a workable idea was priceless.

He was 6^th level, with his wisdom spell bonus he could cast Resist Fire enough times to cover the whole party (in Bhakashal you don’t pre-memorize or pray for your spells each day, you just have a limitation on how many you can cast). So first he cast it on himself.

They heard the bandits outside laughing about how the party was going to die in the fire, betting on whether any of them would run out and be slaughtered, and taunting the PCs, “Come out little pigs”, “Die by fire or by iron”, the Seer then cast it on another PC.

At this point I told them it was getting hard to breathe with all the smoke in the room, so when the Seer went to cast again, I made him roll a saving throw, which he failed, so he got into a coughing fit while casting and had to stop. The other PCs also had to roll, but they made their saves. The Seer tried to cast again, and successfully protected all the party members. The paralyzed NPC Thaumaturge did not have protection.

At this point, the smoke was thick.

They used the cover to run up the stairs to the third level, carrying the NPC Thaumaturge with them. The bandits were now bringing up buckets of water (the tower was on an island in a small river), to throw on the fire so they could enter and extract the bodies or find the hiding PCs.

The party talked to the paralyzed NPC, offering to end the paralysis and reminding her that they saved her, they could have left her in the fire, paralyzed, to die. The Seer broke the spell, freeing her. I had to see what she would do. She could have attacked, feigned turning to their side while intending to betray them at first opportunity, in situations like this I use encounter reaction rolls. Her’s was VERY positive, which I interpreted as a reaction to being told she was expendable, combined with her reasons for being there, I decided she had fallen out of favor with her employers and had fled to join the bandits until things blew over, they hadn’t struck it big yet, and she wanted out. She spilled the beans on everything.

She told them that a basilisk had entered into Bhomar’s secret chambers in the cave complex beneath the tower and petrified Bhomar. The creature then came into the tower and petrified Bhomar’s henchman Hagal Sevenwinds (the stone statue in the front room).

The bandits found the tower, it appeared recently abandoned so they moved in, the basilisk was in the cellar when they arrived, they saw it and blocked the doorway to the cellar and it’s still there. She also spilled that the bandits were working for someone who wanted to disrupt the holdings of House Rostus, all of the territory in the marshlands is the responsibility of a particular noble house, this hex was under the management of House Rostus, and the bandits were harrying caravans in this area to make House Rostus look bad

This was all backroom campaign faction stuff, totally over their heads, but they quickly glommed on to the fact that this information was GOLD to their patron. In a factionalized setting, knowledge is power. So, they knew they had something important.

I was running a clock timer for that conversation, I rolled to see how long it would be before the bandits put out the fire, let the smoke disperse a bit and realized the party wasn’t there in the burnt room and came into the upper levels of the tower looking for them.

After their talk, Maglane took out a scroll. Thaumaturges in Bhakashal cast spells from scrolls, so it’s one and done, and using a powerful scroll is a big deal. She had Binnatav's Sudden Viscosity, a fun 7^th level spell that makes the air thick, it gives big penalties to combat and movement, and makes it difficult to breathe. The longer you are in it, the greater the chances you will pass out. The caster, and up to 1 target per level of experience, are immune to the effects. It was her most powerful spell. Maglane took the scroll, walked down the stairs until she could see the room, and started casting the spell.

To determine if she was spotted or not I called for a surprise roll, attempting casting from concealment is a great use of the surprise mechanic. She achieved surprise, they went past the bandits and fled the tower. There were 6 bandits waiting outside. However, they saw Maglane leaving with them, and they did not see Rojmi Yin with them, so they figured something just went down. They backed off and the party fled. When the blood hawk circled the tower earlier they saw a stable with mounts.

They ran to that stable and released all the bandit’s mounts to flee into the marshes. They then found their mounts, tied up nearby, and headed back to the city. They were not pursued by Rojmi Yin, it took days to get the mounts gathered up. He will exact his revenge later; I will add him to the random encounter table for the marshlands and the city…

They traveled three days to get back to the city, meeting a caravan and a poison snake on the way back, both encounters went favorably. They went to their employer, reported on what they knew, and were rewarded for their success with gems and a new patron. Kamerli the Ivory has schemes he doesn’t want to share with others in his House, so the PCs, as outsiders, are perfect agents for him. My players asked me, “What does Kamerli think of House Rostus, are they an aligned house, or an enemy House?” Bhakashal gives all institutions and groups alignments, and institutions with the same alignment tend towards being allies

It ended up (and I didn’t plan it), that House Quannar and House Rostus were both LN, so this intel about someone wanting to undermine House Rostus was particularly valuable. This is also why all areas in the marshland are designated as territories of the various Houses, so when stuff happens there the referee has a potential connection to make. The PCs discovered the fate of Bhomar as tasked, and they revealed the location of a trapped basilisk, something that Kamerli was quite delighted to hear, “I’ll either kill it and dissect it to make spells, or I’ll put it in my garden and send tedious guests to be turned into art.”

The adventure was more than a success.

They had a new patron. And all the players wanted to play again, regularly. They clearly had a blast, and none of us expected what actually happened. Most of all, they had to think their way out of things, and it feels good when a plan comes together.

That’s the stuff.