Building Bhakashal – Session Report – Domain Play

We had our first session for one of my after-school groups this Saturday, we are shifting to biweekly 3 hour weekend sessions rather than weekly 1-1/2 hour after school sessions for this year, as after school activities are increasing, as well as homework!

We took a 2-month summer break, when we finished they had just arrived back in the city after a fierce fight with a bandit crew. They had traveled across the game world to the Forgotten City, and they were heavy-laden with 8 months of adventuring loot. I have to hand it to them, they hired extra pack animals and traveled with a caravan to ensure they brought all their loot home, it was a major pain in the ass, an extra cost, and it slowed them down considerably. But they were rich!

After a recap of the previous game year, mainly reminding everyone of tasks finished, tasks unfinished, commitments met and not met, allies and enemies created. This was essentially a bookkeeping session, but my group loves those. First we dealt with leveling up ¾ of the party (two PCs didn’t level, the rest did). One side benefit to this (differential XP requirements by class) is those classes that level more often get rewarded. When you run different classes leveling at different rates, this becomes another way to differentiate the classes. People complain about thieves in 1e for example being “underpowered”, but they level up fastest in AD&D and so improve more regularly.

We had one of the party warlocks level, and they rolled for their Patron spell, in this case they rolled a homebrew spell and were pretty stoked about it. It allows you to “borrow” power from a monster if they fail their save.

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Inarrak’s Ingenious Appropriation (Alteration) - Level: 6, Casting Time: 6 segments, Range: 1”, per level, Duration: Special, Area of Effect: Special, Components: V,S,M, Saving Throw:Neg.

Inarrak’s Ingenious Appropriation allows the Warlock to temporarily “appropriate” a power from a monster who fails their saving throw. This could be, for example, the breath weapon of a dragon or the gaze of a basilisk. While appropriated, the monster does not have that power. The Warlock can in principle appropriate any power, multiple attacks, etc. Powers can be used 1 time for every three levels of the caster and must be used within an hour of casting the spell. The Warlock may not appropriate a power from a creature that has more HD than she has levels. The material component of this spell is a small mirror and a gold piece.

 

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Warlocks in Bhakashal are free casters, once they memorize a spell they can cast it up to their maximum number of times per day (level and INT based), but they have failure odds for all castings, and the odds of HARMFUL failure are 5% per level of spell.

Ouch.

Now almost everyone in the party was 8^th level. This means that they are on the cusp of conversion into Bhakashal nobility. At 9^th level PCs who have completed an important task for their faction are considered to become part of that factions upper echelons

The party had two 8^th level members before everyone leveled up at the start of our current sessions, they will likely hit 9^th by mid year and be eligible for noble status. We are transitioning into what would traditionally be called “domain play”.  I consider all levels of play in Bhakashal to be “domain play”, as  you work for a faction from 1^st level, and are thus tied to bigger things from the beginning.

But I digress.

They decided that it was time to figure out what to do as their “big task” to impress the existing Bhakashal nobility to let them in when they did reach requisite level. Up until this point they have been following the direction of their patron. They had a sense of what was important to him, but they did not have a sense of what was important TO THE FACTION beyond him. And the point is that they need to do something big so the faction will want to add them to the existing nobility.

They had two ideas, first was to find a powerful monster that was threatening their House and slay it. The second was to pair up with Craight the Swift, the caravan master of the caravan they had traveled with for the last game year, and find some distant place to open trade with, either in mundane resources that are rare in Bhakashal, or in magical resources, e.g. rare components used in spell and item creation. This second option was what my Friday game from last year decided to do when they had a few players hit 8^th level. They are currently in the underworld trying to build a trade network around exotic monsters. Slaying a fearsome monster is good, figuring out a way to harvest materials from a monster in perpetuity is even better. For example, in Bhakashal several of the marshland villages raise giant slugs and use their acid for various things, from weapons to spell components to alcohol. If the party could corner that trade or get an advantage for their house in that trade, it would be a big deal.

They spent some time talking and decided to ask their patron, Quin Faal the Iolite, for suggestions, he’s obviously more plugged in than them. Over the last four years of this campaign they have gotten to know him pretty well, and on the whole they have been successful at the tasks he has put them to. So, how does the Patron respond? I roll for that. Encounter reaction roll (with mods) was very positive. I decided that Quin Faal was ready to make some big moves of his own, and having any member of the party as House nobility would give him another ally. So, he gave them 3 options, tasks that would both work in his favor, but also give the party a big reputation boost.

The first was related to the Bhakashal Blossom, this gigantic plant has roots all over the city that lead to healing pools, the temples and the Noble Houses control them, but there are rumors of another that has not been found. The healing pools are a big deal for two reasons, one, they heal ANYTHING, you could bring back a finger and get back the person. Second, regular healing drains the Seer (Priest) who does that healing temporarily, the pools do not. Odds are the pool will be on another House’s territory, so if that’s a House they want to forge an alliance with (which can be rolled for), or one they are opposed to, no matter what there are lots of possibilities!

The second task related to demons that have been appearing with increasing frequency and targeting powerful people in various Noble Houses. Demons in the city used to be rare, with so many high level warlocks and seers around, why bother? Find out why and stop the demons. That would be very dangerous, between magic resistance and psionics, demons are deadly, and defeating them and rooting out the source of their summoning would bring major Honor to them and any House that would take them.

The third related to the Spiders (Thieves) guild, in Bhakashal the Guild is split into two, the city branch and the Raosk branch. They have an uneasy truce, but the city branch is run on the sly by a Lord of House Quannar, the PC’s house. When Quin Faal told them this, they became privy to “nobility” level information, the identity of the “Black Arachne”, the guildmaster of the Brass Blade Spider’s Guild, is pretty secret. Now they know, Quin Faal was trusting them with key information. House Quannar has influence over one branch of the Guild, but not the other

Task three was to either slay the Guildmaster of the Raosk guild or take him out of play so that either one of them or a House Quannar Lord could take over, making their house dominant over both branches of the Guild.

That would be a boss move.

We took a break at that point from the RP with Quin Faal and while they thought about the options, we took some game time to take care of some bookkeeping. They had to cover expenses. They had been gone for months, so they had to pay their retainers (the ones who protect their property in the city). They also had to pay tribute to their patron, pay their taxes on their property in the city, make their donations to the various temples, make their donations to their factions, and grease the palms of a number of regular allies. Some also had to replenish supplies, henchmen and mounts.

Then they had to convert their mountains of coin into gems and jewelry. We roll for each PC to see if they get a better, worse or fair exchange when they buy gems and jewelry, various PC skills figure into these rolls.

One of the PCs wanted to RP a brief encounter with a mid level brawler who had bested him in a fight in the Raosk before they left on their big trip to the Forgotten City. He found the guy after some searching around a brief trip to the temple of Aeskaros, Bhakashal god of Vengeance (Aeskaros appears as a fiery red humanoid with four arms and the head of an ape, carrying a pair of two-handed swords), where he left a very large donation, the Seers pointed him to his prey. They had a fight in the Raosk, essentially on the street, there was lots of informal betting, and this time the PC won the day.

They loved that.

Then one of the PCs decided to take downtime to make a magic item, they had found a scroll with Enchant an Item and took the chance to try and memorize it. That was successful, and he had access to the library and the laboratory at House Quannar, so he decided to start with enchanting three shuriken to be +1 and return on throwing. Bhakashal has a process for that, so we rolled and spent a lot of gold (just getting the shuriken made is expensive as they have to be the very best quality materials, made by a skilled artisan) and he got his shuriken.

But that, combined with level training and other housekeeping activities, took up about two weeks of game time. By that time Quin Faal had tasked another one of his groups with discovering the possible extra healing pool.

So that was off the table.

They eventually decided on trying to take out the Guildmaster of the Raosk Brass Blade Guild as their initiation task for status as House nobility. I think the demons scared them off!

At that point they talked strategy, how to best identify the Red Arachne? Eventually they settled on finding something of import to the Raosk branch of the Guild, something that they wanted or wanted out of the way, and dealing with it. That would hopefully get the Red Arachne’s attention, and maybe help them to find out who they are. We broke at that point with the players busily hatching schemes and seeing if any of their new, recently leveled abilities would be helpful.

I should add that generating high level tasks like this is something else that Bhakashal does if the referee desires. There is a rumor table for the setting that has high level stuff like this that is up to the referee to decide on as true or false. So it could just be a rumor, or it could be the basis of something bigger. Add to this any rivalries from the PCs past that impact the House, or any tasks they have completed that hinted at bigger things going on. There are tons of sources of inspiration for this level of play in Bhakashal.

For those who are curious (these figures are rounded, I wasn’t watching the clock the entire time):

Time for Tasks: 7 - member party [OoC means “out of character”, IC means “in character or played out at the table as the PCs)

1. (OoC) Recap of big developments of previous year, enemies/allies made, achievements - 30 min

2. (OoC) Leveling up - 20 min

3. (OoC) Brainstorming "main task" - 20 min

4. (IC) Discussion with Quin Faal - 30 min

5. (OoC) Bookkeeping Tasks (money changing, expenses, henchmen, etc.) - 20 min

6. (IC) PC fight with brawler - 20 min

7. (OoC) Magic Item creation - 10 min

8. (OoC) Brainstorming "main task" - 30 min

Total – 180 min, 3 hrs