Building Bhakashal – Session Report

My former Wednesday group is now a Saturday morning group, we play bimonthly for 3 hours a session. We had our second session today. This group has been with me for 3 years now, and they have reached high enough level to enter what is traditionally called “domain play”

In Bhakashal “domain play” actually starts at 1^st level, as you are associated with a patron and a faction, but when you hit 8^th level you are now ready to enter the upper echelons of your faction, in the case of the party, they were affiliated with House Quannar, and they were deciding on a “big move” they could try to get the attention of the House nobility.

Last session they decided to get involved with the Spiders Guild (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 something about them, Quin Faal was trusting them with key information. House Quannar has influence over one branch of the Guild, but not the other.

So, they decided their “big move” would be to reunite the two branches of the guild by either swaying, kidnapping or slaying the leader of the Raosk branch of the guild, a Chitin named Kalantros (the “Red Arachne”).

Last session they spent 4 weeks of game time doing “bookkeeping” tasks, from potion creation to sage research. Some of them also spent those weeks in the Raosk gathering information, trying to find out anything they could about the Red Arachne so they could come up with an idea of how to get their attention and gain an audience, or find out enough about them to be able to pull off taking them out.

They decided they would present themselves as looking to get a spot of prestige in the Guild by getting the attention of Kalantros. So, they asked questions about him and paid bribes to people trying to find out how to impress the guildmaster and get recruited.

It was an interesting move.

However, role playing out each and every conversation with an NPC where they asked about Kalantros would be too time consuming, so we telescoped it with some rolls. They spent coin every week, and every week I rolled to see what “intel” they got on Kalantros. They heard a few rumours they discounted, for example that Kalantros was really a powerful demon in chitin form, as they didn’t give them an ideas of how to turn that information into something actionable.

They spent 4 game weeks asking around, and on week 4 they hit a piece of intelligence they could act on. Maur Hoguelen, a wealthy Bhakashal merchant has maintained a stranglehold over the sale of mounts by breeders in the marshlands to vendors in Bhakashal. Mounts are incredibly common in Bhakashal, and Maur is the middle man between the hunters who bring in wild creatures to use as mounts and the vendors who sell them.

Everyone goes through Maur.

 

What the party found out was that Maur did NOT pay tribute to or interact with the Raosk Spider’s Guild, even though he did business with hunters in the marshlands who operated out of the Raosk. The Red Arachne would love to get a cut of Maur’s business, as mounts are not used in the Raosk, so they are a business the Red Arachne’s guild normally gets no part of.

The party decided that they would try to kidnap Maur and present him as a gift to the Red Arachne, giving him control over Maur’s business. A major feather in his cap. This would hopefully get them access to Kalantros, or his trust, and they could go from there.

I was impressed, it was an actionable plan, and it showed that they were thinking in terms of big moves, not just securing loot or slaying monsters.

The next part though, was brilliant.

How to get to Maur?

They discussed this in the abstract, and came up with three options:

1.        Find one of Maur’s agents and work them

2.        Work their way up in Maur’s organization to get to him

3.        Find Maur himself directly

This group has been with me for 3 years, they understand how the game works, and how faction play works. 3 years ago, they would have went straight for Maur, Maur has an estate, heavily guarded, where the party could try to get him. It would be risky, and tough. They asked if he ever had parties at his estate, him being crazy wealthy and powerful, I said yes. They tabled that as a possibility later. They considered finding one of Maur’s agents but were unsure if that would be too obvious.

Then they decided they would try the slow and steady route, to get into his organization and work their way up.

I was impressed, they were taking the most strategic route, the longest route, to getting what they wanted, patience, planning and care.

How were they going to join the organization?

They decided that since Maur purchases wild creatures from hunters, creatures that are captured and domesticated, they would enter at the bottom, join a hunting party sent out to capture wild mounts and bring them in. I had not planned for this, I expected them to go straight for the guy or find one of his top people, and of course they came up with a different idea.

A hunting they would go.

They found a few of their contacts and asked around about hunting groups that find and capture potential mounts. They found one that was advertising for new recruits (it’s a dangerous job). Then they surprised me again. When approaching the hunters of the party members said to me, “Kalantros must know about us, we asked a lot of questions and paid a lot of bribes, so he knows there were 5 people who were asking questions and wanted to get into the guild and impress him. So only some of us should go on the hunt, if five turned up together that would raise flags.”

They were thinking about things from the perspective of Kalantros, a guildmaster at the center of a web of thieves and informants.

In fact, after the 2^nd week of asking questions Kalantros found out about the party and has three of his agents tailing them around the city. I roll periodically to see if anyone notices them. Nothing so far. So, unbeknownst to them Kalantros will likely know that they joined the hunting party.

Four of them joined a hunt to capture potential mounts. I opened up the Bhakashal setting manual, and we rolled randomly to see what mounts they would be capturing, and I rolled Raggam (giant boars). Giant boars are BEASTS, 7HD, 7 foot tall at shoulder, they are the size of small elephants, favorite mount of warriors, renowned for their aggressiveness, a captured Raggam could fetch from 300-500 gp.

Thing is, I had no idea how you would “capture” a Raggam.

I made up something on the spot.

The hunting party consisted of 5 Togmu and 5 Kutya hunters, a Saan hunt leader, and 15 “haulers”.

Their technique was to track a herd over a few weeks to learn their patterns, then ambush them when they are in the right area. The hunters generally travel with a spell caster who distracts or drives off a single Raggam, then they surround it, and while two or three hunters and the caster keep it at bay with spears/spells, the others throw ropes over top of the creature, each rope has a weight at each end, a metal loop. They then slip a large, hooked spike through the loop and hammer it into the ground (much like tent pegs). Once three ropes are thrown over and secured a giant boar is pressed to pull away, and one of the hunters hits the Raggam with a poison that knocks it cold for a few hours.

They then find any other Raggam who haven’t fled completely (Raggam are aggressive, so a few usually stick around), the spell caster usually helping to corral or hold them, depending on what spells they have. Using this method, they will bring in 2-3 Raggam per hunt.

The party presented themselves as hunters, they were honest and said one of them was a priest, and he was automatically hired on, healing magic is helpful. Two party fighters hired on as is, and the party warlock offered his magical services. Unfortunately, the hunters already had a warlock, he showed up late, a tall chitin wearing a colorful leather kilt and with bright feathers for a collar and much jewelry. The hunting party leader (a slayer) told the party’s warlock to shove off, the party’s warlock made an issue of it, so the leader told the two to fight each other to see who would get to join. The party warlock took out a pinch of sand and cast Sleep, the opposing warlock cast Stinking Cloud. Fortunately, the party warlock’s spell was faster and it put the opposing warlock to sleep before his spell culminated.

That won them over to the hunters, who found it hilarious.

They discussed compensation, the total take for the haul would be divided amongst the 29 people involved in the hunt, 11 hunters, 15 “haulers” (they helped to remove the Raggam when they have been captured) and the 4 party members. Once divided into 29 equal shares, spell casters would get 3 shares, exceptional hunters 2 shares, and the rest is then pooled and divided amongst the regular hunters and haulers equally.

They organized themselves into teams and headed out on mounts of their own (a giant lizard, or “Gess” for each). They had obtained permission (through payment) to hunt in the territory of House Omsan, which was a 1-day journey. The dice were sleepy, and it passed without encounters.

On the way there they discussed strategy. The party suggested using their Seer’s (Bhakashal priest) Speak with Animals to corral the Raggam to an area where their Warlock could cast Web on them, which would hold them long enough to be tranquilized. Then the haulers are called in and they take them away.

They found their herd at night, in a watering area surrounded by tall grasses (an area chosen by the group’s Slayer for that reason). There was a small, forested area to the north of the watering area that would work for the Web spell. They had left their mounts with the haulers and moved in, it took them an hour to get into position as they moved exceedingly slowly to avoid detection, and I rolled a few times to see if the herd noticed them and were spooked or not. Raggam are not easily spooked, and although they did notice one group of hunters, they ignored them as the were far enough away.

Then the party Seer approached the herd and cast Animal Friendship, and began speaking to one of the herd, telling them that there were juicy tubers and flowers in the forest, ready to be eaten. The beast then headed to the forest and called out to the others, who fell in with them.

The party Warlock was in place near the forest and once they were in position between stands of trees he managed to cast Web and snag three of them in a line. However, they began to push through the web very quickly, snapping the strands, which surprised the party  and the hunters, so they rushed in to tranquilize the beasts.

3 down!

The rest of the Raggam saw this happening and fled, but there were other groups of hunters and party members waiting.

The party Warlock cast a pyrotechnics spell, smoking out a fleeing Raggam, it paused long enough for the hunters to throw three ropes over it and trank it when the smoke cleared.

With the Speak with Animals spell still in force the party Seer used Command to get one of them to “sleep” and it crashed down into a deep slumber. They roped it and tranked it easily.

Then one of the party fighters decided to have fun. He was waiting in a tree in the small, forested area, when one of the Raggam peeled off from the three that were caught in the Web he dropped from the tree on to the beast and attempted to rope it. I gave him two options, one would be to whip the rope around the bottom of the neck of the beast, it would wrap around twice then he could pull back on it, but it might hit him in the process. The other option would be to form a “u” shaped loop and throw it forward, then pulling back on it if it made it over the head. Both required a critical hit to be successful, but the former, in addition to potentially hitting him, would be more secure than the latter. He opted for the whipping approach and rolled a successful crit, managing to harness the beast. While he pulled back and the beast tried to buck him off, his fellow hunters tranked it.

One of the other beasts had seen this and charged in to defend it’s pack mate. The fighter decided to try and jump from his beast to the charging one. He managed to land that jump successfully, and to rope the second beast! Unfortunately, it bucked him off, flying through the air to crash to the ground. The other hunters moved in with spears to distract it while the fighter got back up and engaged the beast directly, menacing it with his pole arm and holding it at bay. One of the hunters managed to trank it while this was happening, and it went down.

Then the party made the only major strategic error of the session. The party Warlock wanted to “beat” the fighter’s total, so he cast a powerful Monster Summoning spell. In Bhakashal monster summoning scales with level, and it summons monsters from the local monster population, so you go to the random encounter tables for the area, select off all of the monsters of the designated HD and roll between them.

The Warlock summoned a red Slaadi.

It easily dealt with  Raggam when the Warlock commanded it to use its ability to cast Power Word Stun on the beast. Then it was sent away, loping off into the marshlands under a haunting moon.

8 raggam captured, more than a regular haul!

The Slayer leader took out a horn and made three long blast on it, the “haulers” then came to the hunting party, it took about a half hour. The haulers had large carts that were being pulled by Gess. The tranquilizers are calibrated to knock out the beasts for about an hour, at which point they wake, stunned and pliant, and the haulers corral them in to a cart and haul them to a waiting barge.

Sometimes they don’t manage to properly dose a beast (the delivery mechanism doesn’t penetrate deep enough, the beast it larger than the dosage can cover) and it emerges from the stunned state and tries to escape, but I rolled, and the hunters had done their job, there were no issues. They had to re-tranquilize two of the beasts as the extraction took longer than expected, they only had two carts as they weren’t expecting this many Raggam, and they had to go back and forth several times.

At one point I rolled a random encounter as the extraction was taking a long time and it came up with a pair of alligators, they saw what was up and noped on out of there!

They could only fit 6 of the Raggam on the barge, so the party seer agreed to ride them back to the city by using Speak with Animals on them to get them to be cooperative. He was 8^th level and could cast the spell multiple times to reinforce the compliance. The Warlock rode the other beast and had spells to use if needed as well. They headed back to the Raosk, where the beasts were delivered to a domestication farm where the Raggam would be trained before being given to vendors to sell.

The party was extremely popular with the hunters. They had taken a lot of the risk, and more than doubled their usual haul of beasts. The way the shares worked was invariant, the spell casters got a triple share, and the party fighter a double share, but that still left a significant profit for the individual hunters and haulers. As the loot didn’t divide completely evenly, they gave the excess to the party Warlock as a thanks

That’s where we stopped.

Observations

The players have embraced the idea of high-level domain play in Bhakashal. They have accepted that there will be different challenges, and different goals, and they are committed to doing something big.

This sort of patience was unheard of when we started, for better or for worse they wanted to achieve their goals instantly and see their efforts rewarded without delay. Now they understand that some goals are “big picture” and require a different kind of focus.

The only strategic error they made in this session was to summon the Red Slaadi. As cool as the thing was, they essentially waved a big red flag, a warlock that powerful wouldn’t go out on a regular hunt. Bhakashal has a powerful honor culture and system of repute, “slumming it” like this is unusual behavior. Of course, the hunt leader is happy to take advantage of a “down on his luck” warlock, but he is going to draw a lot of attention to their effort by doing something like this and will likely be talked about.

The Red Arachne already knows they are asking about him, and he may soon also know that at least one of the people asking about him joined a mount hunting party and is fairly powerful. However, the people he had tailing the party restricted themselves to the Raosk and the city, so they won’t know the details of the hunt. The Slayer leading the hunting troop isn’t disposed to share the information, he will want to take advantage of this situation for as long as he can.

Nothing is certain.

What the Arachne finds out and when, and how he responds, will be determined by dice rolls, so even I don’t know how this will turn out.

What I do know is that the party is all in on the high-level domain play, and is working towards pulling off a job that, if successful, will unite the Spider’s guilds under the House Quannar banner, make them legendary, and make a solid case for them becoming Bhakashal House Lords and Warlocks in House Quannar.

It’s going to be epic.