Building Bhakashal - Session Report - Infiltration

Building Bhakashal - Session Report - Infiltration

My Saturday group are hovering on the cusp of domain play, they are near the level required to become Bhakashal nobility, and in order to gain that coveted status, you need to do two things:

1.        Reach the requisite minimum level (7^th is the lowest where this is possible). Level in Bhakashal translates directly into the repute mechanic, in short, you gain in reputation as you level up, and this directly impacts things like encounter reaction rolls. So, to be considered for nobility at any faction, e.g., a Lordship at a Noble House, you have to be at least 7^th level, which means you have to be known for your prowess.

 2.        Perform a task of importance to the faction in question. This has to be something significant that will get the attention of the faction, something important to it’s goals. Alternatively, you can defeat an existing noble in the faction and take their place. In either case, your action will create instant enemies and allies within the faction, as some people in the faction will resent you for performing the task, or some will resent you for taking out an ally.

The party decided to go for performance of a task for their House, House Quannar, and after deliberation settled on trying to get to the Guildmaster of the Raosk branch of the thieves guild (a chitin named Kalantros the Sly, or, in his role as guildmaster, “the Red Arachne”). The guild has two branches, one in the city (the Guildmaster is a House Lord at House Quannar), the other in the Raosk. Their House controls one branch of the guild but not the other, so bringing in (or taking out) the existing leader of the Raosk guild would be a MAJOR coup for House Quannar.

Ambitious, the way it should be!

If you want more detail than that, the first two session reports are here:

https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/09/building-bhakashal-session-report.html

https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/10/building-bhakashal-session-report-my.html

Today’s Session

The party was trying to get access to Maur Hoguelen, a wealthy Bhakashal merchant who 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. However, mounts are not used in the Raosk, and despite the fact that the hunters all go through the Raosk, Maur does not pay tribute to the Raosk Thieves Guild or deal with them at all.

So, to get to Kalantros, they are going to get to Maur and deliver him to the Red Arachne to convince him to let them into his organization, then go from there to either recruit him (get him to consider merging the guilds), capture him (to force him to merge the guilds) or slay him and take over the guild (or give it to someone from House Quannar).

They started off as hunters and joined a hunt for potential mounts. They used their abilities to help and were very successful, so the hunters took in a huge payoff from their hunt. The party used this to get the lead hunter to give them the name of the person he reported to, who works for Maur.

One step closer!

An encounter reaction roll led to the hunter giving up the information (they had just made him a big bag of coin), and they were off to the Raosk.  Maur Hoguelen has a representative who spends time in the Raosk, recruiting, gambling and drinking, a 7^th level Malu (fish-folk) Spider named Golusk Haik. Haik hangs out Raosk either at the platform fights (d6 1-2), wandering the tents looking for recruits or snooping (d6 3-4) or in Shalsea’s Burden(d6, 5-6), a tent tavern on the Eastern platforms. He travels everywhere with two ogre henchmen who are completely loyal, Beryt and Gryn .

The party decided to split up, half would go to the fighting platform, the other to Shalsea’s Burden.

The party has two heavy melee types, the party mercenary (fighter) and the party spartan (monk). The fighting platform in the Raosk is a bit different than the arena in Bhakashal. Here most fights are unarmed, but there  are no rules other than no magic and no weapons. You can of course use a magic item if you like (e.g., Bracers of Defense), but if anyone suspects you of using magic there are extreme consequences. There is a low-level warlock there to cast Detect Magic if there are suspicions.

They introduced themselves to the bet arranger and made wagers on themselves (you can only wager on yourself to win!). They knew they were likely to win on the platform, although there were some leveled NPCs that fought there, odds were they wouldn’t encounter as many of them, so they were rightfully confident. The goal here was to get in contact with Haik and try to get him to bring them further up the chain.

The mercenary went first, he was paired off against a large Jugyi (turtle folk) bareknuckle brawler.

The platform was lowered and bets were taken, Jugyi, Kos Kos Kamma, was a local favorite. They circled each other for a bit then Kos Kos charged the PC. They clashed in the middle of the platform, the big Jugyi missed his shot and the PC landed a solid hit on his soft stomach. Kos Kos tried for another roundhouse and managed to clip the mercenary on the shoulder.

They split and circled again. The crowds were shouting at the PC, Kos Kos was popular here, and some merc from the city wasn’t going to be well loved.

Next round was shorter than the first, Kos Kos tried to slam into the PC, hoping to knock him down with his greater bulk, but to no avail. He missed the PC, who managed to roll a critical and stun his opponent, long enough for a second attack, which finished him off.  A solid blow to the jaw sent the big Jugyi to the floor. At which point, the mercenary picked him up and walked him to the edge of the platform, sending him over to the marshy ground below.

This is the Raosk, nobody cared, LOL!

They wanted to maintain the image of being badasses, willing to do what it took and merciless in the fight.

Money was exchanged, threats were shouted, and the Jugyi was dragged off the platform.

Unfortunately Golusk Haik was not at the platform to see that fight.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was arriving at Shalsea’s Burden, it was a tent tavern, strewn with pillows and stations peppered throughout with differing libations at each, a beer station, a cider station, a wine station and a liquor station. The party wandered through looking for Haik, but no luck.

Back at the platform the party Spartan (monk) was ready to go. He was itching for some hand to hand as his hands were formidable weapons. His opponent was a lanky chitin (insect folk) with wicked looking claws and a missing right eye.

Unfortunately for the chitin, a 7^th level Spartan is not there to play. A single strike from the party Spartan led to a critical and a stun.

And that was that.

The crowd ROARED for that, and the players did too, but Haik did not show up.

They decided to sit the next round out, and a pair of burly Saan (lizard folk) appeared on the platform and proceeded to beat the stuffing out of each other for 5 minutes, until one of them landed a kick on their opponent’s head, finishing him off.

The party members at Shalsea’s Burden then started to wander the platforms looking for Haik.

Back at the fighting platform, Haik finally showed up. The Mercenary and Spartan then went to the platform together to have another fight, this time against a pair of Kutya (dog-folk) mercenaries. These guys weren’t as high level as the two, but they were pretty close, and thus more of a challenge.

The mercenary and one of the Kutya got into it right away, trading blows in a flurry. A few bad rolls by the PC and a few good ones by the NPC started to promise a different outcome, but in short order the PC had managed to send the Kutya flying and then finished him off on the ground.

The Spartan and the Kutya was also a short fight. This time the poor unfortunate Kutya decided to try for a  grapple, on a Spartan.

Grappling and open hand combat is WHAT THEY DO.

The Spartan managed to get this guy in a choke hold almost immediately, and he held it until his opponent blacked out.

Again, money was exchanged, and the crowd shouted their approval.

At this point the Spartan spotted Haik, and decided to approach hin.

He approached the Spider, framed on either side with a big, bulky Ogre.

He name-dropped the hunter who had led them on the outing to capture Raggam in the wild and told the lanky Malu that they were looking for other work in the organization.

At this point I had to decide if Haik was interested or not. He did recruit in the Raosk, but it was most often to find mercenaries willing to go on the hunt. Hunts are dangerous and “cannon fodder” mercs are a great addition to a team of seasoned hunters. He also recruited for other roles, as he was a trusted associate of Maur. He had just seen the two PCs make short work of some big, strong local favorites, and in a particularly ruthless manner. They were clearly good to fight without weapons if needed.

So I rolled an encounter reaction roll to see how they would react to the idea.

I rolled a natural 100, ENTHUSIASTICALLY POSITIVE.

My job as a referee is to interpret this result. Why would Maur’s recruiter be interested in a pair of platform fighters? Well, they just bare-knuckled a bunch of big, powerful fighters with ease, so…

“I am looking for a few warriors that can fight without weapons as well as with them. My boss needs muscle that can defend him even in areas where you can’t bring weapons. You two will fit the bill nicely. Show up at Maur’s estate in two days, he’s having a party, I’ll introduce you and see if he agrees with me or not.”

And, just like that, they had another lead.

There was another interesting development for this group. For all of last session and all of this session, the groups thief/magic-user has been researching a spell while the other PCs were out working to infiltrate Maur’s organization.

Bhakashal has rules for researching spells, but few players have been interested. This particular player had decided, after the group slayed a giant scorpion; to collect part of the scorpion’s tail and research a spell based on it as a component. The process takes time, so he took his character out of the group, holed up in the library and laboratory of their House, and researched a spell.

The process for spell research in Bhakashal is as follows:

The referee and the player collaborate to determine the particulars of the spell. One of the important things to note is that spell levels are a general indication of power, but there is considerable variance both between and within levels, so level assignment is to a degree flexible.

The general process is to have the player decide the basic impact of the spell based on the special component being used. All spells require a special, fantastic component to create them, this component is used in making the ink that is used to pen the spell. Magic is sympathetic, so, to create a new spell that allows you to, for example, paralyze victims with a touch, a ghoul finger might be a good choice of fantastic component. Once that is done, spell parameters can be determined by comparing this spell impact to the impacts of existing spells and finding the closest equivalent.

So, let’s say the PC wanted to make a spell that allowed them to move faster, the most obvious comparison would be the 3^rd level spell Haste. The new spell, call it “Faster” would then be calibrated with respect to Haste. So, for example, if ”Faster” only increased movement rate but not attacks per round (as Haste does) then Faster could be a 2^nd level spell, or if it was also a 3^rd level spell, then perhaps its casting time could be less, it’s duration could be longer than Haste, or it wouldn’t have the aging impact (Haste ages you one year every time you use it). 

In general spells have many parameters, AOE, range, casting time, components, effects etc., and the referee and player can juggle these until the new spell is in the desired relationship with existing spells in respect to comparative power. THIS IS NOT AN EXACT SCIENCE, nor is it meant to be. One of the greatest appeals of the AD&D (and Bhakashal) spell system is that it has exceptions like this, magic is to some degree unpredictable and unquantifiable. The presence of exact statistics for spells is to aid in their use in a game, not an indication that magic is an exact science. 

In some cases, the proposed spell from the player will end up being pretty close to an existing spell, at this point the player may want to simply research the existing spell and pen it rather than a new spell.

In other cases, the referee and player may have trouble finding roughly equivalent spells to compare to. This will be a rare thing in most cases, the AD&D and Bhakashal spell tables are remarkably robust, and cover a lot of ground, but even within these well defined limits there are almost limitless variations possible, so comparisons are fairly easy to find.

Once all of the parameters are agreed upon by referee and PC, the odds of successfully researching a new spell are the same as the odds of casting one:

(the PC’s Chance to Know Each Listed Spell from the PHB) less (5% x the level of the spell to be created).

This process requires 5 weeks of research, - 1 week for each point of INT bonus. The research will culminate in a scroll copy of the spell. If the roll fails, there are harm odds as per regular spellcasting (e.g., 5% per level of spell).

If the attempt is unsuccessful, the researcher can opt to try again, they must wait 24 hours and then can reroll at the same odds. The Warlock can try a maximum of 5 times (the initial time and 4 more), if the last check fails the spell is not possible for that caster to research. Alternately, each additional week of research adds +5% to the odds and gives a new roll, max 20% bonus. If the researcher has help, take the average of the INT scores for all who are assisting, add this value in % as a bonus to the base odds of success, and use this for the researcher’s chances. Overall odds of success can never exceed 99%. The odds of researching an existing spell are the same as the odds of researching a new one, +5%.

There is a 1 in 30 chance for each day of work that there will be an encounter that could interrupt the process. The referee will come up with a list of potential encounters (e.g. a rival attacks, a thief breaks in, etc.)

We spent the last 15 minutes of the Saturday session ironing out the details of the spell, tweaking various parameters to calibrate the spell to existing spells, and then to roll to see if the PC was successful. There was one failed attempt, and the PC chose to try again 24 hours later rather than do more research and improve his odds. His second roll was successful.

This is the spell he researched:

Rikan the Silent’s Scorpion Sting (Alteration)

Level: 3, Casting Time: 3 segments, Range: 0, Duration: 5 rounds, Area of Effect: 1 target per 3 levels, Components: S,M, Saving Throw: Neg.

Rikan the Silent’s signature spell allows the warlock to give a weapon the ability to paralyze a target with a successful strike. The spell is active on the Warlock’s hand for 5 rounds, if not discharged before that time it expires. Any weapon touched will have the ability paralyze a target hit by that weapon, for a duration of the caster’s level / 3 in rounds (e.g., a 3^rd level caster could give a sword the ability to paralyze a target it strikes for 1 round). At most one weapon per 3 levels of experience of the caster may be so enchanted. Paralysis effects are subject to a saving throw, with a penalty of -1 for every 3 levels of experience of the caster. The material components for this spell are a scorpion tail and iron dust, the caster holds the tail, dusts it with the iron, closes their fist on the tail, closes their other hand on the fist, holds them together for the duration of the casting time and then pulls them apart. The palm of the hand that held the tail will be a shimmering silver until the spell duration completes.

We meet again in 2 weeks; I will have his spell printed out on a sheet to represent the scroll copy of the spell that the PC gets at the end of the spell research process.

Big fun.