Building Bhakashal - Session Report - Factional Play and Alliance Building

My Thursday group played their last game of December, we will be meeting again in January. This has been my first all-girl group, and they have really leaned into the game. This is a group of theatre kids, all of them have parts in musical productions at their school, and they quite often either break out into songs from school or sing about what’s happening at the table. They have taken to calling the warlock they were sent to capture “the short bald man”, rather than his actual name, Bamal the Boastful. 

Not to his face of course.

It’s a very different vibe.

We have played 5 sessions together, there was one session where we talked about how to run your own campaign, when we are done they want to be able to do this on their own.

1^st and 2^nd Session - https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/10/building-bhakashal-session-report.html

3^rd Session - https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/11/bhakashal-session-report-we-had-our.html

4^th Session - https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/11/building-bhakashal-session-report-new.html

TLDR: Bhamal stole a magic sword from Quin Faal the Iolite, Faal sent the PCs to retrieve him and the sword, the party has decided to throw in with Bhamal instead.

Didn’t see that coming.

We rejoined the party after they had returned the sword they had found in the maze to Bhamal, he was after it, they got it first, and they gave it over to him, and told him about Quin Faal’s plans for him. This earned them some trust. He has a number of giant spiders that serve him, he put one spider “on” each of the PCs, following them around for the week. If the PCs behave, he will call off the spiders and is planning on bringing them in as he needs the PCs to do things he can’t.

We started the session with the PCs talking with Bamal.

I love doing in character stuff, particularly warlocks. Bhakashal warlocks ooze confidence and power, they don’t suffer fools and they don’t’ waste time with threats or nonsense. They are very fun to play.

Bhamal told them that if they threw in with him he would share what some of his plans were, but at that point they would become instant liabilities to him, i.e., if they didn’t work with him he would have to slay them.

He laid it on the line.

They decided to throw in anyway.

I rolled to see how he would react to this. It ended up being moderately positive. I had made a list of things he knew and his goals, remembering that he used to be a close associate of Quin Faal, so he knows a lot about him and his plans. I decided he would share some of that as the roll was positive but no active response, which meant he would just share information.

I rolled a d4+1 and got 3, so he shared three pieces of information. Here is a rough reconstruction of the key part of the conversation where he revealed these three things.

 

Bamal the Boastful – “You retrieved that Defender before I could get to it, I had wanted to learn more about the maze before taking it, but you have moved my plans forward, for that I am grateful.”

Ynir Freyil – “Grateful, we ruined your maze!”

Bamal the Boastful – laughter – “No, you don’t have the power to do that, you released four magical anchors, and damaged a statue, I can replace the anchors. And it’s not ‘my maze’, it has been here for, well, I can’t say for sure, but some of the languages used in those inscriptions were last being used hundreds of years ago.”

Every warlock in Bhakashal is also a sage with a major and a minor field, and two special categories within their major field. The players don’t know this, but Bamal’s major field is Yalan and minor field is Supernatural and Unusual, and his area of specialization is Languages. The maze was created by Yalan hundreds of years ago, and they inscribed runes using a now dead language.

 

Xala Havalock – “What do the anchors do, keep the monsters there?”

Bamal sat back and laid the Defender on his lap –“No the monsters were the anchors, they kept the sword where it was”

Kohliss the Syne – “The sword wouldn’t go anywhere on its own, why anchor it?”

Xala Havalock – “Maybe the maze is to hold powerful magic items”

Bamal the Boastful – “Your Rakasta friend is closer”

Xala Havalock – “It’s not for the sword?”

Bamal the Boastful – “No, I don’t think it is.”

Ynir Freyil – “It’s a prison”

Bamal looked on with a raised eyebrow, “You are insightful for a mercenary”

Ynir Freyil cut a slice off of the fruit that the warlock had offered them – “I see things”

Bamal the Boastful – “I believe it is a prison, and I plan to use it as one, but I need more time to study it. Quin Faal’s ego is bruised, he wants me and that sword back. He has been dishonored by my theft, it shows him to be weak, doubly dishonored as I was a close ally, Faal’s judgement is called into question within his own House. By choosing to crew with me, you have made a mortal enemy.”

The PCs didn’t know this, but Bamal spent years as a navigator, so he frequently uses naval terminology.

 Xala Havalock – “I didn’t like him when I met him, he was too sure of himself”

Bamal the Boastful – “Spoken true, Faal does not hesitate, he found me fast enough.”

Bamal stood and placed the defender on the ground, picking up Umanon the Unyielding and swirling it about in a sideways “8” several times, then inspecting the blade.

Bamal the Boastful – “But not fast enough to keep me from stealing this!”

Bamal laughed.

Xala Havalock – “Why do you collect magic swords?”

Bamal smiled placing the sword back in its scabbard.

The giant spiders, black and glossy, bobbed silently by each of the PCs, they could jump a good distance, and were looking to be hungry. Four of the spiders stayed with him, but he dismissed the spiders “on” each of the PCs.

Bamal the Boastful – “They need to feed, they are rapacious carnivores, when they get back they will rejoin each of you, the week is not yet up, but this way they won’t be tempted to take a bite out of you”

Ynir Freyil laughed out loud, Xala and Kohliss the Syne did not.

Bamal the Boastful – “ We will talk about my swords later. For now, know this, if you send the ship back with a message to Faal it will buy us some more time, but eventually he will send others. I want him to leave me alone.”

Kohliss the Syne – “You have a problem, he wants his sword back”

Bamal the Boastful – “Mmmmm, yes, he does, so perhaps we need to distract him.”

Kohliss the Syne – “But what about his honor?”

Bamal the Boastful – “Aye, his honor burns for my capture, but other matters are just as important, if not more important, if we disturb his machinations elsewhere, he will eventually forget about me and direct his resources there.”

Unbeknownst to the PCs, Quin is the patron for another one of my groups. Bamal knows many of Quin’s plans, so two of the tasks Quin offered to the other group  (they turned them down) are going to be discussed with Bamal. Had they chosen a task that this party was told to disrupt, then the two different play groups would have met.

Kohliss the Syne – “What machinations are we to interrupt?”

Bamal the Boastful – ‘I know of two projects that would capture his attention, the first is a magical book he has been looking for. When one of his agents showed up with a lead on the book I took the message and sent him away, I have been sitting on the information since. Faal wants the book badly, you could find it first and deny it to him, it is located, I have been led to believe, on a small island several days from here.”

Bamal took a knife and sliced off some meat, throwing it to one of the spiders.

Bamal the Boastful – “Most of my spiders like fresh meat, but this one has developed a taste for cooked, anyone else interested in some?”

Kohliss the Syne and Xala shook their heads, Ynir Freyil reached out and took the food, her stomach growing in protest over several days of plain rations.

Bamal the Boastful - “The other task is back in the city. The day I stole the sword one of Faal’s agents, a warrior named Fon Jallor, was slain and carried off into the marshes by a marsh dragon while on a House hunt. Faal has been desperate to bring his body back before some ill-disposed necromancer finds it and extracts important information. He was so maddened when this happened that he had taken out the sword in anticipation of heading into the marshes himself to look for the body, while engaged with a temple priest I obtained it.”

Kohliss the Syne – “He wants you badly doesn’t he.”

Bamal the Boastful – “Right now, most definitely yes, but he will forget this insult over time as other more pressing concerns overtake him. Before I left the city I tasked a Slayer who owes me his life with the task of finding Jallor’s body, your task would be to go to that Slayer, Bosk Tughlarn, and retrieve Jallor’s body, assuming he has found it. Tughlarn will spread the news that the body has been found, and Faal will be beside himself.”

Xala Havalock – “You know a lot about his plans, no wonder he wants you back, stealing that sword has had a great cost.”

Bamal the Boastful – “Ignoring me and failing to support me will have a greater cost for Quin Faal the Iolite, I assure you.”

So, the party learned three things, that Bamal thought the maze was a prison and planned to use it  for that purpose, that Faal wanted a magical book located on a nearby island, and that one of his agents had been slain and Faal wanted him back.

They had several days to decide what to do as the ship that was going to take them back to the city was 4 days away, so they tabled this information for later. Bamal then told them that there were more immediate tasks to attend to. He wanted to keep this island as a permanent base for his use. He eventually wants to rejoin House Quannar (he hasn’t told them that yet), but this will become a retreat of his long term.

So, he wants to organize the island a bit. First, he told them they were to determine if the shocker and the firedrake were still on the island. Second, he wanted the hoar fox retrieved safely, he plans on offering it to the kobolds as a gift, along with forbidding the giants from harming the kobolds, he is hoping he can recruit them to help in defending the island. I also had him tell the PCs that they inspired him to make a pact with the kobolds rather than just ignoring them, in that they had allied with the kobolds and done so well. Finally, he wanted the carrion crawler slain as he cannot control it and it would slay too many of the other island denizens.

They decided to go after the carrion crawler first. Before they began to talk, Bamal sent out the giants to locate the crawler, by the time the conversation was finished the giants had found the beast on the far side of the island and were heading back.

At one point the PCs asked why the giants obeyed him.

Bamal replied, “There were three of them when I arrived here.”

LOL, badass.

They went on a carrion crawler hunt. They took their henchmen and four of the kobold hunters mounted on axebeak.

On the way there, the kobolds asked why the party hadn’t slain the giants as promised. That caught them off guard a bit, they had forgotten that they made the commitment. They decided to share that Bamal wanted a truce with them, and also wanted to work with them in the future. I rolled an encounter reaction to see how they would take that information, fortunately it was a low positive result (55%), so they decided to wait and see.

The giant pointed them in the right direction and they found the crawler in the marshy lands to the southwest of the island. Because they knew the location of the creature, they could approach carefully and enhanced their chances of achieving surprise, while lowering their odds of being surprised.

They were successful in obtaining surprise.

Kohliss has a pair of “buffing” spells that improve missile fire, Ammon Marr’s Projectile Extension and Ammon Marr’s Feathered Doom, she has only used one of them before, and this time she used both, casting them on the arrows shot by Ynir and all of the henchmen.

This proved decisive, as they hit the crawler with multiple arrows in the surprise round, along with sling stones from the kobolds. The aggregate damage was enough to put it down. They waited until it had stopped thrashing around, tied a rope to it’s tail, and dragged it back to the caves where Bamal lived. One of the giants lifted it’s tail and tied it to a tree so it’s body was hanging down.

Bamal emerged from the cave and walked over to the party. Xala spoke when he arrived,

“Fast and efficient, your new partners do not waste time.”

Kohliss had decided she wanted the head of this thing hacked off, in order to facilitate removing parts for use in potion/spell creation. She asked Ynir to do the deed with her bastard sword.

At this point I made an encounter reaction roll for Bamal, the party had completed their first task handily, and despite the fact they had giant spiders following them around everywhere, they seemed unphased. The roll with modifiers came up strongly positive.

Bamal took the Defender, which had been hanging on his belt, removed he scabbard and sword and threw them to Ynir.

Bamal the Boastful - “Let’s see how you manage a warlock’s sword”

Ref’s note: Warlocks in Bhakashal use magic swords, there are many that are made for them exclusively, a Defender is NOT one of those, but Bamal was essentially trash talking. Throwing her the sword was a test, would she turn against him as soon as she had it?

Ynir stepped up to the hanging crawler.

REF – “If you roll a critical, you decapitate the thing in one swing, otherwise it will take three solid blows to do so.”

She rolled a critical, and the head rolled away.

That was a badass moment. But then, what would she do with the sword?

Ynir wiped the sword on the nearby hill giant’s furs and put it back in the scabbard, throwing it back to Bamal.

They didn’t realize it, but doing things like this was improving the odds that Bamal would come to trust them with more responsibility and freedom. They were under a microscope right now, and the choices they made would determine whether Bamal would betray them.

Good stuff.

They then decided to take on the second task, retrieving the hoar fox. The kobolds were consulted about this, little happened on Siccai Island without them knowing. They went back to the kobold caves and one of the hunters told them that the fox had taken up residence on the north beach. It spent the mornings swimming, the afternoons hunting in the forest and sleeping, and the cool evenings running on the beach.

They decided to wait until evening and go to the beach, they took along some food. .

Kohliss had a polymorph self potion, she decided to use it and polymorph into a hoar fox and approach the creature. It was a clever plan, but there were complications. This fox had been trapped in the maze for years and hadn’t seen any of its kind for that long. There was no real way to know how it would react. It might be crazed, it might be aggressive. And no matter what she looked like, she would not have the mannerisms and reactions of a fox, let alone a magical fox.

I decided to roll to see how it would react.

When she first approached, I asked what she was going to do.

Kohliss the Syne – “I will approach, and as soon as it notices me I will stop and sit”

I rolled an initial reaction, it was neutral, confused.

REF – “It appears to be scoping  you out, what do you do?”

Kohliss the Syne – “I wait and maintain eye contact”

The hoar fox paced from side to side, watching Kohliss in her new form.

Kohliss – “After a few minutes if it doesn’t run away or attack I will inch forward then stop again”

She inched forward, I rolled another reaction, this time it was just positive.

REF – “The beast stays put”

Kohliss – “I  will turn and run around in a circle, then run back a few feet, to see if it follows”

I rolled again, and this time it followed, then stopped.

They continued this process for a while, slowly inching towards the forest where Ynir, Xala and two of the kobold hunters were waiting. When they were close enough Kohliss went to the other waiting party members and moved through the group to show the hoar fox that they were friendly.

The beast moved back and forth, slowly. Xala took out the food and threw it to the fox. It sniffed for a moment, then ate it with abandon.

Kohliss began to play with it again, and the two foxes played for another 20 minutes, running around and between the other party members and through the woods. She then decided that the potion would be wearing off soon, so she returned to the group.

This was the make-or-break roll, when she transformed back the hoar fox would either bolt, attack or accept it. This was another one of those, “who knows” situations, wolves run with werewolves for example, and hoar foxes are not regular animals, they have magical powers. How would it react?

That’s what the encounter reaction table is for. Fortunately for the party the roll was positive.

The fox followed them back to the kobold’s lair. Kohliss decided to stay there, having the kobolds feed the fox and take care of it, until it was willing to stay with them on its own. This took about 2 days, and when Kohliss returned to the party and Bamal she told them that the kobolds were willing to work with Bamal, and that the fox had already used its power to make ice for the hunters, to their great delight in this sizzing hot environment.

Mission accomplished. They returned to Bamal to report their success. In the ensuing conversation Bamal gave the Defender to Ynir, taking her sword so he would have one to wear around, reasoning that she would be better with it than him, and that she was willing to give it back the last time he gave it to her.

They were building trust.

We stopped there.

 

Observations

Embracing faction play was one of the smartest decisions I ever made as a referee. I date this back to the first time I ran Dwellers of the Forbidden City. That module is a master class in how factions can change a run of the mill dungeon into a living, interconnected environment. Ever since then, I map out the relationships between creatures in any environment I create, and those relationships inform how the NPCs / animals / monsters interact.

Turning on their patron was a bold move, but as a referee, how do you handle that? This is a variation on the classic, “what if the PCs don’t take your hook?”

Fortunately, this isn’t a problem in a factionalized setting. Members of the same Noble House turn on each other all the time, they form alliances within and outside of their House, and they work against each other. So, turning on your patron, though often unwise, isn’t unheard of.

The island was also factionalized, Bamal, typical of an arrogant Bhakashal warlock, had ignored the kobolds, but the party’s alliance and successes with the creatures made him realize the error of his ways. Slaying the crawler and giving the hoar fox to the kobolds as a gift are bog-standard factional moves, slay those you cannot manipulate and appeal to your potential allies.

The party was learning that there is a time to fight and a time to shore up alliances and take it on the chin. Powerful, important lessons in a factionalized setting.

It also shows up in the decisions made by NPCs. Wanting the hoar fox in order to cement an alliance with the kobolds was 100% something that would not have come up unless the environment was factionalized, but it produced an encounter that the players absolutely adored. Polymorphing into a hoar fox and role playing, trying to get the creature to become friendly, was super fun for the players, they were completely absorbed in the rolls and in trying to figure out how to react to get the fox to come on board. None of that would have likely happened unless there were factional concerns involved.

What neither the party nor Bamal know is that Quin Faal doesn’t fully trust them at the moment, this is their first mission for Faal, and he’s no man’s fool. There are a pair of warlocks heading to the island to arrive there the same time that the Wyvern (the ship that dropped them on Siccai Island) returns to pick them up. Ostensibly this was done in case the party was defeated or wounded on the island and needed help, but in actuality Faal doesn’t fully trust the party and sent the two, Bham Veen the Mercurial and Kanai Grith the Hessonite to check on them.

I’m very impressed with the PCs, they are doing something very risky and making good decisions while doing it, all the while they are leaning in to the factional aspects of the setting.

Hijinks await!