Building Bhakashal – Session Report - Domain Play

My Thursday group is knee deep in domain play mode, last session they executed a task to pay back a Lord from their House and head of one of the House factions, Umani the Onyx, who had voted in their favor and helped them gain full control of the newly united thieves guild. Umani wants to gain control of the trades guilds for House Quannar, and the guilds were up in arms about a pair of dragon turtles who have been attacking their ships coming in from the coast. The PCs agreed to deal with the dragon turtles as a favor to Umani. They were successful dealing with the dragon turtles, and they found their treasure hoard.

Treasure hoard’s for dragons are wild, they found huge amounts of coin (we rolled at the table for the contents of the hoard, and they scored big time on the coin). Unfortunately, the party warlock was strangled to death by a cursed magic rope. Fortunately, they managed to get his body back to the city where it was placed in the healing pools and restored to life.

Bhakashal nobility has its privileges.

They then set to spending some of their loot on various things.

The party Spider/Warlock (thief/magic-user) swapped spells with another warlock from the House, gaining the spell Morshoggoth’s Evasive Lanyard (this spell temporarily turns a regular rope into a rope of climbing).

The party warlock, recently revived, swapped spells with another warlock from the House, and gained Massmorph in return.

One of the party fighters had special arrows made with meteorite steel and adamantine arrowheads, burning through almost all of his share of the loot from the dragon turtle hoard.

This all took a week to sort out.

When they were lower-level PCs they had a patron, now they are patrons themselves. They have taken on a mid-level party and send them on assignments. They had sent out their party 3 weeks ago to try and secure some green dragon eggs. When they send out the party, I total the HD/levels of all their foes, adjusting for special abilities and advantages, and I total up the levels of their party, create a ratio, and roll to see if they were successful or not.

As it happens, they were not successful and lost 2 party members in the attempt. They returned at the end of the week of activity by the PCs to report on successfully finding the dragons and learning about their lair, but failing to capture the eggs. The PCs gave them all a small stipend for their limited success, then recruited two new members and sent them back out again. Deciding on tasks for their party, celebrating their wins and lamenting their losses has become a source of endless entertainment for the players.

At this point they were at loose ends, the thieves guild was recently reunited under their watch and authority, they installed their chosen leader as the new Red Arachne and put down an attempted coup. The day-to-day operation of the guild was the Arachne’s purview, they were mainly interested when they needed the guild to do something for them, or when there were problems that the Arachne wanted to hand off to them.

To simulate this process, I roll every session to see if a problem has “come up the ranks” to them, and this session one did. Bhakashal has a system for generating tasks for patrons and other high-level nobles, I used this system to generate a “problem” for the guild that the PCs were asked to solve. Villages in the marshlands hunt, fish and farm, but a select few of them also harvest monsters for some product they can produce. Three villages in House Westrill territory (Kacin, Russwood and Muga), have figured out a way to crystallize the venom from water spiders. They have village slayers who capture and breed the water spiders, and there are artisans who collect the venom and crystalize it. This crystalized venom is made into small, marble sized spheres that can be used as a material component in a Laysinath’s Globe of Respite spell (Bhakashal’s version of Leomund’s Tiny Hut). With this special crystalized venom sphere, the spell lasts twice as long and protects against insects as well as giving environmental protection.

The villagers have been selling these small spheres to select clientele in the city, word finally got around to the thieves guild, and the Red Arachne decided they wanted to corner the market, becoming the exclusive client of the villages, and reselling the spheres (at a hefty profit) to city warlocks who would want the spell for use when travelling in the infernally hot and bug-infested Bhakashal marshlands, and those who would cast it for their wealthy masters.

What the party does not know is that a warlock from another House, Teeshaka Onos of House Ain, has approached the villages, hoping to get their House exclusive access to these spheres.

The party decided they would go to the villages and negotiate on behalf of the guild in person, rather than relying on proxies, and without letting their House affiliation be known to the villagers.

Before they went they spent some time deciding on what sort of deal to set up with the locals. They discussed how much they could sell the crystals for, and how much they would pay the locals for them. They discussed distribution, and whether or not they would place any guild interests at these villages for protection. The villages were also in a rival House’s territories, so they discussed how to handle that, and whether or not they wanted to try to, “flip the territory” for House Quannar from House Westrill, knowing it could create a rift between the Houses, and a new rival.

The discussions have changed in domain play, but the passion and enthusiasm have not.

The trip there was 2 days, primarily by boat then a short trip across the marshlands.

In any given session there can be events related to past actions by the party. Case in point, in taking over control of both branches of the Brass Blade Thieves guild, the party had taken control from Riyan the Raze, a faction leader at their house. Riyan was now out to get the party, but too canny to confront them directly. Instead, she has tasked one of her allies in the House, a powerful wind Gyre named Ghanglor Terrik, to teach them a lesson. Terrik will be showing up at some point with an air elemental under his command to cause some chaos.

I rolled at the beginning of the session to see if Ghanglor would be showing up or not, in this case he was a no-show, but eventually the roll will cash out and he will show up, potentially at a very inconvenient time…

The set out in the early morning, when passing through House Klis territory in the afternoon during the downpour from an intense summer storm, they met a House marshland patrol, fortunately House Klis is an allied House, so they showed their colors and passed without incident. They had another encounter on day two with a hunting party from House Destwiller, but Destwiller was neither a listed ally or enemy of their House, and the House alignments were not conflicting, so the reaction roll was unmodified and came up high enough that they passed without incident after a brief discussion asking the hunters about dangerous creatures in the area.

They managed to find the village of Russwood and entered, asking to speak to the village elders on behalf of the Brass Blade Guild. The “official” cover for the thieves guild is that they are a trading guild, though some know the truth.

The village was primarily populated by Jugyi (turtle people), and one of the party was also a Jugyi, so he did the negotiating. Unfortunately, that was when they found out that someone had already approached the villages asking for an exclusive deal. They spent some time discussing the situation, until the village elders decided that they would invite the other party to a meeting, and both sides could state their case.

In past years the party might have tried to force the issue with threats of violence, or plan to ambush the other interested party when they arrived. Time and some gaming wisdom, combined with a  new focus on domain play, has smartened them up. They know they are powerful, but now using power threatens to draw the attention of rival factions and even rivals within their faction. Alliances are proving more useful. I was proud of them.

That’s when we broke for the day.

So far Bhakashal domain play is running like a top, generating tasks is easy, either entirely new tasks or events related to their various inter and intra factional rivalries. There are NPCs within the House that want to challenge their authority and pay them back for decisions that don’t align with their interests, there are NPCs at rival Houses and other factions that work against them. There are also allies within the House, both temporary and more involved that are willing to work with them to reach mutual goals. The setting, combined with the actions of the PCs, does most of the work, I just have to keep track of what’s going on, roll dice, and see how it unfolds.

Big fun