Building Bhakashal - Session Report

My Thursday group had a fun session this week. Bhakashal has rules for generating ships and crew so you can have naval battles. Most ships have a spellcaster in the crew, something that makes it even more interesting. A former group spent 8 months traveling across the globe on a ship having adventures, and I ran a solo-campaign for a friend who played a warlock who signed on as a ship’s magician and spent his adventuring time protecting them from pirates and monsters.

My Thursday group are Bhakashal nobility, this means they can send out underlings to deal with many of their problems. They are also now in charge of the Bhakashal Brass Blade Spider’s Guild (Thieves guild), and they are balancing running the guild and operating in the House.

The guild supports raiders that attack incoming merchant ships that don’t pay their guild dues, and recently one of their raider groups has been getting pushback from marshland patrols in House Tairn territory. The PCs decided to address this issue in person, instead of sending underlings.

But rather than all of them going, they split up. The party fighter stayed back in the city training his new pet baby wyvern, while the party’s newest member, a conjuror, stayed back to train his new mount, a Kestram (giant bird). This left the party warlock, spider/warlock and Spartan (monk). They traveled to meet the raiders at their camp, and after some discussion the party Spartan decided to accompany them on their next raid so he could sort out the patrols that were harassing them. For some reason, they decided that sending out one party member was the best course of action, and the other two party members stayed behind at the raider’s camp.

The raiders hid in a cove along the Sklar River and the Spartan swam out to meet the oncoming ship and the two barges with House Tairn patrols accompanying it. Last session the Spartan climbed on to one of the barges and slayed two guards, but the leader of the patrol gave as good as he got, and the Spartan fled back into the water.

This session we picked up from there.

The Spartan went to the raider ship, and they set out in pursuit of the merchant ship. The leader of the raiders is a Bhakashal Thaumaturge named Thurva Theyliss, thaumaturges are thief/magic-users who only use scroll spells. Their ship is called the Domino, a small galley, with a red flag of a Black malu head with Red domino mask.

When the emerged from the cove and began pursuit Thurva cast a Phantasmal Force spell and created the illusion of a wall of thick mist between the ships. That wall of mist moved with the Domino and began to overtake the merchant ship.

Thinking this was odd, the spellcaster aboard the merchant ship, the Astrolabe, a rakasta named Willen Smokil the Onyx, smelled trouble, and cast a Mokuul the Mighty’s Monstrous Conjuration spell (Bhakashal’s version of Monster Summoning), obtaining a snapping turtle (a L sized creature). He sent that turtle into the mists to see what was there. Thurva could see the turtle approaching (her crew could not, illusions work like that in Bhakashal), so she decided to deal with the turtle before it damaged her ship.

She took out a scroll and cast the reverse of Stone to Flesh on the giant turtle. The creature failed its save, turned to stone, and sank immediately to the bottom of the river. She then dismissed the illusion, revealing her ship, so her crew could see the merchant ship.

The players thought that was pretty awesome.

At that point the Warlock on the merchant ship realized that they were dealing with another spell caster and cast Globe of Invulnerability on himself. 

I did some quick distance measurements to determine the separation between the ships, and we were off! Initiative was rolled, and the chaos began.

First off were the crossbowmen on the two ships and the two barges. The shots were made from Long range, so the full -5 penalty applied. Most of the shooters were 0-levels, with a mix of mid-level and a small group of high-level fighters.

The fighters from the first House Tairn barge fired off a volley of bolts at the Domino and managed to slay two crewmembers. The crossbowmen from the second House Tairn barge fired and slayed 2 more. The Domino crew returned fire, slaying 3 members of the merchant ship crew. However, their crossbows fired as the warlock on Barge 1 cast Ammon Marr’s Missile Inversion and snatched 7 bolts from the air and returned them to their source, slaying 3 more of the crew on the Domino.

 At this point the warlock on Barge 2 caster cast Magic Missile at Thurva, the players were sure this would be her demise, Warlocks (and Thaumaturges), don’t have the best HP, and Magic Missiles never miss. What they didn’t know was that Thurva had Fregoth’s Rapier at her side:

Fregoth’s Rapier (AR) This thin, razor-sharp blade comes with an elaborate filigree cage hilt encrusted with emerald slivers. It is a +1 weapon with the damage profile of a short sword and a weapon speed of 3. When wielded by an arcane caster it is a +3 weapon, with the damage profile of a longsword and a weapon speed of 2. It also acts as a magnet for Magic Missiles, drawing them in when shot at the wielder. The sword can attract up to the wielder’s level in Magic Missiles per day.

 I tend to make a big deal out of describing spells when they are cast, it adds to the flavor of the game,

“One of the House Tairn patrol warlocks, a stern Chitin named Chilonder Bix, touched his finger to his forehead and pulled out a long, glowing chain of magic missiles, he pulled back the chain and then whipped it forward, the missiles separated from the insubstantial chain and whistled through the air, corkscrewing along in the darkness, their bright crimson glow making them look like embers from a fire blown by the wind. As they approached Thurva they suddenly deviated from their path and struck the blade of her sword, now in hand, there was a sound like crystal smashing, and a brief shudder along the length of the blade. The raider’s leader smiled and winked at Bix in the distance.”

The players LOVED that. One of the nice things about Bhakashal is that it is jam packed with magic items they have never heard of, so when something like this comes up they are genuinely surprised and impressed.

 

We stopped there, and will resume the fight next session. The fighter and conjuror will be arriving on the back of the Kestram on the next day, so they will likely miss most of the fight. The warlock and spider/warlock may or may not appear during the fight, at the moment they are sitting it out.

Adventure awaits!