Building Bhakashal – Session Report – New Players

I have been running a game for a new group of players, the first two session reports are here:

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

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

Their first session had them arrive on an island in search of a warlock, Bamal the Boastful, who had stolen a magic sword from his employer, a Bhakashal warlock and patron named Quin Faal the Iolite. At the end of that session the party had met a group of kobold hunters who lived on the island and befriended them, then they went searching for the warlock. Near the end of the first session they had a harrowing encounter with a Killinth plant, the plant almost consumed the party thief, but fortunately the party fighter managed to finish it off handily with her bastard sword. The next session saw them exploring an underground maze and releasing its inhabitants on to the island (unintentionally of course…)

Last night’s session had them meeting up with the kobolds again.

As an aside, I have run this adventure many times, it’s my default one shot adventure I use to introduce people to the setting, its short but can last longer depending on how it is played, and it is self contained (an island) which simplifies things a bit. It is interesting to note which groups befriend or at least parlay with the kobolds, which groups ignore them, and which groups attack them. In pretty much every case, the group who ignore or attack the kobolds do badly, the groups that befriend them do well.

Make of that what you will.

Because the kobolds saw them kill the shadows and save their hunters, they were welcomed with open arms and invited to join the kobolds for food. That led to some conversation about the island, and questions about the short bald man. The kobolds were sure that the giants had killed and eaten him, as they hadn’t seen the warlock for weeks. That got them talking about the giants.

The kobolds didn’t like the giants, they periodically ate kobolds or axe beaks, and they harassed anyone who came to the island. The players were already starting to show that they understood how to leverage their resources in the game. One of them pointed out that the kobolds might be willing to help them if they agreed to get rid of the giants for them.

That’s the stuff.

The players proposed exactly that, and I rolled an encounter reaction, it was cautiously positive, so they agreed to lend the PCs a few of their hunters as long as they agreed to finish off the giants. Further conversation revealed that the giants were most often sleeping during the heat of the day, so midday was the best time to go to the giants if they wanted to catch them unawares.

So, that day at noon they set out on axebeaks and giant boars towards the east end of the island and the giant’s caves.

I told them that since they were traveling with the kobolds, their odds of encountering a monster/animal on the way were reduced from 1 in 12 to 1 in 20, as the kobolds knew the island extremely well, and the odds of encountering deadly killinth plants was zero, as the kobolds knew where they were.

They learned another lesson, speak to a hunter/guide or someone familiar with an area and you can adjust your odds of an encounter downwards.

They approached the giant caves through the forest, and when they arrived at the forest’s edge I rolled to see if the giants were up or not. There were 5 in 6 odds they were sleeping it off, 1 in 6 they were up.

I rolled a 1.

The two giants were outside the cave in the merciless mid-day heat.

As the ref, I had to figure out why there were there. It is instructive to see how you can do this sort of thing by essentially creating a chain of connected events/actions.

I have run this particular island adventure dozens of times, and to keep from getting bored with it I randomize some things. In particular whether or not Bamal the Boastful is alive or not. Sometimes he is dead, having been slain by the giants, sometimes he’s alive, having made a pact with the giants (whether through force or spell).

I rolled at the beginning of the session to see, and Bhamal was alive. I decided that, in addition to being on the run, he was on the island to investigate the maze. The maze features four creatures, a carrion crawler, a hoar fox, a firedrake and a shocker. Each are imprisoned in a room in the maze, when anyone enters those rooms the creatures attack the intruder. But the real purpose of those monsters is their essences, fire, ice, lightning and paralysis. Balancing these four essences binds the shadow at the heart of the maze, and the shadow conceals a powerful magic sword.

Bhamal wants the sword, as he is collecting powerful magic swords, the one he stole from Quin Faal and the party is here to retrieve and the one in the maze are just the latest. He plans on making a gift of 6 powerful magic swords to a Type V demon named Ukimmar (type V demons have 6 arms) in order to form a pact with the demon.

He has been studying the maze and trying to figure out how to extract the sword but leave the maze intact, as he suspects it serves another purpose based on his study of the runes and sigils therin.

The party knows none of this, and at this stage he doesn’t know they broke the maze, released the monsters, and have the sword he is looking for.

I decided that Bamal has a crystal ball. He scrys the surrounding oceans periodically and if he views ships coming by he sends the giants to the beach to lob rocks at the ships. The giants think this is to sink ships so they can loot them, but in actuality it is to scare them off and for the sailors to report to others that the island is dangerous and to be avoided.

Bamal doesn’t want to be interrupted in his work, nor for Quin Faal to find him.

So that got me to explaining why the giants, who the kobolds said were most often sleeping during the hot daytime, were out of the cave. I decided that Bamal had sent them out and they were heading to the beach to lob rocks at a passing ship.

 

Each giant picked up a large bag of rocks and marched to the forest towards the beach. The party saw them walk away and looked at each other, what to do now?

A quick conference produced the following plan (remember that the don’t know if Bamal is alive or dead):

-            The magic user would send her familiar to follow the giants and see what they were up to, she, her giant boar mount, her henchman and one of the kobold hunters would wait at the forest edge. In Bhakashal a magic-user can see through the eyes of their familiar.

-            The party fighter headed into the forest opposite to the magic-user, climbed a tree and waited with her bow by what appeared to be an animal run to hopefully bag a deer or a wild boar, she wanted to offer the giants food and try and either trick them or at least buy them off.

-            The party thief, along with one of the kobolds, headed up to the giant’s cave to check it out while they were gone.

The thief and kobold entered the cave, however, Bamal was IN THE CAVE. The giants occupied the vast back area of the cave, Bamal had a corner of his own near the front where he stored his tomes and did his work on translating the runes in the maze and figuring out how it worked.

First I rolled to see if the party made enough noise on the way in to alert Bamal to their approach before they entered the cave. In Bhakashal anyone can sneak, but depending on how you are dressed (e.g., if  you have heavy armor on) there are modifiers. Base odds are 2 in 6. Every PC rolls these odds to try and sneak up on someone. A thief, however, is better at sneaking, so if their 2 in 6 roll fails, they can roll their appropriate thieving percentage, in this case move silently.

Both made their rolls, so when they entered the cave it was a straight up surprise roll to see if either side was surprised. The party was expecting the cave to be empty. We rolled and Bamal was not surprised, but the party was.

So they entered the cave and saw the short bald man.

There was much shrieking at that point.

However, he got one free action against them due to surprise.  

I rolled to see what his reaction would be. He obviously doesn’t get many visitors, but the thief had specifically said she was not going to have her weapon in hand, and the kobold is native to the island.

I’m a firm believer that nothing is “obvious”, just because intruders show up at your doorstep doesn’t mean you instantly fireball them into oblivion. Bhakashal uses the encounter reaction table with modifiers. So you can certainly put a strong negative modifier so fireballing you into oblivion is a more likely option, but it is never certain.

I believe in this for three reasons, one, all of the best fantasy and sci-fi stories I have read have scenes exactly like this, where the “bad guy” doesn’t just attack for some, often esoteric reason, it’s virtually a trope, and I have always liked it.

Secondly, it keeps things opaque to me as well as the players, I like to be surprised.

Thirdly, it can often lead to interesting results.

In this case I rolled a mild negative interaction, which in game terms meant that he wasn’t  going to attack, but he wasn’t going to sit there and let them attack him either.

Bamal spoke one word an a pair of giant spiders scurried around from the shadows, these are size L spiders but the party hadn’t noticed them in the split second since they entered the cave. The two spiders scuttled over to the PC and the kobold, stopping a few feet away and bobbing up and down, ready to leap.

Bamal - “No sudden moves, they are easily upset, fairly hungry, and carnivores”

The party stayed still.

Bamal - “I don’t get a lot of visitors, why are you here?”

Thief – “We are exploring the island”

Bamal – “We?”

The thief smiled.

Bamal – “This island is fairly isolated, few come here to ‘explore’, mostly sailors who stop to find fresh water or game, are you a sailor?”

Thief – “Not exactly”

The thief was not being aggressive, she was at a disadvantage, and the story about exploring the island wasn’t that unusual, adventurers are known to explore remote locations. But Bamal also knew he was a wanted man, and was expecting that at some point Quin Faal would send people to find him.

Bamal – “Did Quin Faal send you; I was wondering when he would find me.”

At this point the players burst into discussion about what to do, be honest with the guy, lie like crazy, or bolt.

They decided to lie.

Thief – “We are just explorers, the island looked interesting.”

Bamal – “Did you arrive today?”

Thief – “Yes”

Bamal – “There is a ship passing by today, but it hasn’t arrived yet, I’m positive there aren’t two ships passing by today, which means you are lying”

Bamal isn’t stupid, and ships don’t pass by that often, he scried one on the way earlier today, that’s why he sent the giants to the beach. But he knows it hasn’t passed by yet, so the party was lying to him. At this point the thief was panicking, she had been caught in a lie and was at the mercy of a warlock with no reason to keep her alive.

Delicious

Thief –“Alright, I’ll level with you, we were sent to find you, but not to slay you, just to bring you back with the sword you stole.”

Bamal – “Quin Faal wants me alive, how quaint”

Thief – “We can just leave”

Time for an encounter reaction roll, every time the conversation leads to a potential decision point for the NPC, I call for one. This one was mildly positive. I had to now interpret that, why in the world would Bamal be positive towards agents sent to retrieve him?

Bamal – “Oh no, you can stay. The only conversation I get around here is from those two giants, and they are as dumb as a bags full of rocks that they carry.”

Bamal was a bit lonely, being on this island for months was enough for that. He wanted conversation and news of the world outside. For that he was willing to let the party live… for now.

Thief – “Why are you here?”

Bamal – “in part to hide from Quin Faal, but also to explore an underground maze on the island, I hope to discover how it works and extract something from it”

Thief – “Ummmm, er, ahhhh, yeah, we released the shadow from the maze and the monsters inside fled.”

At this point I needed to determine how Bamal would react. His goal was to retrieve the sword in the maze without disturbing the overall maze ecology, as he suspected the maze served a greater purpose. The party had disturbed all that. So, there was a LARGE negative modifier to the roll.

I rolled, and the result came up as negative but not actionable, I decided he was angry, but he also wanted the sword, and if he slayed the thief on the spot there was no guarantee he would find it.

Bamal – “YOU RELEASED THE SHADOW! I have spent months studying that maze, MONTHS, and you have undone my work in a day. WHERE IS MY SWORD?”

Thief – “My companion has it, outside”

Bamal – “We will go outside together and retrieve it, immediately.”

The thief nodded and turned to leave, and Bamal following after summoning forth two further spiders from the shadows and having them surround him as he walked.

The thief made it out of the cave before Bamal did and had a few seconds before he emerged from the cave. She frantically waved at the magic user and indicated for her to flee.

She cast Dimension Door and transported herself to the forest before Bamal emerged.

However, her mount, one of her bodyguards, and the kobold were still there.

Bamal came out of the cave and saw them by the forest edge, he stood outside the cave and took out a wand, holding it in his hand.

Bamal – “Retrieve my sword immediately”

The thief went to the other side of the clearing and entered the forest to find the party fighter, she caught her up, and got her, reluctantly, to agree to giving up the sword.

It’s a +4 Defender, she’s not keen to give it up.

They emerged, and Bamal watched them like a hawk. She and the fighter arrived and they presented the sheathed sword, handle first, to the warlock.

He took it and stared at them intently. The players had a quick conference between the three of them.

And then the party thief did something I didn’t expect.

Thief - “Quin Faal sent us here, but we are not his allies, this is just a job. We would be willing to work for you instead.”

Oh my, betrayal! Of a Bhakashal Warlock and patron no less! The point of this job was to impress Quin Faal so he would take them on as their patron, instead they were throwing him over for Bamal the Boastful.

In the last five years of patron driven faction play I have only had this happen once.

And now twice.

Thief – “Come over to us, we have decided to join Bamal”

The party magic-user emerged from the woods and walked to the group.

As always, when something like this happens, I roll for it. The party had been non-aggressive, they gave up the sword, and they revealed their hidden party member. On the other hand, they did come here to kidnap him and steal back the sword.

The roll came up enthusiastically positive.

I decided on the spot that Bamal realized that slaying the party members would not put off Quin Faal, so he needed to buy time.

Bamal – “When does Quin Faal expect you back?”

Thief – “the ship returns in four days to pick us up”

Bamal – “You will send a message back to Quin Faal, tell him to have another ship stop here in approximately two weeks, as you discovered an underground complex, fairly extensive, and you haven’t been able to find me yet. That gives us two weeks and four days without being disturbed, so I can plan my next move.”

The warlock then turned to the spiders, he spoke to each in a tongue none of the party members had ever heard before, then pointed to each party member in turn. One by one the spiders moved towards each party member, bobbing beside them and clicking their mandibles.

Bamal - “Each one of you will have one of my spiders beside you AT ALL TIMES until I am comfortable you are to be trusted.  I can also scry you at a whim to see what you are doing if you are not in my presence.”

He then reached into his robes and took out a horn and blew two short blasts on it.

Bamal – “the giants will return shortly, I will tell them to let you be, but they are remarkably stupid, so your best bet is to interact with them not at all.”

We stopped there.

 

Observations

I have run this scenario many times, sometimes Bamal is alive, sometimes he is dead, but this is the first time the party has found him alive and betrayed their patron to join up with him. I’m always fascinated by this sort of thing, Quin Faal is a powerful high-level Bhakashal warlock, crossing him earns you an instant, deadly enemy.

Why?

Who knows, but this will mean that, going forward, things will be fun!

Bamal is not a patron, he is a high-level warlock, he may be contemplating coming back to the city and becoming part of a Noble House, he may want to slay Quin Faal, dishonor him, or something else entirely. I will muse on that. I will also muse on how the kobolds will take all of this, they were expecting the party to take out the giants.

The players had a blast, this was not what they expected either! I love that everyone at the table was surprised by how this turned out. It may be some time before we return to the city, and I’m excited to see where this goes.

I got my second surprise of the night when the players told me that they wanted me to stay on as their regular referee and continue to run games for them. This was supposed to be a 6-session gig, and then I would be done.

Naturally I said yes.

I now have a fourth regular game to run, one home game and three others.

Right on.

 

 

 

 

Building Bhakashal – Session Report - Factional Play

My current home game is meeting about once a month, we played last night.

The campaign branched off from an earlier one that had my son, his friends and their dads. The kids dropped out when school started as they have hit an age when playing D&D with your dad isn’t as cool as going out with your friends.

But the dads wanted to keep playing.

When they started off on their own I initiated the campaign with a task for their patron, Kamerli the Ivory. Kamerli had an associate, Bhomar the Bronze, who had a tower in the marshlands. Kamerli hadn’t heard from his associate for a time, and he sent the PCs to investigate.

The resulting sessions have been a case study in how in Bhakashal, a factionalized sandbox style setting, once you seed the game with an adventure, grows entirely on it’s own. I don’t have to do anything but react to the PC’s actions, there is no need for me to map out long term goals or some “overarching narrative”, the back and forth between the game world and the PCs drives it all.

This session was a perfect example of the joys of factionalized play.

The full details of how they got to today’s session are available in previous blog posts:

Session 1 - https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/06/

Session 2 - https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/08/bhakashal-session-report-my-after.html

Session 3 – https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/09/building-bhakashal-home-game-session-3.html

In summary, they went to Bhomar’s tower and found out that he had been petrified by a basilisk, after that, bandits took over his tower and were using it as a base to raid caravans passing through the area. That was the “hook”. However, rather than having them just be random bandits, I used the Bhakashal setting details to situate their actions. Bhakashal is a factionalized setting, so you can either have completely random encounters without any connection to the larger game world, or you can connect these encounters up to factional rivalries. When you do so the resulting sessions are rich and rewarding as they are fully embedded in the game world.

So I decided the bandits were there as two Bhakashal nobles, Mitrax Toma the Bold and Calligaster Naukan, both of House Omander, had hired them to raid caravans in the area.

Why would they want that?

The marshlands around Bhakashal are the former territory of an evil empire, filled with demon worshipping sorcerers and foul priests of death cults. That nation collapsed years ago, but the marshlands are filled with ruined temples, old warlock towers and areas of foul, corrupt power.

In Bhakashal, the various Noble Houses have territories in the marshlands. They are responsible for patrolling and protecting these territories from monsters and the depredations of bandits and raiders. In exchange for this protection, the Houses get first refusal on any items or areas of power found in the marshlands. The locals don’t want this sort of magic, they believe it to be inherently dangerous (and they are right!), so they are generally willing to let the Houses have what they find as long as they fulfill their end of the bargain.

However, this is not an asymmetric relationship, the Houses cannot occupy land or otherwise displace or harm anyone in the marshlands, and they cannot build settlements of any kind. The villagers have the power of the marshland Saan black dragon riders behind them, and are a faction of their own, equal in power and treated with respect by the city factions.

There was a site near one of the marshland villages in a House Rostus territory, that site was the location of a former death cult temple that had crumbled to dust hundreds of years ago. Hundreds of sacrifices were made there, and foul, evil acts committed. As a result, the area is cursed, and a source of significant necromantic power. The locals avoid it, but Calligaster Naukan wants access to it as he wants to build a temple there and harness it’s power, while building a personal army of skeletons from all of the dead to use against his enemies.

As this area was in House Rostus territory, the first step to doing this was to keep House Rostus from discovering the area and laying claim to it, for whatever purpose they chose. They might want to purify the area, to harness it’s power, there are many options. Calligaster didn’t want that, so he and Mitrax hired the bandits to raid in the area to dishonor House Rostus in the eyes of the local villagers. The bandits taking over the warlock’s tower was a coincidence, but it drew the attention of the party’s patron, Kamerli the Ivory, and thus drew the party into the web.

Naukan has been in negotiations with the Spellbinder from the nearby Yalan village of Golta, Jijam the Harrow. Spellbinders are Bhakashal shamans, they gain their power by speaking to the dead and asking spirits for favors. Naukan won’t take what he wants by force, even someone with his nefarious goals won’t break the ancient covenant between the city and the marshland villages. Jijam is reluctant, he speaks to the spirits of the marshlands, and they have told him that the area is evil, and that nothing good will come of harnessing its power. Naukan has been wooing Jijam for months now, trying to convince him to get the villagers to agree to him building a temple there.

So, our first session had the party finding the bandits in Bhomar’s tower, routing them, and getting the bandit’s Thaumaturge, Maglane the Malachite, to turn against them. They found out that the bandits were being paid by Mitrax Toma the Bold to raid in the area, but they didn’t know why. Mitrax and Calligaster are allies, but at this point they didn’t know of Calligaster’s involvement.

When the party reported this to their patron, he wanted to know why Mitrax was doing this, the area was House Rostus territory, Mitrax was from House Omander.

Something was afoot, and the party had stumbled on to it.

The next session had them finding the routed bandits in the city and recruiting them (they had failed Mitrax and were looking for new patrons).

The party and Kamerli conferred and decided to rattle Mitrax’s cage a bit, to force his hand, to do this they would try and kidnap him. In Bhakashal kidnappings are honor crimes, the target is NEVER harmed, that would be the height of dishonor, harming a bound captive, but they do get generous ransoms, and the victim is dishonored, which leads to their isolation and a loss of power.

They successfully ambushed Mitrax in transit, he wasn’t forthcoming with any information, but he generated a healthy ransom to Kamerli. They figured this would force him to move before he was ready and reveal his hand, as well as his allies. In this case, Calligaster Naukan paid the ransom, revealing to Kamerli that they were allies. This wasn’t necessarily a secret, all in House Omander knew of their alliance, and a few outside knew as well. But this cemented it.

Knowing this, the party and Kamerli conferred and decided the best way forward would be to go after Calligaster next, but not directly. Calligaster had an apprentice, a 6^th level Necromancer named Pholl the Gaunt. They asked around about Pholl and bribed a local hunter to find out that Pholl was making forays into the marshlands regularly, going to sites of former battles so he could animate the dead from the swampy ground.

They followed Pholl to one of these sites, the necromancer took along a black dragon, Haekomarl, who was indebted to Calligaster and served him. The party confronted Pholl in session 2, took out a number of his guards, and managed to turn the dragon against him. The dragon slayed Pholl, and in exchange the party agreed to slay Calligaster, ending the debt between necromancer and dragon, and freeing him.

The party used Speak with the Dead to gain further information from Pholl, specifically,

“Calligaster wished to dishonor House Rostus so the village of Golta would refuse their protection, denying them access to their territories.”

So after the last session they knew who was behind the bandits, and what the bandit raids were supposed to do, discredit House Rostus to keep them out of the area.

So what was in the area, and why were Calligaster and Mitrax interested in it?

That all gets us to last night’s session.

The party did not destroy Pholl’s body, they left it behind to rot in the swamp. Unfortunately this meant that Calligaster, after Pholl was a few days late reporting back, would have sent operatives to find him, and would retrieve his body and use his necromantic powers to communicate with the slain apprentice and find out about the party’s involvement. As a result, I rolled every day thereafter that Naukan would send something, an assassin, a monster, etc,, after the party. I rolled a 1 in 30 chance on day 1, then 1 in 20, then 1 in 12, etc.

They decided next task was to figure out why they wanted access to that area.

Their first step was to go to a sage that knew something about the area. They found a Chitin (insect-folk) sage named Yeehl Bantag Lon, an expert in Yalan history, to determine what was important about the territories around the Yalan village. The rolls came up and they hit paydirt.

They found out that worshippers of the death god Evok had committed atrocities in their temple there centuries ago, and that this was now a cursed area of great necromantic power.

They decided to go to the village and see what they could do there.

It was a two day journey to the Cairan forest where the village was located. They travelled on the road to get there, the weather was challenging on the second day of travel, during heavy rain surprise odds change, high winds impact missile weapons, and heavy rain at night impacts viewing distances. Fortunately no encounters happened during the storms.

When they reached the forest and approached the village they were challenged on the way in, they identified their House, and I made a reaction roll that came up negative. A negative roll has to be interpreted, I decided it was that the party identified as House Quannar forces, but the soldiers that travelled with the party (the former bandits) did not wear house colours.

The party thought quickly on their feet and said that these were “personal mercenaries” and that they were not flying House colours as they were there on clandestine business.

It was the perfect in setting explanation, so I gave them a bonus on the next reaction roll, and produced some knowing laughs (complete with hisses) from the Yalan guards. They were led in. My players are now familiar enough with the setting to be making good calls like this.

They asked to speak to the village Spellbinder, they identified their patron and their House. This was a gutsy call. The Spellbinder was initially reluctant, House Quannar (their House) was aligned with House Rostus, and the villagers didn’t like House Rostus because they had been unable to stop the Bandit raids.

They told Jijam that Calligaster was interested in the area near the village as it had necromantic power, and that it would be a threat to the village.

Much to their surprise they were told by Jijam that he had met with Calligaster many times, was aware of what he wanted, and that so far he had refused to persuade the villagers to cooperate with Naukan. This was a learning moment, they expected the Spellbinder to be a simplistic marshland villager, but he was instead smart and savvy, and focused on protecting his people and the villages in the area.

Calligaster had claimed that he had sent in “personal troops” to dissuade the bandits from attacking the villages, so they were overall neutral towards the necromancer. Now that the party revealed this new information, they were hoping to sway Jijam the Harrow to their side.

Jijam was hesitant, something that surprised the party, but then they made a bold move. Bhakashal is an honor based, martial setting, bold moves get you respect, or lead to your downfall. In this case the party fighter suggested bringing in the bandit leader, Rojmi Yin, who was now working with them.

Bringing in the bandit leader that had been harassing people in the area was audacious, it could have infuriated the Spellbinder.

I made a reaction roll to see what would happen, and it was strongly positive.

Their boldness was appreciated, being honest about their alliances, and showing that their source of information was genuine, won him over. Jijam now knew that Calligaster was playing him, and he sided with the party and their patron.

This is how factional forces shape the game at the table.

In return for their information, Jijam told the party that Calligaster visited the cursed area in the forest on gibbous and full moons, Jijam had consented to this as long as the necromancer did not disturb the dead there while he visited.

They spent the night in the village then returned to the city and their patron to convey what they had learned. As Bhakashal is a factional environment, the discussion with the patron was an opportunity for me to pull back the curtain a bit. Surprisingly to the party, Kamerli revealed that he wanted access to the cursed area for himself, for a number of reasons:

-            to have it cleansed by powerful priests from the temple of Vekka (the temple associated with House Quannar)

-            to use Speak with the Dead to gain important information from the hundreds slain there, the knowledge possessed by the dead from the long-lost nation that lay beneath the soil of the marshlands was a direct conduit to items of power of interest to Kamerli’s House

-            to cede interest in the area to his allies in House Rostus (Lord Kammershorn and Warlock Tairnay the Sphene) now that the village was aware of what was going on and likely willing to work with House Rostus again, this would cement his alliance with them and indebt them to him

-            to share his knowledge with house Omander, there are some in that House who are rivals to Calligaster and Mitrax, and this would indebt them to Kamerli

In short, the party had brought their patron key information that would give him advantages in the fractious factional environment. The party has been successful in their last two tasks, so Kamerli discussed with them about next steps. They came up with three options, to try and take Calligaster by surprise in his tower, to go to House Rostus with information and get help from them or go to the village and wait for Calligaster to come to the cursed area.

They were leaning towards the last option, and the party Seer (priest) decided to cast Augury and ask if they should wait for Calligaster in the village or not.

Smart play. The bones were rolled and they came up “Weal”, and as a gibbous moon was upon them in a few days, they decided to go back to village and wait for Calligaster to come back for a visit and ambush him.

They travelled back to the village, the only encounter along the way was with Chitin Shepards, moving a herd of wild boars along the road.

Calligaster flew to the area on a Worra (giant bat) with a  pair of ogre bodyguards.

The party had been using sentries watching the skies (Jijan let them know that Calligaster flew to the site)  and spotted the Necromancer as it happened to be a clear night when he flew there.

Bhakashal weather rolls can influence so much of what happens at the table.

We rolled for surprise, as my players have learned, surprise can be the difference between success and failure, between a short and long fight.

They got surprise, waiting until he was descending on the giant Worra.

The party’s new ally, the Thaumaturge Maglane the Malachite, cast Charm Monster on the flying beast, she did not have any way of communicating with it, so she couldn’t command it, but it would not harm her or her allies while the spell was in effect.

The party warlock cast Magic Missile, if he had done more than half of Calligaster’s HP in damage he would have been dismounted by Bhakashal rules, but it was not enough. Still, it rattled his cage.

The party priest cast Spiritual Weapon, the Bhakashal version of Spiritual Hammer, and a shimmering, dark blue trident, the weapon of his god, Sithasial, god of oceans and travel, appeared in his hand. He threw the trident (outdoor range 90’) at the Necromancer and did enough damage to reduce him below half total HP, so he was dismounted.

That produced an interesting rules question.

According to the rules, when you are surprised, your attackers all get one action against you before you get to act in the next round (in AD&D that can be more than one action, Bhakashal simplifies this to one action only). So, technically, he could not do anything as he plummeted to his death.

However, AD&D rules also say you should always have a chance, that’s the whole idea behind saving throws. And I put it to the players, if your PC was knocked off a high spot in a surprise round, would you want to be able to react in some way, or would you accept that you were just going to plummet to your death?

When stuff like this comes up I put it to the table to decide, knowing that the choice they make at the table can come back to haunt them later.

They decided Calligaster should get a saving throw versus death to be able to cast a spell, it just so happened he had Feather Fall.

I roll in the open, and Calligaster Naukan , 7th level Emberi Scribus Maker Necromancer, House Omander, plummeted to his death screaming in a lost demon tongue, landing with a sickening crunch.

So many referees would have saved Calligaster in some way as he was the “BBEG” for this adventure, and this encounter was over in a round. This is one of the reasons why combat in many D&D games takes forever to resolve.

That’s not the Bhakashal way, the party was smart, formed alliances, gathered information, planned out their actions, and thanks to a helpful surprise roll, won the day in short order.

That’s a win.

The Worra wasn’t going to attack the party thanks to the Charm Monster spell, so it flew off back to the city with the confused ogres on top.

Then the party used Speak with the Dead on Calligaster. His shattered jaw made sickening grinding sounds as he answered their 2 questions.

“What were you going to do if you gained control of the cursed ground?”

“Necronaut, I would build a temple to enhance my power and raise an undead army from the hundreds of years of bones below”

“Why were you doing this?”

“I wished to move against several powerful Lords and Warlocks in House Omander, and a personal army of undead hidden in the marshlands would be my secret weapon.”

They stripped his body of magic items, the party warlock has Iessalon’s Revelation of the Enchanted, Bhakashal’s version of Identify. It worked on Calligaster’s wand (a wand of metal and mineral detection), but was unsuccessful on his ring. They found two potions, a potion of clairaudience and a potion of Black Dragon control. He also had a scroll with Forget and Magic Jar.

Having learned from their experience with Pholl the Gaunt, they chopped of Calligaster’s head, burned his body, and took the head back as proof of death.

Badass.

There were no encounters on the way back to the city, and they shared what they had learned with their patron.

This was big news. They knew of Calligaster’s plans, they had information of value to House Omander, House Rostus and to Kamerli directly. They had humbled Mitrax Toma the Bold and slain his ally, dealing him a severe blow (and gaining a new enemy). They had repaired the relationship between House Rostus, the village of Golta and their Spellbinder Jijam the Harrow, and the village is now positively disposed to the party as they revealed to them Calligaster’s deception, giving them another ally. Kamerli could now decide how best to use the information they had gathered to his advantage, and as Kamerli’s star rose in the Bhakashal firmament, so the party would rise with it, as his allies.

Also, the party has fulfilled their bargain with the Black Dragon Haekomarl, so when he shows up at some point to check on them, they can stand tall. And they have a potion in their back pocket if the dragon still wants to betray them.

 

Observations

What makes this all so layered and engaging is that the factions of the setting frame everything that happens. The PCs aren’t just “fighting monsters and bandits”, they are casting their lot with factions in the long game of interfactional rivalry.

It’s exhilarating as they are always faced with the possibility of those more powerful than them taking an interest in their demise. They make enemies and allies as they move through the game world, and these relationships drive the action in new directions.

It’s also important as raw power isn’t really the deciding factor, the party fighter made a lot of great suggestions in this game, his largest contribution in this session wasn’t his sword arm, it was things like cutting off Calligaster’s head and burning his body so he couldn’t be brought back. Old school play rewards smart players, not smart characters, and Bhakashal is old-school to the core.

Encounter reaction rolls were key to this session, in so many ways. Factional affiliation impacted those rolls, who you are aligned with matters. Factional alignments mattered to, as they decide which factions are allied with each other, and thus influence those encounter reaction rolls.

One consequence of this is NEITHER THE PART NOR I KNOW how things will turn out when the party interacts with groups in the game world, and this gives the game an extra layer of excitement and unpredictability.

It was also clear that social interaction was a big part of the tension and risk. When the party was talking to Jijam the Harrow and he revealed that he knew Calligaster you should have seen their faces, they thought that he might have been ALLIED WITH Calligaster, and they may have put themselves at the mercy of an ally of their foe. What if Jijam was only pretending to be uncertain about Calligaster, would he betray them once they left? What if he decided to attack them, they were in the Spellbinders house, the seat of his power, surrounded by 200 or so Yalan villagers, many of them accomplished hunters. The fear was delicious. 

Surprise rolls were also important as a game mechanic, they proved decisive here, and the party will eventually fall foul of them, which could lead to unpleasant results. They are now experienced enough to realize this, and after this sessions easy victory over Calligaster one of them pointed out, “That could be us next time, we got lucky”.

Exactly.

It is, of course, not JUST luck, but luck is always a factor.

They also got to see that I don’t “save” my precious NPCS, they know the game is fair and transparent, that their actions won’t be nerfed by a DM who wants to ensure that ‘the story is dramatic.”

Knocking Calligaster from that Worra to his death was dramatic!

It was also a reminder that information gathering (sages, informants), alliance formation (Jijam the Harrow) and divination magic (Augury) were key elements in their success. Indeed, it is telling that in Bhakashal, the party Seer used NO healing magic in this session, but divination magic was crucial to their success.

I’m a firm believer that game design influences play, if you create a faction-based setting where the party will face foes well beyond their power, alliances and information will become very important, so information gathering divination spells are a key tool in the divine caster’s arsenal. I suspected that this would happen over time, and it has.

It is also instructive to observe that one of my primary roles at the table is to INTERPRET dice rolls, each time I rolled an encounter reaction, I had to decide WHY it was the way it was, the dice just give you a result, you must contextualize it, and Bhakashal's in depth factional setting gives you the tools to make those interpretations in ways that drive fun, unpredictable and engaging play. I was as surprised as the party, and had as much fun as they did discovering how things were going to turn out.

I know most design features are player focused, but this referee focused impact is important too. I ran this game at the end of a full day where I had given a 3 hour lecture right before the game, and we gamed for 3-1/2 hours (from 8pm to 11:30). I could have kept going for hours more. I'm running four current campaigns, and the ease of refereeing in a factionalized sandbox style setting is apparent, since the setting + player actions do the heavy lifting, I can run multiple campaigns easily. 

It took them three sessions of 3-1/2 hours each to unravel this mystery, and it all spun out of me deciding that the bandits they were going to face in their first adventure were working for one of the factions in the setting.

I couldn’t be happier, Bhakashal is working as designed and creating a rich playing experience, and the players had a blast.

Mission accomplished. When Bhakashal comes out soon, you can partake of this glorious feast of gaming goodness. 

 Building Bhakashal – Session Report

We had our third session for a new group this week. I was approached by a group asking if I could teach them how to run games. I decided to spend 4 sessions just running the game for them, and 2 sessions discussing how to run games rather than playing them.

They have been sent to a remote island to retrieve a renegade warlock who stole from his powerful master. Last session they discovered that kobolds (with axebeak mounts) lived on the island and they established an alliance with them. Rather than fight them, they shared a meal with them, exchanged some goods and information, and learned a lot about the denizens of the island. When we finished last week the party Spider (thief) barely escaped being eaten by an intelligent plant, we picked up from there.

A reminder that this particular group has asked to be taught “how to run a game”, so I will gloss a lot of what happened with comments about the process of instructing them about the play of the game.

First thing after slaying the plant the player of the party Mercenary (fighter) suggested they should look around the plant for loot that “may have been dropped by former victims”.

This led us to have a discussion about “lairs”, e.g., how if a monster or animal flees combat, one option is to try and track them and find their lair. In this case they were lucky as the monster in question is stationary. They spent some time digging into the ground around the plant and looking through it’s guts and found some gold coins, but nothing else.

The kobolds had told the party where the warlock they were searching for had been spending his time, so they had an idea of where to look. I told them they had a 1 in 8 chance of finding what the warlock was working on, and a 1 in 12 chance of an encounter, check both every turn.

They knew there was a green dragon in the area, so they were a bit tense about that!

After an hour of searching they hit paydirt, finding a door made of metal bars with a lock hidden behind some trees and brush. They saw that this door led to a rough-hewn corridor that descended into darkness.

Their first dungeon!

They found the door was locked, so the thief got to try her skills for the first time. She took out her tools and spent a turn finessing the lock, and it opened!

Then they descended.

However, they put the party fighter in the lead, she was a human, and had no infravision, so she could see about a foot or so ahead and that was it.

This produced delicious fear!

They decided to go without torches at this point as lighting torches in the dark would make them easy to spot.

I informed them of the dimensions of the corridors, and the party fighter, who had a really long bastard sword, asked if it could be used in a confined space.

They were starting to get the idea, the environment determines the constraints, so you have to ask questions or find out the hard way. I told them that the game has “space required” stats for all weapons, so we consulted the tables to see.

The dungeon was a maze, so they got out a piece of paper and began to map to keep track of where they were going. I suggested just doing lines for corridors and keeping it simple.

As it happens, they made choices that led them to the center of the maze. That was pure luck, as there were many branching paths that could have led them to traps or to monsters, but instead they arrived at the central room.

There was a pool full of black, metallic liquid in the center of the room, surrounded by 8 statues of warriors, all of the statues faced the pool. There was a low, ambient red light in the room that cast no shadows. For some reason the ambient light freaked them out and they insisted on lighting a torch. They asked about the statues, and I told them they would have to investigate them. They walked over to the pool and dropped a coin into it.

“The coin disappears from view as soon as it goes under the water, swallowed up by the black, metallic liquid.”

That they did not like!

They went over to the statues. They found that each statue had the same symbol carved into the stone at their feet, it was three lines within a circle. One of them asked if their character would know what that means.

I told them that their thief had a read languages percentage and could try that to see if the symbol was familiar, but it came up blank. Then I mentioned that Warlocks in Bhakashal are also sages, so they should check to see if the party warlock had a relevant area of knowledge.

It ends up her major field was “signs and symbology”, LOL.

So, she had a chance of knowing what this symbol was, and she rolled it at the table.

Huzzah!

The symbol meant “bound”

That got them talking.

They decided since the statues were all facing the pool, and they all had the same symbol on them, that they were likely binding something in the pool.

Then the question became, “should we try and free it, or get out of here”.

At this point I told them that there are spells that can help with situations like this, Augury, Contact Other Plane, Legend Lore, or they could consult a sage, or they could talk to the kobolds and see what they knew. But they didn’t have any of those spells, there were no sages on the island, the party warlock’s area of expertise didn’t help, and (although they didn’t know this) the kobolds knew nothing.

In short, they had to decide for themselves.

That produced some conversation, they were convinced that they should have SOMETHING in their toolkit that would solve this conclusively. I informed them that this isn’t the way the game works, sometimes you have what you need, sometimes you have to wing it. They were insistent that I should just GIVE them something that would help them out. They even said that their warlock having Signs and Symbology as her major field was something I did on purpose to help them with the symbols in this encounter.

But as I told them, I drew the three PCs for this adventure out of my file folder at random, it was just luck. This was a great opportunity to discuss how, in the kind of D&D that I run, and in old school D&D in general, the goal is to make due with what you have, not for the referee to give you what you need when you need it. That way, as I told them, when they win its because of THEM, and if they lose, it’s because of THEM, not because I tweaked things either for or against them.

So, after a long conversation, they decided to try and free whatever was in the pool. Since there were 8 statues that all had the rune on them, they figured destroying any one of the statues or runes would be enough to break the binding spell.

As it was.

The party Mercenary bashed one of the runes until it was marred.

Then, the ambient red light intensified and dimmed over and over, and a shadowy form rose from the pool. It was humanoid in shape but made of shadow stuff.

That produced a gasp of surprise.

“At almost the same time as the creature emerges from the pool, you hear four distinct noises, you can’t place their exact location or distance, but their sound carries through the confined spaces, you hear what sounds like roaring flame, some sort of slithering noise, a crackling sound, and the sound of wind.”

They weren’t sure what that meant, but they panicked! Still, the shadowy form was their immediate concern.

In Bhakashal, monsters don’t just attack every time, instead, you roll to see what would happen.

If you freed a shadow from centuries long binding, what would it do first? Would it attack those who freed it? Would it be so hungry that it attacks the first thing it sees? Would it be so desperate to be free of it’s prison that it flees immediately to avoid being bound again? I farm out decisions like this to the dice. I announce the options, “On a 1-3 the creature attacks you, on a 4-5 it flees, on a 6 it hovers and watches you”

Then I roll in public, a 4.

“The creature leaves the pool (the black metallic water having disappeared as it emerged), as it does so it becomes a shadow that moves across the floor, as if cast by a body that isn’t there. It travels to the exit opposite the party and disappears down the hallway, all the while screeching what sounds like the word, ‘free’.”

By now they are learning a key aspect of the style of play that I’m promoting, namely that it tries to create a degree of impartiality, the referee sets the odds, but the dice decide the outcome.

As soon as the shadow fled I told them this,

“The sound of slithering and wind gets softer, receding into the distance, the sounds of roaring flame and crackling, however, get louder.”

At this point the party fighter goes over to the pool to see what is there now that the water is gone, and she sees a sword! She grabs the sword without hesitation, and they decide to book it as fast as they can.

At that point I go round by round, they flee, and every round I tell them if the sounds are getting closer or further away. I have a map in front of me, I mark off the requisite number of squares each round they flee and the requisite squares for the two monsters that are heading their way (two monsters chose to flee the maze, two to head towards the center).

The noises were getting closer as they fled, they didn’t know what was coming, and they were freaking out. One of them was scouring her character sheet for spells or items to help, another was just panicking.

Then, one of them decided to ditch their torch so whatever was coming would home in on that and maybe miss them entirely.

They were thinking beyond their character sheet, excellent.

The way the maze was laid out and the way they ran they managed to make it out of the maze before the monsters go to them, and they slammed the gate shut, locking it behind them. They proceeded to a nearby standing of trees and watched. A firedrake appeared first, it bashed it’s head against the bars of the door to no avail. Then it directed it’s fire breath to the door.

Then the Hoar Fox showed up.

The two looked at each other but did not attack. Then the Hoar Fox breathed on the bars, making them icy cold. They alternated until the bars shattered and set them free. I rolled to see what they would do, and both fled.

Then the shocker emerged (the carrion crawler, the sources of the slithering sound, remained in the maze), it saw the party, I rolled, and it headed towards them to attack.

“A humanoid figure, apparently made up of lightning and the source of the crackling sound you heard, approaches you.”

At this point the party warlock decided she was going to cast one of her spells, Sjin’Saar’s Corrosive Decay. This spell, like a Fireball in geometry, causes ferrous metals to corrode instantly upon a failed save.

The player asked me, “How would this spell impact a creature made of lightning”

And that was great opportunity to discuss another aspect of the game, at the table rulings.

The rules don’t cover everything, so sometimes you have to figure it out on the spot. In Bhakashal, the recommendation is to collaboratively come up with possibilities and vote on them together. Everyone has to agree to move forward. A few options were discussed:

1.        It would do nothing

2.        It would do half damage

3.        It would destroy the creature utterly

4.        It would knock it unconscious

5.        It would temporarily disrupt the creature

We voted and settled on 5, and the Shocker flickered in and out of existence several times. I then made a morale roll, and the creature fled.

At that point they decided to go back to the kobolds and compare notes. They found their mounts, which were tied up a distance away and being attended to by the warlock’s henchmen, and they rode towards the kobold caves. When they came out of the forest, I told them this,

“As you emerge from the trees  you see a startling sight, four kobolds, mounted on axebeaks, are surrounding the shadow which fled the maze ahead of you.”

At this point they were enamored of the kobolds and wanted to help, the Warlock and the Spider were hesitant to attack for fear of hitting an ally, but the Mercenary just sneered and charged, her recently discovered sword in hand. As soon as she held the sword and charged to attack, she became aware that the sword was magical, and could either aid her attack or her defense, at her will.

Unbeknownst to her, she had found a +4 Defender!

She chose to put all of the magical mojo into attacking.

Before she could reach them the shadow attacked one of the kobolds, I described it as follows:

“The shadowy form collapses to the ground and slides across it, two dimensional as it moves swiftly across the grass, when it reaches one of the kobolds it reverts to humanoid form and passes through the mounted figure… and the kobold screams, changing into a shadow.”

They instantly understood the implications, each victim of the shadow could become another shadow, and they would be outnumbered in short order.

The Mercenary arrived, she swung her sword and hit the creature, almost splitting it in half. The shadow tried to attack her and missed.

She pulled on the reins and came back around for a second time, this time she rolled a critical, and opted for two attacks. The first attack finished off the original shadow, the next attack finished off the second shadow in one strike.

Her dice were on fire, and they were all very happy about it.

We stopped there.

It was a great session for learning, we covered a lot of rules and situations that will come up regularly at the table, and they saw how much of the process is farmed out to the dice. They also discovered that you don’t always have what you need so you have to improvise, and that some problems aren’t amenable to what is on your character sheet.

What they don’t know yet is the guy they are after might be dead, slain by the hill giants that live at the other end of the island. I'm going to roll for that before they show up so I will be surprised too. When they encounter the giants they will quickly learn that thrown boulders are extremely deadly!

It will be epic.

 

Building Bhakashal – Session Report – Intelligence Gathering

My Friday game resumed this week. We took a long hiatus after last year because my players all had commitments in September and October. This is my longest playing group; they have been at it for 4 years now. They are all 7^th – 8^th level in experience.

Before I get to the session report, I should do a brief recap.

When you hit 8^th level in Bhakashal, you are on the cusp of being able to become a patron, at 9^th level you transition to domain play and become a Bhakashal Lord, Warlock, High Priest, etc. and start taking direct part in city politics. But to get in you need to do more than just get to 9^th level, you have to do something big for the faction to get their attention, to convince them you are a worth addition to the faction’s upper echelons.

They decided last year to enter the Bhakashal underworld to find their big thing. Once there they would establish an outpost for their Noble House and trade with the locals. Then they got there and found their first underworld city, filled with Togmu, Malu, and strange spider people. They formed a friendship with a local merchant, sharing their idea of opening up trade, and asking if there were any in the city who would be interested.

One thing led to another, and they decided that they didn’t want to establish a regular trade, they wanted to do something bigger. There were monsters here that had never been seen in the upper world, so they would capture and kill these monsters and take them back to the city, where they could be used to create new spells and magic items.

This was a far, far more important advantage to bring to their House.

But then someone got clever and asked if it was possible to create a teleportation gate of some kind, AD&D has teleportation magic, and this would allow them to bring back monsters faster than the several month long journey it had taken to get there.

Bhakashal is an open ended sandbox style setting, so the answer isn’t “yes” or “no”, it’s, “how do you want to do that?”

How to make a magic teleportation circle?

They took a few sessions figuring that out, but essentially they had to find someone who had the knowledge, and eventually, after gathering as much information as they could in the city and getting nowhere, their party priest used a high-level divination spell on a scroll to ask the higher powers where they could find what they needed. They had been saving this scroll all year, so it was a big deal to use it.

But it paid off.

The spell told them of a powerful warlock who lived in the underworld, he had a collection of tomes that included one that detailed circles of this kind. Find him, find their solution. That led to a two-week journey, where, ironically, they lost the party priest to a trio of carrion crawlers led by a hunting party of underworld Malu hunters.

They eventually found the wizard, who was a blind Yalan (snake man) who had given up his sight for various magical powers. His companion was a giant, intelligent slug. The slug “saw” for the warlock, and in exchange it was taken care of. The party decided to be friendly to the guy and it ended up he was pretty lonely in the underworld, so he agreed to help them out in finding the information they needed, in exchange for them agreeing to stay for 2 weeks and keep him company.

That gave them access to the tome that had the details on how to make a teleportation circle. There were a number of mundane components, and a design they had to make exactly right, but part of the process of creating the magical ink used to mark the circle was to slay four mind flayers, drain all of their blood, and mix it with the ink and several other ingredients (including Volt blood and ground up phase spider brains).

So that sent them off to look for an Illithid city in the underworld. Several more weeks journey, where they lost one of the two party warlocks to a trio of Umber Hulks, led them to the Illithid city. Dhargana, the illithid city, was located in an immense cave, the cave had columns of stone in a huge empty space, each column was hollowed in places to form huge caves. There was one gigantic column that held the majority of the city, and many smaller columns that held private estates. The mind flayers city existed to house the infrastructure, servants and slaves they needed to support their bodies while they explored alternate planes and realities with their minds.

At that point they had to make some decisions, as infiltrating a city of mind reading illithids wasn’t going to be easy. The city did have other races there, Vorunn (spider-folk), Emberi (humans), Togmu (frog-folk) and Malu (fish-folk) were also in the city, but the majority of Emberi were servants, laborers and slaves, and the Malu and Togmu were fishermen, hunters and mercenaries. The party would stand out as  a motley collection of overworlders (they had, for example, a Rakasta), so they decided to set themselves up posing as a renegade alchemist and his retinue, fleeing from an enemy in the overworld, wanting to set up shop in the Illithid city.

This was possible as the party has a Myrmidon, in Bhakashal, Myrmidon’s are fighter/alchemists, whose limited spells all work on potions. They also have a spell that allows them to combine the relevant components on the spot to make a potion. The Myrmidon carried a number of potions with him and could make more with various ingredients he had collected on their journey or harvested fresh.  

That is where we broke for the summer, with the party having just dropped coin to pay for a large tent from which to run their potion making business, and plans to figure out how to waylay an illithid or two…

Cue to today’s game.

We did some recap then dove right in. They decided to do business for a few weeks and see what they could learn talking to their customers. When you do stuff like this in game you can either abstract it totally (set then roll the odds of discovering something important), or you can role play it out at the table. The former can be handy, but also dull, the latter can be too time consuming.

Bhakashal’s random encounter system works for this sort of thing perfectly.

You roll for random encounters 4 times a day, at different odds, from morning to night, 1 in 12, 1 in 10, 1 in 8 and 1 in 6. With these odds, on any given day there is a roughly 40% chance you will have an encounter. Over two weeks, that means, on average 5.6 encounters. 

We rolled 8.

For each encounter, as the PCs were at the tent most of the time (they had a sleeping area in the back), the encounter had to happen there. If anyone went out and did anything, then we would roll to see where it happened if the party was not all in the same place.

Note also that the party dealt with the public more than 8 times, as vendors they would see discussion and business with many people, but only 8 of these  are “encounters” e.g., we role play them out at the table. The other visits are abstracted, and I can generate the “revenue” from those visits, if any, abstractly with a roll.

 

Encounter 1 – Day 2

Malu fishermen came in wanting something a potion of Sweet Water, during the conversation:

– “The squid-heads, they meditate all the time, that and eat brains!”

Fact this is based on: The illithids spend most of their time lost in their minds, they return to reality to eat brains and conduct affairs

 

Encounter 2 – Day 4

Thieves tried to enter the tent from the rear and encountered party members in their private section, all were sleeping but one, the party phantasmist. He heard them moving around then cutting the tent, he cast an illusion over the sleeping party members of a gigantic, coiled snake that covered the space taken up by 3 sleeping bodies. I rolled a reaction, and the thieves made off.

 

Encounter 3 Day 7

A group of Malu city guards came by the tent, they started off being vaguely threatening, making comments about outsiders and such, then they said they had heard they were hiding a monster in the back. The party showed the guards the empty space willingly, showing no evidence whatsoever that a giant snake had been there, and they left.

 

Encounter 4, Day 10

A pair of Malu hunters came in to sell animal parts to be used by the alchemist, but the price offered offended the Malu (the party gets a big negative mod to encounter reactions as outsiders) so they got angry and attacked. The party Spartan (monk) took them down weaponless and they fled. I rolled again every day to see if they came back with friends!

Encounter 5, also Day 10

A Togmu fisherman/hunter came in looking for pure salt, as the salt he normally uses to kill certain vermin infesting his catch is “dirty” and causes other problems. During conversation:

“Squidders are homebodies for sure, except for Sogogg, that crazy tentacle head is leaving on Haitam, probably hunting with the Fish-heads again!”

Fact this is based on: The illithids rarely leave the city, with few notable exceptions, one being Sogogg Brot, an Illithid that has spent time running with the Malu hunters in the caves

 

Encounter 6, Day 12

A Vorunn necromancer came into the shop, she needed a Potion of Longevity for experiments, during the conversation,

“No, the old-ones would never eat my brain, they only consume the minds of the lowest, I am more valuable to them intact”

Fact this is based on: The illithids eat the brains of slaves, servants and laborers at their leisure, otherwise they eat brains of criminals (anyone breaking a significant law is just taken to an Illithid and their brain is consumed) and random creatures captured in the caves.

 

Encounter 7

One of the party members spent the day travelling the city, and while doing so he had an encounter with a passing NPC, the PC was looking at animals that were being sold as “guard dogs” and he encountered a trio of Ettercaps, in the underworld Ettercaps interact with other groups, they are primarily hunters. The Ettercaps noticed him looking at their unique silk gear (nets, bolas, battle sashes), and started a brawl with him. Fortunately, it was the party monk, and he managed to drop them all in different ways.

 

Encounter 8

A Malu merchant came to the tent looking for a Potion of Healing. The player asked me if they could look at the monster parts they had collected to see if they had ingredients for that potion, and I told them it was so poorly lit they would need an artificial light source, so they lit a lamp.

During the discussion:

-            “Close your curtain, that fire is blinding”

Fact this is based on: The whole city is low-lit with softly glowing striated rock and flights of luminescent insects that swarm and fly through the air, as a result all of the regular inhabitants are used to extremely dim light and are light-and fire avoidant, and you rarely see fires anywhere.

If we had rolled one more encounter the city guards were going to return to ask about the monk, as he had been involved in two altercations now, both of which were seen by others.

They talked about their intel and decided to try and nail the Illithid leaving the city, he would no doubt be with guards/monsters/henchmen for protection (Illithids don’t travel alone), but less protected than he would be on his estate.

Then one of them brought up that they didn’t really know what mind flayers could DO, e.g. their powers, just some things about what they were doing, e.g., their activities.

So, to the market they headed, the plan was to pinch a servant/slave and interrogate them, surely the slaves and servants would have seen the illithids use their powers before, likely on one of their peers. They would know things.

How do you model ambushing a target in a crowded marketplace?

I told the party to come up with a plan. They said they would spend the time walking around the market and looking for opportunities to waylay someone in an area where they wouldn’t automatically be seen.

OK, I decided to model this too.

Every turn they had a 1 in 8 chance of finding a servant or slave in a situation where they could talk to them unseen while in the busy market. Also, every turn there was a 1 in 12 chance of an encounter. We rolled them simultaneously.

After an hour (6 rolls of a d8 and a d12), the d8 came up.

“You see an illithid noble riding by on his Xixia with his retinue, four burly Malu bodyguards, a large, leashed lizard of bright green hue with multifaceted yellow eyes, and a trail of Emberi slaves, each carrying a large bag on their backs. At the end of the line is a Saan, the first you have seen here, who is spotting the overstuffed bags for spillage as they move along. At once he is distracted by something between two large tents, and bolts in towards it. You have an opportunity and spring into motion, running towards the Emberi between the tents”

Now, a word about magic in Bhakashal.

The party warlock has memorized Power Word Stun as one of his spells. In Bhakashal, a warlock can memorize any level of spell. When cast, there is a chance of spell failure, and of harm to the caster. The warlock had been using this spell a decent amount, as it wasn’t lethal, and it worked well.

So when he rushed in, with the party Gyre behind him (Gyre’s in Bhakashal are raw magic users, benders, they can manipulate their particular dominion, the party had an earth gyre, essentially an Earth bender), he decided to cast Power Word Stun on the poor hapless fellow, rather than risk tussling with him and getting hurt or him getting away.

He rolled his casting odds, 82% chance of success.

95 was rolled.

The spell failed.

Failed spells have a 5% chance per level of harming the caster, 7^th level spell, 45% chance.

22 was rolled.

The warlock uttered the words of the spell and was stunned into unconsciousness on the spot for nine rounds.

This is why I love probability-based mechanics; he knew this was going to happen, but he never knows when, and each time it does happen,  there is such a gap in between that it spooks him.

I find the balance perfect.

The Gyre saved the day, when the Warlock was trying to stun the guy, the Gyre manipulated the dust and dirt  on the ground to either side of them and made a thin dome to protect them from view. In the already low light environment between buildings, it was already dark, but this would stop those who were used to low light from seeing anything.

I rolled to see what the slave would do; he cowered in fear.

The Gyre then cast a second spell; this time he used his ability to bend a metal bar into a binding for the slaves hands.

He told him that they weren’t going to hurt them, the slave looked on in confusion.

The party Gyre spoke to him in Togmu, all of the slaves knew some Togmu through their dealings with hunters and farmers, and he told him that they were looking to find out what the “Squidders” could do, as they wanted to harm them.

This produced a very positive reaction, the slave detested the illithids, so the slave asked, “If I tell you all I know, will  you let me free?”

The party was sceptical, they felt he would go back to his master and tell him of the threat, hoping to curry favor.

“If I go back to him he will read my mind, know of you, slay me for leaving his presence and then be on to you, I have no desire to die, let me flee, I can leave the city and take my chances in the caves.”

They debated this and decided on taking the information. This guy was an illithid slave for a year now, so he had seen them doing things many times. I counted up the “facts” about illithids from their description, and rolled for four of them that the slave would know. I figured the illithids would freely use their powers around slaves, so it wasn’t unreasonable that they would know things, they rolled the following:

1.           “They can read minds, but not all the time, only when they focus” (ESP)

2.           “They are not strong, but they can subtly manipulate your mind when you try and strike them, minimizing the blow” Flayers have decent Hit Dice, Hit points are not all physical, it’s left to the referee to interpret, this is my interpretation.

3.           “They can overpower your mind” - Domination ability

4.           “They can slip out of space then slip back” – Probability travel

Importantly, the slave had no knowledge of their magic resistance, so the party does not know that.

They gave the slave some coin and a dagger to defend himself and let him leave, knowing every second he was with them the odds of the Illithid noticing he was gone and would come after him increased. They then waited for the party warlock to wake and fled back to their tent.

They formulated a plan; they would try and ambush Sogogg Brot when he left the city in two days.

They still have to find him to track him when he leaves, and they don’t know what sort of party he will be leaving with, but they figure one flayer outside the city is far easier to bag than one on it’s estate or in full public view.

We stopped there.

It was a largely information gathering session, but in addition to gaining information, they tend to build anticipation, the players are thinking about their adversaries, the threats they face, and how to cheat death. Because we integrate information gathering into the encounter system, it combines both bookkeeping and role play in an entertaining way

Next session will be down to business I think.