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!

 

 
Building Bhakashal – House Rules!

Time for a hard truth.

Everybody house rules.

Even people who play strictly “BTB” and “RAW”, they house rule too.

There are several varieties of house rule, and it would save a lot of electronic ink if we got them straight.

A house rule is just that, a rule that applies in the “house”, e.g., at a particular gaming table.

For example, “on a natural 20, you do double damage”

That’s a rather famous house rule, it was and is remarkably common when I played AD&D 1e BITD, but it was not in the books, it was something that individual tables chose to do.

My argument, TLDR, is that you HAVE TO house rule to play D&D, this isn’t an empirical observation, it’s a logical claim.

Why?

Well, D&D, unlike many other games, is open ended and has a LOT of rules, you simply cannot anticipate all the different ways in which the rules will interact with the game world and the player’s actions. The rules can’t cover every eventuality, if they did they would be remarkably unwieldy, instead, you adjudicate as needed and your house rules grow.

If you have played the game for any length of time you will realize this. I would go as far as to say that almost every session I have run for the last 40 years has had an example of this, a case where I had to make an adjudication because the rules didn’t tell me what to do.

Take an example from my game this Tuesday. My players were about to raid a warlock’s tower, so the party priest cast Divination. The spell description says this,

“The spell gives information regarding the relative strength of creatures in the area…”

What does that mean?

Gygax doesn’t specify it any more than that. So how do you provide this information?

You could keep it simple, “There are foes more powerful than you in the tower”

You could give metagaming detail, “There are foes of X HD and Y level in the tower”

You could be selectively descriptive, “There are foes that have more powerful magic than you in the tower”, or “There are foes with greater fighting ability than you in the tower”

The point here is that you will decide how the spell works in your game, and when you do so, that’s a house rule at your table. Look at the DMG section on player spells, Gygax discusses how to interpret spells based on his gaming experience, they are official rules as they were put there by Gygax in the game book, but every individual DM in the world has had to make interpretations of this kind, and those are all house rules.

So, with all that in mind, here is a brief taxonomy of house rules:

House Rules that Interpret – A spell or an existing game mechanic doesn’t specific what to do in a particular situation, so the DM comes up with a ruling on the spot.

House Rules that Replace – On a natural 20 you double your damage, normally the rule is that a natural 20 is either a hit or a miss depending on the AC of the target and the attacker’s class/nature, but this house rules substitutes a different result on a natural 20

House Rules that Add – D&D doesn’t have rules for what happens when you fail to groom and feed mounts regularly, so the DM creates rules for this or imports rules from another game.

House Rules that Omit – Say a table doesn’t bother with encumbrance at all, the DM just eyeballs the amount of stuff and says no sometimes to taking more, or the Dm doesn’t like the existing unarmed combat rules, so they drop them.

These are all house rules as they will vary from table to table.

I can see someone saying that they don’t do these a lot, or they don’t do some of these, but it beggars the imagination to suggest that you could play the game for any length of time and not have to do any of them.

It would thus be far more useful to drop all the arguing about whether or not you should house rule, and instead advocate for house rules in particular, or house ruling in degree or in kind, e.g., either argue that particular house rules are better or worse (double damage on nat 20 is good), the degree of house ruling is good or bad (house rule as little as possible, house rule as much as possible), or the kind of house ruling is good or bad (interpretive house rules are good, additive house rules are bad).

Note that this isn’t an “anything goes” post, it’s a “clarify what you mean because we aren’t having a productive conversation” post.

I will also add that, IMO, understanding the rules as written is a key component to running good games, as you can’t even decide that you want to house rule until you know what the rules actually are. Ignoring the rules entirely from the get go is, IMO, not a good way to play. Trying to figure out what the rules mean, rather than ignoring them if they seem confusing or challenging, is the best course.

House ruling is something you do in addition to learning the rules of the game, not something you do instead of learning them.

Peace!

 

 

Building Bhakashal – Session Report

My dad’s group is on a roll, we have met for four sessions of 3-4 hours each, session reports here:

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

Session 2 - https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/08/

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

Session 4 - https://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/2024/11/building-bhakashal-session-report_21.html

TLDR – They discovered a plot driven by a Bhakashal Lord and Warlock from House Omander (Mitrax Toma the Bold and the Necromancer Calligaster Naukan) to get access to a cursed glade in the marshlands. The party killed Calligaster in the last session, decapitating him and burning his body, returning the head to their patron, Kamerli the Ivory.

*****

So far the group has been successful in every task they have performed, they have uncovered the plot session by session, and they have done so with clever play and judicious use of magic. Before the session I did some homework and determined that they were eligible for leveling. The Bhakashal system is goal based, not XP, monster or loot based, you compare the relative difficulty of the encounters versus the success/failure of the party, calibrated by class (like AD&D, different classes level at different rates).

So, we spent the first half hour leveling everyone up. In Bhakashal, as in AD&D, some levels bring a little, some a lot, and different classes get differing advantages as they level. As it happened, the party warlock (magic-user) was leveling from 5^th to 6^th, which meant their saving throws and “to hit” rolls improved, as they did for the party Seer (cleric) and Mercenary (fighter). Hit points were rolled, new spells were given out, even a new weapon proficiency slot.

And the party mercenary hit the sweet 7^th level spot, and graduated to 3/2 attacks per round.

Righteous.

Players LOVE levelling up. I know there are advocates for games that don’t involve levels, but its hard to argue against the joy players get from the process. Notably the party Seer (priest) now has access to the whole list of 4^th level spells. He was pretty excited about that.

Once the bookkeeping was out of the way, they were on to adventure!

They went to the tower of their patron, Kamerli the Ivory, Kamerli is a tall, thin Emberi (human), dressed in dark red leathers, his hair is a lustrous black and his all-white eyes lack pupils. Kamerli received the PCs and revealed the head of Calligaster Naukan, kept on a pedestal near his fountain. Kamerli had the Seers of Vekka (each House has a temple associated with it) using Speak with Dead on Calligaster to divine his secrets.

On a side note, Speak with Dead has been getting quite the workout in our game, because the target has to answer truthfully, the party has learned to use the spell to interrogate recently slain foes.

Smart.

Calligaster’s spirit has given up many secrets, and Kamerli presented the party with a few options on what to do next. Kamerli doesn’t assign tasks, he collaborates with the party as they have proven quite successful. The options presented were as follows:

Go to the underwater city, Calligaster had line on supply of squid ink for scribing spells, squid ink is one of the most important components in making spells, so it is highly valuable. Securing a supply is a big thing. Calligaster’s potential suppliers had stopped communicating recently, so the party could go investigate that. If they choose this option they might run into the dragon Haekomarl who they encountered earlier. Haekomarl was heading to the coast to hunt and was going to come back to the city to see if the PCs honored their bargain (I rolled a 1 in 20 chance of this each day), so if the party headed to the coast on this task I was going to change the roll to 1 in 6.

Retrieve the body of Fon Jallor, an agent of one of Calligaster’s rivals, Haegamal the Heliotrope, Jallor was slain on a House hunt recently, his body dragged off by a monster. Haegamal wants the body back so no one will retrieve it and use necromantic magic on it to learn his secrets. The party could retrieve the body and offer it Haegamal as a favor in exchange for an alliance with Kamerli against Mitrax.

Calligaster had discovered the location of a powerful magical tome, the Book of Makaramaj, located on a nearby island off the coast. The party could retrieve that.

Break into Calligaster’s tower. As a House Warlock (terminology clarification, Noble Houses have nobility, either spell casters or warriors, the generic term for a House warrior Noble is a Lord, the generic term for a House spell caster Noble is Warlock. Calligaster is a Noble House Warlock, but his class is Necromancer), Calligaster has a group of apprentices below him. They work (and some live) in his tower. The party has slain Calligaster and one of his apprentices (Pholl the Gaunt). So, the head of the snake has been removed. Before they have a chance to regroup, Kamerli suggested the party enter Calligaster’s tower and retrieve a powerful magic item, a Rod of Iospha. Kamerli wants to give the item to the Temple of Iospha to gain favor with them, in order to cement an alliance with House Xandal (the temple of Iospha is affiliated with House Xandal).

Make deal with Mitrax Toma The Bold. This was an interesting suggestion, Mitrax was kidnapped and dishonored, and his primary ally in his own House, Calligaster, was now dead. There are rivals within House Omander that are now planning to move against Mitrax at his time of weakness, so he might be ripe for an alliance. This might lead him to ask for fight in the arena to restore his honor. On a side note, I rolled every game day a 1 in 30 chance that Mitrax might demand an arena fight to restore his honor anyway.

The factions in Bhakashal create an almost endless variety of adventuring hooks based off of PC actions, when combined with divination magic and old-fashioned investigation, the PCs were presented with more options than they could even engage with. Some DM’s struggle with coming up with “adventure hooks.”

Bhakashal refs are swimming in them.

They decided on the raid, break into Calligaster’s tower.

To do this the first task was surveillance.

They travelled to the Ward of House Omander and checked out Calligaster’s tower during the early evening when the streets were active. It was a corner building near the canal, close to a large commercial building (the two were connected at the top by a foliage canopy, many buildings in Bhakashal are so connected). The party warlock has a familiar, a blood hawk, it flew around the building and discovered that there was a giant spider on the rooftop (many rooftops are guarded by monsters/animals in Bhakashal).

They retreated to a tavern nearby and the party warlock had his familiar perch near the tower and used his familiar’s eyes to watch the comings and goings. Of note was a figure that approached later in the evening. He was dressed in reflective silver robes (the moonlight glinting on them) and was flanked by two large Ettercap bodyguards. He approached the tower, and the doors opened for him (telling the party that the doors were being watched by people inside).

At this point something wonderful happened, the party waited until about 2 in the morning when the tavern closed up. They went to an alleyway between the tower and the nearby commercial building, and the party warlock cast Rope Trick while the party Mercenary (fighter) and the NPC Thaumaturge (thief/magic-user) kept lookout.

The party Seer (priest) and Warlock climbed into the Rope Trick extra-dimensional space, and he cast Divination.

Divination is one of those spells that is rarely used in game, it is a bit specific and the AOE is very defined, so a lot of players ignore it. In this case the spell was a gold mine,

“The spell gives information regarding the relative strength of creatures in the area; whether a rich, moderate or poor treasure is there; and the relative chances for incurring the wrath of evil or good supernatural, super powerful beings if the area is invaded and attacked.”

This was a necromancer’s tower, so the answer to the second question was “rich”, the third question was “the chances are relatively good” (as the Necromancer’s tower held a number of powerful supernatural beings like demons in captivity, if they were released…)

The first question was one of those cases where the referee has to improvise on the spot.

How do you indicate, “…the relative strength of creatures in the area” in a meaningful way that doesn’t give away too much?

It ends up that AD&D has a mechanic that ROUGHLY and APPROXIMATELY does this for you: Hit Dice. Though there are exceptions, the higher the HD of the target, the more powerful they will be in terms of special abilities/spell like powers, attacks, that sort of thing. The equivalent for NPCs is level. So, I quickly made a notation for each floor of the tower, and then wrote down the HD/Level of every living thing within.

The players didn’t know whether or not the creatures indicated were NPCs or animal/monsters, nor did they know WHERE within each floor the creature was located, but they knew what they were up against in a general way, which floors were more populated and had the greater threat.

People really sleep on divination magic.

There was a discussion about whether they should try again another time and hope for fewer threats to be present (e.g., come back when fewer warlocks are in residence), but they were eager for the challenge, so they decided to go in.

I swear that AD&D and Bhakashal were built for breaking and entering, the whole session was fire.

The party warlock cast Levitation multiple times, which allowed all of them to levitate upwards. I rolled to see if anyone in the tower or in the surrounding area saw them. There are Ward patrols, passerby’s, people in nearby buildings, and the city’s “Long glass” network (a series of towers manned by Ward soldiers and equipped with telescopes, they scan the wards for trouble). If they had done this during the day I wouldn’t have bothered rolling, they just would have been spotted, but they were doing this at around 2:30 am, so I distilled these possibilities as follows: 1 in 6 chance of being spotted per turn of being near and outside the building.

They made it to the roof of the nearby commercial building. From that distance Maglane the Malachite (the NPC Thaumaturge allied with the party) cast Charm Monster on the giant spider, which failed its save. They crossed over to the tower roof and saw four runic circles on the floor, a throne with a table beside it in the middle, and stairs leading down. Before landing on the roof, they cast a Find Traps spell and scanned the whole roof.

They found a magical trap on ground around the throne and on the stairs. They then avoided the area around the throne and cast a Dispel Magic spell on the stairs. This negated the magic on the stairs for a round, and they went down quickly.

About a turn had passed since they cast the Divination spell, so there was a chance that the warlocks on the 4^th floor had moved since it was cast. I rolled for that, and they had not moved from their location.

The party then decided to do something I had not seen coming. A few sessions back the party had picked up the spell Guards and Wards on a scroll. Someone had the bright idea to cast it now, on the tower, to cause confusion. As a side note, I roll for all spells and magic items randomly, so this was not planned by me. What they didn’t know was that one of the warlocks in the tower had Guards and Wards in a ring of spell storing, and a protocol to cast it if anyone broke into the tower.

However, the warlock with the ring was not there at this point.

Delicious confusion.

The party cast the spell, and it got freaky. Multiple doors were covered by illusion and hidden (I rolled randomly for that), all doors were Wizard Locked, all stairs were filled with webs and all corridors with fog. The Thaumaturge (who was casting the spell) targeted two areas on the 4^th floor for stinking cloud spells.

The fog and webs were not visible to the four warlocks on the 4^th floor, they were in a room and didn’t see the effects. However, the guards on all the other floors noticed things, mist, webs and certain doors seemingly disappearing. A captured crimson ape in a cell began to howl when the door to their cell apparently disappeared. Several people were locked in their room without knowing it.

Now, the guards know that when these things happen this means that there are intruders in the tower. However, they also knew that the warlock that had the ring with the spell, one Zimmerlin Suel, was not in residence. The guards on the 2^nd and 3^rd level didn’t know if he had perhaps arrived on the first floor and they didn’t see it, but the guards on the 1^st floor knew he wasn’t there, so something was up. The warlocks on the 4^th floor knew that Suel was not there, but perhaps he had just arrived and triggered the spell.

Guards started shouting, and after trying the door and seeing it was under the impact of a Wizard Lock spell, one of the three warlocks in the room on the 4^th floor cast Knock on the door to open it. Unfortunately for them, and unbeknownst to the PCs, they had placed one of the Stinking Clouds in front of their door.

While this was happening, the party moved to the stairwell they had just come down, now filled with webs, and the Thaumaturge cast a Burning Hands spell to set fire to the webs, she then did the same to the stairs going down so they could leave.

Unbeknownst to the PCs, one of the warlocks trapped in the room behind the Stinking Cloud had that spell as well, and in Bhakashal if you have the spell in question, you can cast it on the manifestation of that spell as a counterspell to neutralize it, the mechanics work like Dispel Magic.

The PCs ran down to the 3^rd floor and cast Locate Object to find the Rod of Iospha, locating it in a room on the south side of the floor.

In Bhakashal warlocks are free casters, they can cast a given number of spells, of any level, per day, rather than a fixed number of spells per level per day.  Upstairs, the Warlock attempted to break the Stinking Cloud spell again and failed!

A guard on the 3^rd floor rushed towards them and the party Mercenary intervened, dispatching him with a gladius to the neck, killing him instantly.

The PCs were unceremonious at this point as they were in a rush, and they smashed down the Wizard Locked door to the room with the rod. Inside there was a runic circle around a pedestal with a small chest on it. Rather than risk the room, the party warlock, who had just obtained (and successfully memorized) the spell Telekinesis as his “level up” spell, used it to move the chest from the pedestal to him.

Smart.

The warlock upstairs tried to neutralize Stinking Cloud  again… and failed!

I roll in the open so I can’t “fudge” results like this, I know many DMs who would because they resent it when their NPCs don’t get to succeed, but I have grown to love the chaos and unpredictability that this brings.

The party fled up the stairs to the 4^th floor again, all the while hearing the guards and a warlock from the lower floors trying to smash down the Wizard Locked door between floors.

Chaos!

The party bolted across the floor to the stairs to head out the way they came, unfortunately, the warlock on the 4^th floor, Moon Abithin (he was the warlock in the shiny silver robes that the party spotted entering the tower earlier), finally managed to dispel the Stinking Cloud. He exited the room and soon after the party emerged from the stairwell.

I rolled for surprise, and neither side was surprised.

We then rolled initiative.

The party mercenary was the first out of the stairs, he tied with Abithin, so the moment he released his net from his hands to throw at the warlock, the Slow spell culminated.

I really love Bhakashal’s initiative system because of things like this. The net flew from his hands as he, the Thaumaturge and the giant spider slowed down, covering Abithin, preventing him from spell casting until he got free.

Yisen Khas, a Yalan (snake-folk) phantasmist had emerged from the room when Abithin cast his Slow spell, he now cast Color Spray on the party as they emerged from the stairwell. The spell blinded the Thaumaturge and the party Seer (priest).

The only member of the party who wasn’t impacted by either spell was the party Warlock, who then cast Magic Missile on Abithin, doing decent damage but not slaying him.

We stopped there.

 

Observations

MADNESS.

It’s times like this when all of the fiddly little rules on timing (initiative), distance, saving throws and such come together in a magical way. It looked like chaos on the outside, but all of it was governed by clear rules that determined what happened when, and sequence is KEY to resolution. What spells take effect first, the area of effect for those spells, the distances involved between combatants, the open rolling, all of these features mean that combat is chaotic, messy, unpredictable and fun.

Every time someone argues for simplifying the rules I remember crazy sessions like this, sure, you can just arbitrarily rule what you want, but what emerges from the cocktail stew of rules at the table is far, far more fun and rewarding. I also LOVE that I randomize everything, so the party having Guards and Wards and the NPCs using that spell when the tower is breached was completely unpredictable and produced sweet confusion.

The opponents in the lower floors of the tower are confused about what is happening and at least temporarily restricted from coming up. What the party does not know is that there is a third warlock from that room that turned invisible and is moving around the room to cast a spell at them. They know there is a third warlock, but not that they are invisible.

Big fun.

 

  

 

Building Bhakashal – Session Report

My Friday group had a few rough weeks as different members came down with the same pneumonia, they are all friends in real life, so it passed around the group. As a result we have had a few sessions where only one person could make it, and they prefer not to play when that happens. So we have been doing some bookkeeping. I have redone all of their character sheets, and used some of that between play time to clarify aspects of their magic items, abilities and spells that they were not clear on.

You’d be amazed how often players don’t bother to read their spell, ability and magic-item descriptions. Part of that is my fault, I am perfectly happy to answer questions about any of that stuff, so they assume I will tell them if they don’t know. Not all of them of course, some of my players read the rule books between sessions and know everything they can, but that’s not the case for them all.

This week were all back to the table and fighting fit.

The party is attempting to slay and collect the bodies of 4 mind flayers. They need mind flayer blood so they can build a teleportation circle. They have the book that tells them how to build the circle, the other ingredients necessary to make the ink for the inscribing circle, and they have found an underground illithid city, so they have plenty of potential victims. They just need to get a few illithids, and that’s proving to be a challenge. Mind Flayers are no pushovers, and they are in a WHOLE CITY FULL OF THEM.

It was one of those interesting inversions, they spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to find mind flayers, they eventually found out that there was a mind flayer city in the underworld they could go to.

Perfect, right?

Then they got there are realized:

a)      They weren’t mind flayers, and in a city of mind flayers, they would stand out

b)     There were a lot of mind flayers there, all of whom can read their minds

Sure, there were non-flayers in the city as well (slaves, servants, laborers, merchants, traders, hunters, etc.) but the adventurers stood out as “overworlders” as well as “outsiders” and “armed to the teeth” non-flayers, who were comparatively rare.

They figured a way around that, a clever way IMO. One of the PCs is a Myrmidon, a Bhakashal fighter/magic-user, but in this case a fighter/alchemist. Myrmidons can create potions, and these are high level PCs, so in this case the Myrmidon can create potions from the appropriate fantastic ingredients (basically monster parts) with a spell, rather than needed a full laboratory.

So they decided to pose as a travelling alchemist and his retinue. They purchased a tent in the market area and started making and selling potions using the various monster parts that the Myrmidon had collected over the last few weeks of adventuring.

Flayers in the city live like wealthy Roman lords, on huge estates where they indulge their pleasures, eat brains and explore other planes in their spare time. They don’t “enforce the law” on rabblerousers, they use non-illithid troops for that. So the party had a visit from the local guards at one point, but some banter and a bribe got them to move on.

Now they had a cover, and they had managed to get information on a mind flayer who left the city on a regular basis. Most of the flayers stay in the city, but there are a few that travel around the underworld. One of those flayers, Sogogg Brot by name, was leaving in two days to head out of the city and to another city a week or so away for some nefarious purpose. This was an opportunity to get access to a flayer when it wasn’t in it’s estate and well protected.

They bribed one of the hunters who had travelled with Brot before to find out information about how he traveled, and discovered that he stopped off at a water source about a two day journey from the city to water his mounts, they were going to wait for him around there.

They left a day before Brot was going to leave, and had 2 days of travel through the underworld. That’s 8 random encounter checks (4 per day).

I find random encounter checks fascinating, particularly if you let the dice dictate the result rather than fudging to ensure there is an encounter. Sometimes they roll 4 checks a day for several days and get nothing. Other times they get multiple encounters over consecutive days, or even on the same day. Because we roll everything in the open and the odds are announced, they know that any encounter is random, pure luck (though the odds vary by time of day, and there are things you can do to reduce odds of an encounter).

So, when it happens, they react to it. When the parents came by to pick up the kids one of my kids mentioned that the players, “screamed like crazy three times during the session”.

They screamed each time we rolled an encounter.

Never let anyone tell you differently, players LOVE to roll dice, and rolling dice in the open is even more exciting. Random encounter checks are a highlight of the game, not something that “wastes your time” on the way to the real adventure.

Rant over.

Travelling through the Bhakashal underworld is a spooky affair, lighting is limited to certain luminescent mosses, striations of luminescent metals in the rocks of the cave walls, and luminescent insects that swarm around in the air, lighting things then leaving them in darkness. However, the underworld is also an enclosed space, even if the caves are considerably large, sound doesn’t disperse as much or get carried away on the wind as much (there is air movement, but not as much as above ground). So you tend to hear things before you see them, and they are often closer than you realize.

They set out and in the first 6 hour block they had an encounter right away (1 in 12 odds, encounter during hour 3). They were on a trail, all mounted, when they came upon a field of 7’ tall flowers, above which were a quartet of giant bees that had just finished with the flowers.

We rolled for surprise, no surprise for either side.

AD&D restricts encounter reaction rolls to encounters between parties that can communicate with each other. In Bhakashal you roll an encounter reaction roll for every meeting between the PCs and any NPCs/monsters/animals. In this case I rolled to see what the bees would do when they saw a party of 5 humanoids riding giant lizards. It came up neutral, so the bees buzzed off. There was a brief discussion of trying to slay a bee for monster parts, but they decided to stay on point.

The next encounter check was negative. The third for day 1 was positive. Two in one day, that was notable.

This time it was mobats. I forgot how BIG mobats are, 12-15 foot wingspans, and they have a fear cry that can mess with your party.

Fortunately for everyone there was no surprise, but they were very close.

“You have seen no trees in the underworld, but here the fungi grow as tall as trees, and for the last half hour or so you have been following a trail through a mushroom forest. As the trail bends slightly to the right three huge shapes swoop down from above towards you.”

The mobats were only 30 feet away when the party noticed them, diving directly towards the party Myrmidon, Gyre and Warlock. The Warlock had time to cast Power Word Stun, and took out one of the mobats instantly. It was, however, diving directly for  the Warlock at the time, so he had to roll a saving throw to avoid it crashing into him. That was successful, however, and it crashed into the ground, damaging itself so badly it would not be able to fly away.

The second mobat screeched as it dove towards its prey. Two of the PCs were in the AOE and had to save or experience fear. They both made their saves. The party thief spurred his mount and rode forward, swinging his sword on the way by at the second mobat as it dove towards the party Gyre, he managed to tag it with a decent strike, not enough to make it unable to fly, but enough to reduce it to almost half HP.

The Gyre caused a cluster of rocks to spray at the descending mobat (the party is travelling with an earth Gyre, essentially an “earth bender”, who can do things with rocks  and earth, in this case causing a spray of stones from the ground to strafe his opponent), this finished it off and knocked it off course to slam into the ground harmlessly.

The third mobat was heading towards the party Myrmidon. A few months back, the Myrmidon had a magic sword forged for him. He paid BIG coin to have a blacksmith make the finest sword possible using meteorite steel. He then brought the heart of a white dragon to be used in the forging of the sword. He paid BIG coin to have a Bhakashal warlock in his House cast Enchant an Item on the sword and after a series of rolls he had a +1 Sword of Ice, +3 against fire creatures, Special Powers: x2 to damage against fire creatures, and cast Cone of Cold (at 6^th level power) 2x per day.

He had been itching to use the Cone of Cold ability, and this was a perfect opportunity. He activated the cone and it hit the mobat full on, freezing it solid (doing enough damage to slay it instantly). However, there was now a giant bat, frozen like a popsicle, barrelling directly towards the Myrmidon!

He failed his save, and the frozen bat slammed directly into him, knocking him to the ground and doing substantive damage.

The encounter was a reminder of something though, the party made almost all of their saving throws. At lower levels, they failed almost all their saving throws, but now that they are all 7^th level and above, that’s changing.

Many people hate binary pass fail mechanics, they like “failure but a consequence that moves things forward” or “success with a cost”. I prefer pass fail mechanics as they help to make clear how experience and power matter in the game. As characters level they get better saves, so they save versus these pass/fail effects more often. In essence, they EARN their improved prowess through risk taking, experience and smart game play (if you don’t play smart, you don’t survive!), not because the referee saves them when it “feels right” or the game gives them an out  “to move things forward”. They feel like badasses because they ARE badasses, they’ve earned it.

Word.

They chopped off a mobat head and camped down to sleep and rest their mounts. There were no encounters while they slept, and they headed out for day two of travel.

The next encounter happened when the party was sleeping on the second night. This time they were on a plain of tall grasses, something they hadn’t seen much of in the underworld (something indicative of water sources, unbeknownst to them). I rolled for the encounter on the random encounter table and I came up with a minotaur. There were no mazes around, so why would this creature be out and about?

 As a referee your job is to make the dice make sense, so I decided that this minotaur was part of a cult, it was surrounded by 8 cultists dressed in grey robes that worship the god Nareen, Bhakashal god of darkness, rebirth and knowledge. Each cultist carried a candle holder with a candle that burned with a low blue light. The minotaur carried a huge axe and was cowled so it’s eyes were covered. Nareen is often depicted with an axe (the axe that the god uses to cut through the daylight and bring on the night), and the cultists revere the minotaur, a creature that can navigate a maze and wields an axe, as an avatar of the god of knowledge. The cult maintains a maze that they use for sacrifices, and they are travelling to a settlement in the underworld where they will find their next sacrifice to bring back to the maze for slaughter. I randomly determined that the cultists were a mix of Saan (lizard folk) and Rakasta (cat folk).

Freeform riffing off of the setting to explain random encounters has to be one of my favorite things to do at the table.

The party thief was on watch when this group of cultists approached. He saw a dim blue light in the distance. Once they were about 100 feet away they could make them out. He couldn’t tell what the minotaur was other than very tall, the cultists looked normal humanoid sized.

He called out to them, greeting them, assuming them to be pilgrims of some kind. He spoke to them in Rakasta, his language.

One of the cultists responded in Rakasta, “Do you follow the Axe?”

Nareen is often referred to as “the axe”, so they were asking if the party worshipped Nareen.

The party thief wasn’t sure what this meant, so he kind of panicked and answered,

“We follow the hammer”

That was unexpected.

It just so happens that there is a Bhakashal god named Bhammak, a god of knowledge and artifice, who wields a hammer. I rolled to see how the cultist would interpret the PCs statement, and they decided that the PC was saying they were followers of Bhammak. Bhammak is a god of a similar domain, and the followers of those gods are generally aligned.

LOL, dumb luck!

So, the cultist asked the PC to approach them.

Honestly, I didn’t think he would do it. He hadn’t woken up the party yet, they were all soundly sleeping (I did roll to see if the exchange was enough to wake them up, but it did not). For some reason he decided to walk towards them alone, between the gently swaying long grasses of the underworld, while bird sized luminescent insects swarmed above, and the dull blue flames of their candles flickered.

Players, you can never predict them.

I made an encounter reaction roll, the PCs were (apparently) followers of an aligned god, and they had made no hostile moves, indeed, they were displaying an inordinate degree of trust. The roll came up positive, and the lead cultist cast a Bless spell on the party thief as he stood there in front of the group.

He couldn’t see much of the minotaur, but decided not to try and see more.

The cultists praised Bhammak and Nareen, moved their candles around in ritual circles, then moved off into the darkness to head to the village to extract their tribute in the form of a sacrifice.

Most of the party slept through the whole thing!

Encounter reaction rolls transform the game. Changing encounters from guaranteed violence to a range of possibilities, from violence at one end to alliances and aid at the other, makes for a far more interesting game, and makes travel matter much more. It also gives you opportunities to flesh out the game world and introduce flavor.

Big fun.

We stopped there for the session.

What the party doesn’t know is that the flayer they are after is a bit of a non-conformist, he is one of the few that leaves their city (most flayers are content to eat brains and explore other realms ethereally), and he isn’t particularly enamored with his fellow flayers. So if the party approach him with their plan to slay 4 flayers, he might just be interested in helping them to do so, as he can eliminate some rivals that way without having to wear it.

However, they may just go in guns blazing, if they do that, it will be interesting, the flayer doesn’t travel alone (quite obviously) and no one in the party is currently aware that mind flayers have 90% magic resistance.

It will be interesting!

Building Bhakashal - Session Report - Infiltration

Building Bhakashal - Session Report - Infiltration

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

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

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

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

Ambitious, the way it should be!

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

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

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

Today’s Session

The party was trying to get access to Maur Hoguelen, a wealthy Bhakashal merchant who has maintained a stranglehold over the sale of mounts by breeders in the marshlands to vendors in Bhakashal. Mounts are incredibly common in Bhakashal, and Maur is the middle man between the hunters who bring in wild creatures to use as mounts and the vendors who sell them.

Everyone goes through Maur. However, mounts are not used in the Raosk, and despite the fact that the hunters all go through the Raosk, Maur does not pay tribute to the Raosk Thieves Guild or deal with them at all.

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

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

One step closer!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the Raosk, nobody cared, LOL!

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that was that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grappling and open hand combat is WHAT THEY DO.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I rolled a natural 100, ENTHUSIASTICALLY POSITIVE.

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

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

And, just like that, they had another lead.

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

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

The process for spell research in Bhakashal is as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the spell he researched:

Rikan the Silent’s Scorpion Sting (Alteration)

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

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

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

Big fun.