terrycloth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
terrycloth) wrote2005-03-15 12:50 am
terrycloth) wrote2005-03-15 12:50 am
Mr. Adventurer, PI
Jeff is too busy right now to DM the normal Monday game, and he said in e-mail today that he'll likely stay too busy through April, so Ed suggested we have a substitute DM in the meanwhile, and David (Stacey's brother) stepped up to volunteer.
Given the late notice, we of course didn't have characters made up, so we started out by making them. David was using some third-party character background generator that involved us rolling twenty million times on a bunch of tables of tables of tables, and refused to tell us what any of the rolls meant until he was finished, ostensibly so that he could work it all together into a story... but then decided it was taking too long and skipped the story part, just giving us the information line by line.
Then we generated names randomly using a d30. I ended up as 'Phygtyl', and Stacey as 'Tydek'. Ed was 'Ignacious', but that was just one he chose, instead of random. We never actually used the names in-game anyway.
A paladin, a ranger, and a rogue walked into a marketplace, where they spent some time scamming people out of their money with Three Card Monte, until they saw a woman post a job offer -- find her kidnapped child for 300 gold. The ranger altered the contact information to reduce competition, and they went to talk to the womanand take the job.
The child, the sixth to be kidnapped in just a couple weeks, had been mysteriously kidnapped from a locked room... well, okay, not *that* mysteriously, as the lock on the window shutters had been jimmied. The ranger tried to track the invader, but it was too late and the city streets too well traveled, and he quickly lost the trail, although it seemed to lead toward the beach. They asked around to see if there were any witnesses, and an old man told them that a stranger carrying a 'struggling sack' had wandered along the beach towards the tannery district. But that was about where that trail ended, as there was nothing obviously untoward happening near the tanneries.
So, after staking out the beach to see if they could catch the kidnapped in the act of kidnapping someone else, they headed back to talk to their employer again, only to find her in the process of being raped.
The rapists seemed civilized and pleasant, aside from the raping, although they refused to stop raping even with swords at their throats, so the party had to kill them. They turned out to be much stronger than they looked, but the party managed to prevail. Not having any healing, they had to wait a full day before they could interrogate the survivor, and the only thing he had to tell them was that he'd been hired in the 'Coughing Dragon', a tavern in the tannery district, by a man who looked very high class.
So they killed him too, and went to check out the tavern. There *were* high class people doing *some* sort of business, but their carriage was too fast for the party to follow, and headed into the controlled-access high-class section of town anyway. The party noted the symbol of one of the merchant houses on it, though, and immediately assumed that the merchant house was behind the kidnappings.
This left a curious lack of motive for the kidnappings, since a great merchant house would have been able to just buy as many kids as they could eat. Talking to their employer about that, they found out that on the day of her birth, the kidnapped child had been spoken over by a mysterious preistess of an elder god. The same with all the other kidnapped children. Oh, and did we mention she was kidnapped on her birthday, just like all the others? No? Sorry.
There were a few days before the next scheduled kidnapping (they asked around), so they decided to investigate the House of Lyon, who was possibly implicated. They didn't see anything out of the ordinary from the street, though, and eventually it came down to a stakeout.
They set up the paladin at the Coughing Dragon, where they assumed the kidnapper would head first. But... he didn't, and they lost some time retrieving her. Instead, he headed to a shack near the place where one of the kidnapped childen's bodies had been found, all chewed up. Once they were all together again, the party rushed into the shack, disposed of the crazy shack-guardian, and headed down through the obvious trapdoor under the big rug into the insane sauhaugin temple.
The priest there was caught in the act of sacrificing a baby, and although it was a long, long battle, he was quickly surrounded and unable to use magic (or at least unwilling to risk taking all the AoOs for a measely 2nd level spell), and so eventually defeated. The sauhaugin was a lot harder, especially because it couldn't be flanked without someone going and swimming, and came within a hare's breath of taking down the ranger, but it, too, was eventually defeated. The party liberated a bunch of treasure and a pair of frightened children (one sitting on an altar of rusty knives waiting to be sacrificed, the other underwater, partially eaten by the sahaugin but still alive), who they returned to their respective parents.
Given the late notice, we of course didn't have characters made up, so we started out by making them. David was using some third-party character background generator that involved us rolling twenty million times on a bunch of tables of tables of tables, and refused to tell us what any of the rolls meant until he was finished, ostensibly so that he could work it all together into a story... but then decided it was taking too long and skipped the story part, just giving us the information line by line.
Then we generated names randomly using a d30. I ended up as 'Phygtyl', and Stacey as 'Tydek'. Ed was 'Ignacious', but that was just one he chose, instead of random. We never actually used the names in-game anyway.
A paladin, a ranger, and a rogue walked into a marketplace, where they spent some time scamming people out of their money with Three Card Monte, until they saw a woman post a job offer -- find her kidnapped child for 300 gold. The ranger altered the contact information to reduce competition, and they went to talk to the womanand take the job.
The child, the sixth to be kidnapped in just a couple weeks, had been mysteriously kidnapped from a locked room... well, okay, not *that* mysteriously, as the lock on the window shutters had been jimmied. The ranger tried to track the invader, but it was too late and the city streets too well traveled, and he quickly lost the trail, although it seemed to lead toward the beach. They asked around to see if there were any witnesses, and an old man told them that a stranger carrying a 'struggling sack' had wandered along the beach towards the tannery district. But that was about where that trail ended, as there was nothing obviously untoward happening near the tanneries.
So, after staking out the beach to see if they could catch the kidnapped in the act of kidnapping someone else, they headed back to talk to their employer again, only to find her in the process of being raped.
The rapists seemed civilized and pleasant, aside from the raping, although they refused to stop raping even with swords at their throats, so the party had to kill them. They turned out to be much stronger than they looked, but the party managed to prevail. Not having any healing, they had to wait a full day before they could interrogate the survivor, and the only thing he had to tell them was that he'd been hired in the 'Coughing Dragon', a tavern in the tannery district, by a man who looked very high class.
So they killed him too, and went to check out the tavern. There *were* high class people doing *some* sort of business, but their carriage was too fast for the party to follow, and headed into the controlled-access high-class section of town anyway. The party noted the symbol of one of the merchant houses on it, though, and immediately assumed that the merchant house was behind the kidnappings.
This left a curious lack of motive for the kidnappings, since a great merchant house would have been able to just buy as many kids as they could eat. Talking to their employer about that, they found out that on the day of her birth, the kidnapped child had been spoken over by a mysterious preistess of an elder god. The same with all the other kidnapped children. Oh, and did we mention she was kidnapped on her birthday, just like all the others? No? Sorry.
There were a few days before the next scheduled kidnapping (they asked around), so they decided to investigate the House of Lyon, who was possibly implicated. They didn't see anything out of the ordinary from the street, though, and eventually it came down to a stakeout.
They set up the paladin at the Coughing Dragon, where they assumed the kidnapper would head first. But... he didn't, and they lost some time retrieving her. Instead, he headed to a shack near the place where one of the kidnapped childen's bodies had been found, all chewed up. Once they were all together again, the party rushed into the shack, disposed of the crazy shack-guardian, and headed down through the obvious trapdoor under the big rug into the insane sauhaugin temple.
The priest there was caught in the act of sacrificing a baby, and although it was a long, long battle, he was quickly surrounded and unable to use magic (or at least unwilling to risk taking all the AoOs for a measely 2nd level spell), and so eventually defeated. The sauhaugin was a lot harder, especially because it couldn't be flanked without someone going and swimming, and came within a hare's breath of taking down the ranger, but it, too, was eventually defeated. The party liberated a bunch of treasure and a pair of frightened children (one sitting on an altar of rusty knives waiting to be sacrificed, the other underwater, partially eaten by the sahaugin but still alive), who they returned to their respective parents.