terrycloth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
terrycloth) wrote2005-11-08 12:43 am
terrycloth) wrote2005-11-08 12:43 am
Entry tags:
Nothing Happens
Had a session of Patrick's D+D game, in which nothing happened. Although several things *almost* did. This time, Jeff was gone. I guess we're rotating, and next week it's my turn to skip out? (Patrick did last week, which is why there was no game)
After retrieving the piece of the plenary malachite, the party was able to extract themselves from the sewers without much trouble -- the ropes and such they'd left behind were well-enough planned to get everyone out, and the dog who would have been the only one who couldn't climb them was dead.
They headed to the nearby city's adventurer's guild, to inquire about how exactly they'd pay taxes on the loot they'd found. They were told to just go to the magistrate and he'd handle everything... nothing about 'he'll be using truth spells so don't lie' or 'get everything appraised by an independant auditor first', although that advice would have been very helpful.
The first snag was when Rrann claimed 500 gold as the 'appraised value' of the paradox engine. "He lies!" intoned the blind seer-child-slave the judge had on a leash. "Well... we didn't actually appraise it," Rrann admitted, not mentioning that it was magical and under a Nystul's magic aura to appear not so. An appraiser was brought in, who named the price of 2000 gold for the box and all, since the crystals were still magic. "Do you know what they do?" the judge asked. "We think they power some magical item," Marriss spoke, which was the truth.
The second snag was when they failed to declare the plenary malachite. It was bad enough that they didn't declare it, but Seldon tried to lie repeatedly to avoid declaring it once they were caught, and came within a hare's breath of getting the entire group imprisoned for a week while he 'cast the spells to retrieve it'. But, once it was presented for appraisal, it proved as impossible to identify in the empire as it had back home, and "If it has any powers, we don't know what they are" was a truthful statement, as Uei had refused to tell them.
There was an additional surcharge to remove the child slaves from the empire -- all slaves were considered partially property of the state, so they had to pay the state to buy their freedom. Fortunately, child slaves were not worth much, and they took it out of the Paladin's share, since he was the one who'd insisted on taking them and 'freeing' them.
At any rate, the judge was reasonably understanding of the 'small' lies they'd gotten caught in, and the money they ended up paying in taxes was enough that he didn't feel compelled to inquire too deeply into the lies they'd managed to get away with, so they escaped from the empire without further trouble, and were told that they'd be welcome to come back and spend more money whenever they wanted.
In the first town outside the empire, Vryce gave the children their freedom... by turning them over to the temple of Tyr, where they were made into acolytes and immediately put to work. Mariss and Seldon were not amused, but not inclined to stop him either -- children *did* need someone to look after them, and it wasn't like an orphanage would be a good solution, even if there were any to be found.
After that, the plan was to make a quick stop at the Dwarven kingdom so that Mariss could get a replacement companion. She wasn't actually powerful enough to take a mountain lion as a companion, but the dwarves did have a selection of dire badgers and weasels. She picked out a likely one, trained for combat, and bound him to her, then got her dead dog's chainmail refitted as badger-barding. While they were there, Seldon picked up a bunch of scrolls, and Rrann bought a mithril chain shirt, since he missed the elven mithril but couldn't afford a full suit of chain.
They were also offered a job, by the head of a 'merchant house', who was annoyed that a human thieves' guild was muscling in on his fencing operation. He offered them rich rewards (as in 'tens of thousands of gold worth of items') to take his rivals down... but Marriss and Seldon refused to have anything to do with it. Not wanting to risk discovery, he basically forced the party to choke down enchanted beer that bound them to an oath of secrecy -- it very nearly came to blows, as Rrann was not amused by this entire procedure, but relented when the 'merchant' (who was also going to drink the beer) swore as well not to harm them.
The temple of Luck was breathing down Seldon's neck by now, as they'd sent for him to make good on the favor he'd promised, and he had yet to return to Elveen. Another reason to head back there was to see the bard about the second piece of the malachite, which they still had no idea how to use. But there were downsides... chief among them being that making that detour would leave them smack dab in the middle of the goblin king's invasion of Blennin at the time it was prophesized to occur.
So instead, Seldon conjured up a bunch of disposable mounts, and they rode hard for the salt marsh, riding until the mounts fell over dead, at which point new ones were summoned. Nigel (their gnome) and Digger (their badger) were not amused by this, but had no say in the matter.
They managed to get all the way to the elven border town, about halfway to the marsh, without incident, where they were invited to dinner by the elvish ambassador they'd met before. He mentioned that several elvish scouts had been sent to the marsh to investigate the seer's murder and the prince's kidnapping, but hadn't reported back yet, which was unusual... and of course they were under spells of nondetection, so scrying to see what had happened was right out.
Rrann asked for a token to let them know they were on the same side, if they should meet, but the ambassador reminded them that Vryce had been marked as an elf-friend, which should suffice.
last session | next session
...then we quit early because Jen was feeling woozy, having done nothing but talk to various people and do our best to avoid adventure of any sort all session.
After retrieving the piece of the plenary malachite, the party was able to extract themselves from the sewers without much trouble -- the ropes and such they'd left behind were well-enough planned to get everyone out, and the dog who would have been the only one who couldn't climb them was dead.
They headed to the nearby city's adventurer's guild, to inquire about how exactly they'd pay taxes on the loot they'd found. They were told to just go to the magistrate and he'd handle everything... nothing about 'he'll be using truth spells so don't lie' or 'get everything appraised by an independant auditor first', although that advice would have been very helpful.
The first snag was when Rrann claimed 500 gold as the 'appraised value' of the paradox engine. "He lies!" intoned the blind seer-child-slave the judge had on a leash. "Well... we didn't actually appraise it," Rrann admitted, not mentioning that it was magical and under a Nystul's magic aura to appear not so. An appraiser was brought in, who named the price of 2000 gold for the box and all, since the crystals were still magic. "Do you know what they do?" the judge asked. "We think they power some magical item," Marriss spoke, which was the truth.
The second snag was when they failed to declare the plenary malachite. It was bad enough that they didn't declare it, but Seldon tried to lie repeatedly to avoid declaring it once they were caught, and came within a hare's breath of getting the entire group imprisoned for a week while he 'cast the spells to retrieve it'. But, once it was presented for appraisal, it proved as impossible to identify in the empire as it had back home, and "If it has any powers, we don't know what they are" was a truthful statement, as Uei had refused to tell them.
There was an additional surcharge to remove the child slaves from the empire -- all slaves were considered partially property of the state, so they had to pay the state to buy their freedom. Fortunately, child slaves were not worth much, and they took it out of the Paladin's share, since he was the one who'd insisted on taking them and 'freeing' them.
At any rate, the judge was reasonably understanding of the 'small' lies they'd gotten caught in, and the money they ended up paying in taxes was enough that he didn't feel compelled to inquire too deeply into the lies they'd managed to get away with, so they escaped from the empire without further trouble, and were told that they'd be welcome to come back and spend more money whenever they wanted.
In the first town outside the empire, Vryce gave the children their freedom... by turning them over to the temple of Tyr, where they were made into acolytes and immediately put to work. Mariss and Seldon were not amused, but not inclined to stop him either -- children *did* need someone to look after them, and it wasn't like an orphanage would be a good solution, even if there were any to be found.
After that, the plan was to make a quick stop at the Dwarven kingdom so that Mariss could get a replacement companion. She wasn't actually powerful enough to take a mountain lion as a companion, but the dwarves did have a selection of dire badgers and weasels. She picked out a likely one, trained for combat, and bound him to her, then got her dead dog's chainmail refitted as badger-barding. While they were there, Seldon picked up a bunch of scrolls, and Rrann bought a mithril chain shirt, since he missed the elven mithril but couldn't afford a full suit of chain.
They were also offered a job, by the head of a 'merchant house', who was annoyed that a human thieves' guild was muscling in on his fencing operation. He offered them rich rewards (as in 'tens of thousands of gold worth of items') to take his rivals down... but Marriss and Seldon refused to have anything to do with it. Not wanting to risk discovery, he basically forced the party to choke down enchanted beer that bound them to an oath of secrecy -- it very nearly came to blows, as Rrann was not amused by this entire procedure, but relented when the 'merchant' (who was also going to drink the beer) swore as well not to harm them.
The temple of Luck was breathing down Seldon's neck by now, as they'd sent for him to make good on the favor he'd promised, and he had yet to return to Elveen. Another reason to head back there was to see the bard about the second piece of the malachite, which they still had no idea how to use. But there were downsides... chief among them being that making that detour would leave them smack dab in the middle of the goblin king's invasion of Blennin at the time it was prophesized to occur.
So instead, Seldon conjured up a bunch of disposable mounts, and they rode hard for the salt marsh, riding until the mounts fell over dead, at which point new ones were summoned. Nigel (their gnome) and Digger (their badger) were not amused by this, but had no say in the matter.
They managed to get all the way to the elven border town, about halfway to the marsh, without incident, where they were invited to dinner by the elvish ambassador they'd met before. He mentioned that several elvish scouts had been sent to the marsh to investigate the seer's murder and the prince's kidnapping, but hadn't reported back yet, which was unusual... and of course they were under spells of nondetection, so scrying to see what had happened was right out.
Rrann asked for a token to let them know they were on the same side, if they should meet, but the ambassador reminded them that Vryce had been marked as an elf-friend, which should suffice.
last session | next session
...then we quit early because Jen was feeling woozy, having done nothing but talk to various people and do our best to avoid adventure of any sort all session.