Lucky session 13…
In attendance for this session are Biminey, Stak, Torel, Visra with T’Balktu being played by Visra as well.
Sushanna is brought out to the airship and started down the path of the Artificer by Biminey. This after a couple of days and Biminey attuning the master control to her and giving her a artificer familiar grants her rudimentary control of the airship. In that she can take it down to the ocean’s surface or up above the clouds.
While the rest of them are in town Biminey has crafted a mount for one of the ballistae that was purchased giving it the ability to aim downwards at a 45 degree angle from the bow of the ship. He also devised mounts for the longboat attaching it to the stern of the ship.
In town Torel and Stak meet with Garon, Werrick the Watch Captain and a new face to them that of Sargent Driskull, a fighter of middle aged years which tells them a lot about his skill levels.
Captain Werrick and Garon have obviously reached something of agreement as to how they should proceed and the group talks with Driskull primarily. It’s his firm belief and he’s convinced the others that the city needs a show of force or they risk the hobgoblins thinking they’re weak and that would result in the tribes swarming over the city, an attack they cannot hope to repulse. It’s his plan to strike at one of the villages and wipe out one of the tribes, allowing a few to spread the word. If they don’t succeed he believes the town is doomed to fall to the hobs.
This makes sense to Torel and Stak and they defer to the old warrior, expert killer that he is, and agree. The city is going to send 50 men on the mission, 6 heavy squads of 8 men along with Sargent Driskul and a corporal Bael. They make arrangements to get the mission underway and start picking the men and getting them equipped and arranged and agree to meet back 2 or 3 days for a review to acquaint the troops with the party.
They head back to the ship and pick up Biminey who’s now got Sushanna trained enough to raise and lower the boat. The group united once again head back to town and head to the Temple of Eris to gather their goods and such and are going to send them to the boat. Biminey also brought one of his new hirelings, Visra’s old retinue and is having her shop around for a suitable home for them all assuming that real estate given the future of the city and the exodus that is going on will find them a suitable place cheap.
At the temple Biminey finds a beggar child waiting for them with a tale woe. A man, an elf in his words wants to meet with the group to talk and the man has taken his sisters and threatens them with harm if the group doesn’t show up. Biminey rallies the troops and they head to a tavern in the dock district.
There they meet with Warrick the leader of the bandits that were raiding gold shipments, that captured them and tried to sell them to slavers and fought with them in the warehouse during a meeting with slavers and Meri, one of Shuk’s seconds, in an upstairs room. Warrick tosses Torel a scalplock and tells him it will grant them passage to a hobgoblin tribe that he’d dealt with and that he was doing this as a final job for his employer. He offers them the same general information that Driskull gave them. That hobgoblins respect martial ability. He tells them how to reach the tribe the trophy will grant them access to, the Jagged Maw tribe. He doesn’t know why he was tasked with meeting with the party but the money was good. He comes off to the group while cold blooded, he’s willing to have children killed if the party causes any trouble at this meeting but honorable in his own way, in that he’ll fulfill his side of a bargain. Meri’s presence is a bit of a puzzle and she’s not forthcoming with much information.
The group backs out of the room and leaves the tavern to be attacked by hobgoblin assassin’s, three of them in the street outside. The hob’s paralyze the party with poisoned bolts from crossbows and then attack them with garrotes in the street. The fight carries on for a bit and with two of the hobgoblins down, the third tries to flee. Biminey knocks him through a tavern window with his thundering armour power and Stak is waiting at the tavern door with his deadly accurate bow as the assassin tries to flee through the tavern.
They recover a pair of gloves that can be form and color shifted at will and that produce small bladed weapons at the wearer’s need. In addition they recover coup sticks from each of the assassins, one bearing 68 notches, the other two 18 and 19 notches. Obviously a master and his apprentices. They strip the bodies claiming valuables and wait for the watch to show up. They send for Driskull who wonders what the party has done that hobs would send assassin’s after them but the group isn’t very forthcoming with the information.
On one of the bodies they find a note from Warrick wishing them the best if they managed to defeat the assassins and admitting that he’d set them up for the attack after he had his meeting with them. He also pointed suspcion at Teagon one of the three councilors of the city, the one in charge of shipping goods inland by river and wagon. Mostly river.
They head back to the Temple and find Lerik waiting for them. Lerik has dug up some ancient law on the books granting the city the ability to tax adventurer’s 10% of their goods although in times of extreme duress the city can raise the cost up to 50%. Lerik’s aide lets slip the information that the group would have 24 hours to arrange for their goods to be appraised. Lerik has also hired two body guards that the group reads as being highly skilled, easily their own abilities and probably higher. On top of that he’s arranged for the Sargent Major of the watch along with Torn and several watchmen to be present as the party is served their notice.
As the group threatens to leave the city they’re given advice to talk to the other councilors and see what can be done about the laws.
They talk to Garon and reiterate their threats to simply leave the city to their fate and Garon swears to deal with the issue, passing along the information that Lerik is just not acting rationally these days and that he seems to have a very personal hatred of the group.
They pass the rest of the day in preparing for their trek in the morning to meet with the soldiers that are going on the hobgoblin raid. Biminey retrieves the high priests crystal and hides it in the heavy flail he carries for his Dancing Weapon power.
They meet with the soldiers and get introduced all around. Most of the troops are middle tier, in fact they’re probably stripping the watch and mercenaries of the bulk of their middle experience troops leaving only the young and the old so to speak left in the city.
Lerik finds them later that day, he’s furious and almost insane with rage that they’ve bypassed his attempts to get their goods or them to leave whichever he was going for. Visra, an impartial observer believes it’s not so much rage as fear is the primary emotion driving Lerik.
Early in the week hours the next morning they head south toward a farming commune on the coastline. They’re able to stealth their way through the countryside and reach a vantage point. Stak and a couple of scouts from the Watch kill an observer and they’re able to view the commune. They make plans, the bulk of the force will attack the commune and wipe out the rank and file of the hobs and rescue the visible captives kept in corrals. The party will go after the command structure that is set up in tents outside the commune.
A fight ensues and goes well, the group defeating mixed forces of hobgoblin warriors, casters, summoned undead, hill giant mercenaries and a Hand of Bane. The fight went well for the group, they’re able to take down the hobgoblin forces although one of the hill giant flees toward the end of the battle as it goes badly for them and the warcaster surrenders assuming he’ll be dealt with as other hobgoblins do. The group turns him over to Driskull to be tortured for information and makes sure he dies. A few of the grunts are set free to spread word of the deed in typical hobgoblin fashion and the group takes trophies included the Hand of Bane’s flail and the battle standard of the tribe which were known as the Throatcutters.
As the survivors of the battle are patched up and seen to and the captives counted and gathered we bring this session to a close as the group starts packing up the leader’s tent and stuffing it into their bag of holding along with assorted weapons and the like that will come in handy for a town under siege.
[Notes: This was a long session with a lot of non-combat interaction and we got a bit of a late start as the application I wrote for Temple (Biminey) didn't want to work right for me. Basically it's a dot net app that lets Temple press a mouse button to roll a d20 which is then announced audibly. But in the end we got going.
I was also using MasterPlan 'for real' for this session. It has a lot of good features but there are things I would have done differently to speed up usage of the app but overall I was happy with it. There are some basics that need to be addressed, the ability to add effects that boost defenses for a turn or two, attack boosters and that kind of thing. But its a very much supported and constantly updated application so there's a pretty good chance it'll continue to be developed.]
