Preamble
We have turned the corner in the campaign from the point of view that the game was projected to run 10-15 episodes. As we enter into session 11, we should be on track to begin the final climb to the campaign's climactic ending and "post credits" set up for Season 2. The party is on their way to recover the needed tools to reverse a convergence event, and hopefully not kill the major NPC along the way. Of course they've also assumed that both he and the convergence shard are safely hidden away. Fools these mortals be...
Picking up with Combat
When we left the heroines they were engaging with men in full plate mail armor. The fight that ensued was solid and while I'd love to share the statblocks here, these particular beasts are coming around for another go at the group in the future so, no spoilers there. What was fun was to explore some alternative attacks to the standard "hit them with my sword" but adding some surprises in the form of tangling chains to the mechanized men.
One trick is to keep an eye to the various monsters with webs, and other similar abilities to set appropriate DC's for escape and ranged attack bonuses. The good news here is that it's not that hard to quickly look up a CR3 creature (or there about) and see what they have for these stats.
Sisters Unite
This episode added Delilah to the party as another hanger on. Lindy's sister arrived assuming that the people she was in the company of were also bandits, the like of which Delilah had been tracking and hoping to remove from the area by force. Seeing a chance to join forces to a mutual good, she was relatively easily won over.
Delilah
Lindy
While I enjoy the RP and seeing Aveline go into "Cool Aunt" mode I was a little surprised that her flirting with Helena, her adventures with Clarise did not translate into interest in either of the two sisters. I'm chalking it up to "they're messing with me" rather than my own inability to read a room for potential romantic tensions.
Maybe the group needs to encounter a broad shouldered man of the cloth, someone with a deep rooted faith and solid sword arm. Tusks preferred.
You had a plan for getting in
Following Delilah's lead the party set out to ambush a camp of brigands and blackguards that are plaguing the area. They arrived at the campsite to find the one person on watch asleep. The party is fully rested making this attack in the predawn twilights. And they had a plan.
And the plan was great. Syb snuck into the camp caught the guard unaware, put a knife to him and had him right where she wanted him.
The only problem was that no one talked about what to do once she got into position. What was a perfectly executed ambush turned into a furball as bandits came out of their tents, pulled people into tents and chaos followed.
In the fight the leader of the bandits joined the fray, coming out barefoot but strapping into his armor. Kati, the Half Orc cleric was there to face him down and make him regret his life of crime and violence as one of our players captured below:
The fight was pretty intense and represented the second combat of the night. For a group that had been really focused on in depth Role Play for so much of our time together I was really surprised that when we wrapped everyone was very pleased with the flow of the night. The combat was a tense one with a few close calls but I've yet to put them in another do-or-die situation like we had in our semi-random Gnoll encounter.
Looking forward
I used to sneak some minor spoilers in here but I'm getting out of that habit. Things here are pretty safe for the players to know what I'm thinking as well. It'll give us time to vet some of the more challenging aspects of the game storywise.
The sisters definitely have a history and an agenda. I have plans for them and what they're there to do for the party and to the party. How do they work in with Cormag the evil Cleric of the Forge God? Well that's another story for another time. But that is a direction the party is currently traveling. And leveling up along. I had planned to let the party reach level 4 after they got the Tunneler and then level 5 at the end of the season. I may have to adjust that plan based on the energy expended going after Cormag.
I also want to explore some resistance to the Empire. So far the Empire seems fairly benign. It is an empire with a single hereditary head of state and government. The Empress does reign supreme. There are good people within it who do generally good things day to day. There are evil people who do evil things that would not like those good people in the Empire and would want to harm them.
The real moral issue, I suppose here, is whether or not resistance for resistance's sake is a good thing. Is fighting the Empire solely because it's a massive bureaucracy and military power something a "good" person does? Is it something that Kati and Syb would sign on for? Is there space for Aveline to take the side of the Empire despite her misgivings?
So many places to go from where we are so many stories to tell.
Watch the full episode here:
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