Sorcery! #5 - The Beggar

Campaign Diary

The party set about planning the heist. Goncol called on his old contacts, and learned that the key to the vault at Vlada's Gambling Hall was kept by Horace, the pit boss, who usually kept an eye on the whole joint from the upper floors of the gambling hall. They discussed several options, but finally decided that they would ambush Horace on his way home and seize the key off his person.

With still several hours till the closing of the gambling hall, Morgana proposed the party returned to the Temple of Slangg, where she revealed the party's plans to the priest. The priest, bemused by his latest convert, decided to aid her, and provided them with information of where Horace lived. The party decided to steal into Horace's room at the inn where he kept a permanent room, hoping to find something which would give them some leverage over the man. However, they found little information there - Horace apparently kept all his business at the office; they nevertheless decided to steal the coins and a set of nice clothes they found there.

Returning to the gambling hall, the party staked out the place: two of them watched the front door, while the other two watched the back door.

After midnight the gamblers began to leave, and an hour later the back door opened, and the party saw a humanoid creature with no arms came out of the kitchen, holding several bags with the tentacles which emerged from its misshapened head. It threw the bags into a heap against the wall of the building, and returned into the kitchen.

A little while later, the front door opened, and two men exited and proceeded to lock it. Soon afterwards, the back door opened once more, and Horace, accompanied by two other men, exited, locked the door, and together the three made their way towards the inn.

The party trailed Horace and his men, and became aware that they were taking a circuitous route to the inn, perhaps just to avoid any ambush. Using his knowledge of the city, Goncol led the party to a narrow alley, where they managed to surround Horace and his companions.

The party, now masked to hide their identities, managed to quickly overcome Horace's men, but before they could get their hands on Horace, he smashed the windows of a nearby building and entered it. The party followed him into the building, and after a short scuffle managed to knock him out. The party searched and found a bunch of iron keys, which they took off of Horace. Then, carrying Horace's limp form between them, they returned to the gambling hall.

Using Horace's key to unlock the back door, the party entered the kitchen. There they found a staircase leading to the upper floor, a door to the main hall, and a door to the side. Entering the side door, they found themselves in a storeroom, and saw the humanoid creature they saw earlier on a pallet on the floor. The creature screamed, and Valerian struck it with a makeshift sap, hoping to knock it out, but the creature screamed even louder. Valerian struck it again, and then again, and the creature fell silent. Valerian had killed it. Immediately Valerian felt the blessings of his patron god Usrel, the goddess of Peace, depart him.

Another staircase led from the storeroom to the basement below. The party entered the basement to find two guards, alerted by the creature's screams, waiting for them. The party quickly subdued the guards, this time without killing them. Opening a door behind the guards with another key from Horace's bunch, they found themselves in a vault with many locked niches in the walls. Using his magical sense, Glowulf detected the faint glow of magic behind the door of one of the niches. To their horror though, they realised that none of the keys in the bunch fit any of the locks!

Morgana tried using sorcery to unlock the niches but failed. Goncol then tried his lock picks... and succeeded. He opened the niche, and found the book that he had stolen not so long ago.

The party took their loot back to the Temple of Slangg, where they rested for the rest of the night. Goncol studied the pages of the book, and memorised as much of it as he could. The next day they returned to Lortag's house, where they exchanged their loot for the third spell line. Lortag informed them that their heiest had become the hottest news in Khare, and he bade them to leave as soon as they could before Vlada and Darius' men found them.

The party still lacked one spell line, though. Desperate, they decided to find Theetah, the seventh noble of Khare, who was rumoured to have been blinded by the Red Eyes. At first they searched among the beggars near the South Gate, where the few beggars who claimed to be Theetah were quickly revealed to be impostors. Morgana then had the idea to search Theetah's old residence for clues. Goncol led the party to the abandoned mansion, but a search of the interior revealed no clue to the nobleman's whereabouts.

Returning outside, the party saw a blind beggar approaching them. When asked, the old man claimed to be Theetah. The party offered to help Theetah get his vengeance against the Red Eyes in exchange for his spell line, but Theetah, suspicious of their intent demanded that they revealed their purpose for opening the North Gate. Wary of leaking their mission to spies of the archmage, the party refused to do so - they were at an impasse.

Then suddenly, three winged forms appeared behind Theetah - harpies! As their cries pierced the air, Theetah begged the party to protect him against the harpies, whom he told them were sent by the Red Eyes to torment him. The party set themselves between Theetah and the harpies, and after a hard fight brought all three of the creatures down. The grateful Theetah reluctantly gave them the spell line.

With the sun setting, the party hurried to the North Gate. As they approached the isolated north wall, the few guards on the walls paid them little heed. Our party stood before the north gate, and one by one they each recited one line of the spell. When the final word of the spell was spoken, a rumbling sound issued from the gate. Belatedly, the guards realised something was wrong. They called out to the party. Three loud clanks were heard, as the bolts holding the gates disengaged themselves, and the doors to the gate began to open.

The party ran towards the gate, while the guards stared in confusion. They were through the gate before the first of the guards had descended the walls.

Prepping and Running the Game

I had planned to base the session on the module "Sea's 7", a heist module by Evan Perlman. The module had an interesting story, a cast of NPCs which would have provided role-playing opportunities, and some description of the layout of the gambling hall/casino. I imagined the PCs would interact with the NPCs and either try to con or blackmail their way to the vault, or else use subterfuge to lift the key from Horace. As it turned out they chose the murder-hobo approach. Well, at least they didn't just charge into the gambling hall, weapons flashing...

I did not plan on them visiting Horace's home, and had to make up where he lived on the fly. I decided that Vlada employed only people with no family, to ensure that they were less likely to be compromised, and that Horace was careful to leave all work-related materials at the gambling hall.

The ambush against Horace would have been an easy encounter for the party, so I decided that Horace would naturally guess that any attacker would have been after the keys to the vault, and so made his priority keeping the keys away from the attacker. I had Horace hide the vault keys inside the building he broke into - the irons keys the party found on him were keys to the other doors in the hall. Had the players asked to search the building for other keys, I would have let them find the hidden keys.

The flayer, the tentacled creature whom Valerian killed, was originally a cook found in another encounter in the original book. I decided to put him in the kitchen of the gambling hall as the party had not had a chance to meet it earlier. The creature was harmless, and probably the only innocent being in the whole city, and it was a shame that it died despite their intention to avoid killing it. In the original book, killing the creature would have resulted in the failure of the whole mission, I believe.

The encounter with Theetah was pretty much as in the original book. I decided to place him near his old residence when Morgana's player suggested the party search it.

Over all I found the session rather bland. Part of it I attribute to the low crunch of the combat system. In future sessions I will try to let the NPCs utilise more of the combat options, which will hopefully inspire the players to try them too.