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| A rogues' gallery |
As our campaign begins, our gallery of rouges are assembled in The Hanged Man, a tavern on the seedier side of Arkleton, Analand's capital.
As they waited for their prospective employer to arrive, our villains took to boasting about their latest exploits to each other.
Gearfrid, a merchant formerly from Ruddlestone, told of how he was framed by a noble and thrown into prison, but through his skills at manipulation managed to convince the guards to smuggle in some weapons for him. He armed a fellow prisoner by the name of Silent, who was then able to cut them their way out of the prison, leaving behind fifty dead prison guards.
Zul and Penn, halfling highwaymen, boasted about the rich haul they got from waylaying another noble's caravan.
Zhora, an elven necromancer, spoke of how she and her dwarven bodyguard Zamm were hired by a baron to slay a rival, whom she then animated as an undead and made march back to her employer to collect her pay.
(At this point I was worried that Analand was running out of barons and the letter Z.)
Malus the minstrel then spoke of how he sowed discord and plague among the inhabitants of a city, causing strife and countless deaths, not for silver, but for his pleasure. His companion, the quiet druid named Horovar, merely grunted.
Then just as the sun was setting, a hooded man, calling himself only 'V', came to their table, and told them that the Grand Wizard Goncol had died in "an accident", and that he wished them to retrieve a scroll from the vault in his mansion, before the place would be occupied by the king's men.
V offered each pair of our villains 150 gold pieces for retrieving the scroll, and an offer for two other jobs afterwards if they succeeded, promising a total of 500 gold pieces for each duo upon completion of all three jobs.
Our villains took the contract, and set off to gather information on their target.
By speaking to former students of Goncol's school, suppliers of his food and magical components, and dwarven masons who built his tower, they were able to ascertain the layout of the mansion, the adjoining tower and its vault, and that Goncol most likely lived alone, and had in the past procured various alchemical supplies, as well as clockwork mechanisms.
Armed with this information, Silent, Penn, Zhora, and Horovar set off for the mansion, arriving a little after midnight.
Here they found that the compound was divided into two parts: a mansion to the front, and a tower in the rear, the latter surrounded by a hedge maze.
The party attempted to enter the tower through the hedges, but Horovar reported that the hedges were strangling vines from the Forest of Snatta, and that hacking through them would be too dangerous.
The party then entered the compound by the front gate, and found a plaque upon the door of the mansion with the following lines:
If you seek to enter my tower, first find ye two keys of power.
One lies behind my greatest treasure, source of my pride, my joy, my pleasure.
The other lies in plain sight, unhidden; but woe to he who takes it unbidden.
If you wish to enter my vault, two more keys you will need by default.
Where the first is, is crystal clear, but reach for it, and it will cost you dear.
The other is not found upon this Earth, to find it you must return to my birth.
Venture into the mansion of Goncol, and you will find out I am quite the
Wary of entering through the front doors, the party pried open a pane of glass on the window to the dining hall, and Penn the halfling climbed through, and opened the door from inside. In the main lobby they found four bronze statues depicting Goncol himself, the Arch-sorcereress Morgana, a warrior named Valerian, and an elven warrior named Glowulf. When they wondered aloud whether the statues would animate and attack them, the statues started to speak, denying that they would do so; and true to their words, they did not. The party questioned the statues, but they could provide little information.
The party then searched through the rooms in the mansion, encountering a few magical traps, but no opposition, and found various minor magical items, such as an egg-cup that cooked eggs to perfection, a wand of fruit transmutation, a salt cellar that held ten times its volume in salt, a glow globe, a couple of magical pillows, and a couple of clockwork artifacts: a musical box in the shape of a nightingale, and an alarm clock in the shape of a rooster.
Inside Goncol's bedroom, they found the Grand Wizard lying in his bed. Horovar struck at the form with his sword, only to find that it was an illusion. They searched the room, and Silent found the first key, a small golden one, in an alcove hidden behind a nude portrait of Goncol himself.
The party descended to the cellar, and found a hidden door to an underground prison. Within one of the cells was a man who looked like the statue named Valerian. The man claimed to have lost his memory from the tortures inflicted upon him by Goncol, and begged the party to release him. After some deliberation, our villains decided to do so, gave him some of the loot they had taken so far to carry, and took him outside the mansion... whereupon he bolted for the front gate. Penn reacted swiftly and put two arrows into the man's back before he could reach the gate. As he fell to the ground, dying, his form changed to that of a hideous, tentacled humanoid. Horovar moved to where he fell, but could not bring himself to deliver a killing blow - but the creature expired soon after.
Unable to locate a second key, the party decided to go into the hedge maze instead. Entering the garden that led to the maze, they found a fountain, and lying within it was a second golden key. Horovar used his sword to gently fish the key out, but as the key broke the surface of the water, the water began to move and take a humanoid form...
Prepping and Running the Game
The basis for this session is Magical Murder Mansion by Skerples.
I had originally envisioned the campaign to be three assassination missions, each of which would take place in a different environment. I thought that Morgana would be encountered in her Sorceress' Tower, and Goncol in his mansion, and so I searched for modules set in mansions, and came upon this module. In the module the occupant of the titular mansion was dead, and I thought I could work that into my storyline too.
The actual mansion in the module is much larger and had more parts to it, but I wanted a much shorter session and thus had to cut the number of rooms down. I went through the module, noted the encounters which I thought were funny or interesting, and then placed them into the rooms in the Heroic Maps mansion map which I bought a while back.
I then added minor magical items from a table in Knock #1 to locations which they would fit in. This encouraged the players to search the place, and also placed some pressure on them, as we tracked encumbrance for this game.
Then, in the finest tradition of funhouse dungeons, I composed a poem to let give the players know that they had to find keys to complete the mission, and also clues as to where they might be found.
The players were rather cautious in the first part of the game, no doubt due to their experience in our last campaign, where every room was either guarded by undead or animated statues or golems, or trapped. The four statues were of course for comic relief, but also played an important role for the whole campaign as they would allow our characters to recognise the four members of the party from the previous campaign.
They also spent time searching for loot, and trying to figure out what each magical item did. There was no real combat this session - the only time we drew cards for initiative was when the creature tried to run away, and Penn shot it... because he was carrying some of their loot. Ironically, when Horovar moved in to try to crush the creature's head with the bear trap he had, the player rolled 3 successes on him empathy check on 3 dice - you have to *fail* an empathy check to deliver a coup de grace.
The party had spent a lot of in-game time just acquiring one key, leaving them 2 or 3 hours to enter the vault and find the scroll before daybreak and the king's men would move in. There will be a couple of combats in the next game, so we will find out how fast and interesting the combat system in Forbidden Lands is.
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