When running a hexcrawl, the easiest option is to use a single random encounter table that applies to the entire hexcrawl. No matter the hex or circumstance, if an encounter is indicated you simply roll on your one-and-only encounter table and you’re good to go.

But it can also be well worth your efforts to prep and use specialized encounter tables. For example, you might have different encounter tables based on:

• Terrain type (forest encounters vs. mountain encounters)
• Type of travel (road encounters vs. river encounters vs. wilderness encounters)
• Time of day (night encounters vs. day encounters)
• Regional encounters (using different tables for the Old Forest vs. the Azure Fields)

These categories can also overlap with each other (or not overlap with each other) depending on how your classify your world. For example, you might have a Road Encounters table that is used in both the Old Forest and the Azure Fields, as long as the PCs are on a road. On the other hand, you might also have both an Old Forest Encounters table and an Old Forest Road Encounters table, distinct from the Azure Fields Encounters table (or tables).

WHY SPECIALIZED TABLES?

Specialized tables, as noted, increase the amount of work required to prep them and the complexity of using the tables at your table. So why bother?

Primarily, using multiple tables allow you to be more precise in describing your world.

• Wyverns only live in the mountains, so logically they should only be encountered there.
• A river-specific table would allow you to key boat-related encounters that would obviously be inappropriate on the King’s Highway.
• The shadow hounds only come out at night.
• Goblins infest the Old Forest, but fear to challenge the blue rocs of the Azure Fields.

And so forth.

This kind of detail and, crucially, distinction isn’t just about taking your worldbuilding to the next level. (Although it is.) It also creates a dynamic environment in which the players can make meaningful choices: Do you risk encountering shadow hounds by traveling at night? The risks of the Old Forest are different from the Azure Fields, where are you going to explore? And so forth.

Playtest Tip: The corollary here is that the PCs should be able to learn the details of your encounter tables. Not only can you use your encounter tables to seed your rumor tables (e.g., “Old Pete tells you that the shadow hounds only come out at night”), you can also tap them for background events or topics of conversation when NPCs are making chit-chat.

ADVANCED RULE: VARY ENCOUNTER CHANCE

You can vary the chance of having an encounter in the same way that you can vary the encounter tables you’re rolling on. If you choose to do this, I recommend simply writing the encounter chance at the top of each encounter table for easy reference.

Design Tip: One potential drawback of varying encounter chance is that it becomes difficult to pre-roll encounters, since you can’t always be sure exactly where the PCs will be for the next encounter check(s). On the other hand, it’s a very effective way of making some regions of your campaign world more dangerous than others.

ALTERNATIVE: CHECK ALL APPLICABLE TABLES

If you care about multiple encounter factors — e.g., both region and travel type — an alternative to prepping every possible combination of factors — e.g., having both an Old Forest Road Encounters table and an Azure Fields Road Encounters table — is to make an encounter check for each applicable table.

In other words, if you’re in the Old Forest and you’re traveling on the road, then you’d roll on both the Old Forest Encounters table and the Road Encounters table. On the other hand, if you’re in the Old Forest and you’re traveling along the river, then you’d roll on both the Old Forest Encounters table and the River Encounters table.

This can obviously increase the likelihood of an encounter, so another option is to check for an encounter and then randomly determine which applicable encounter table to roll on. (For example, roll 1d6. On 1-4 check the region encounter table; on 5-6 check the method of travel encounter table.)

On the other hand, checking multiple tables can be a great way of generating simultaneous encounters, allowing you to combine them in myriad ways (as described in Part 5: Encounters).

DESIGN NOTE: SINGLE HEX ENCOUNTER TABLES

Once you start designing region-based encounter tables into your hexcrawls, a common trap is to get a little too specific. While you certainly can drill your specialized encounter tables down to a specific hex (or perhaps a few hexes), you’ll almost never want to do this because the value-to-prep ratio isn’t great.

For example, imagine that you create six hex-specific random encounters. Well… how many times are the PCs likely to have a random encounter in that specific hex? And are those random encounters really so specific to that hex that they couldn’t be included in a larger regional table?

If the answer to that last question is, “No,” then the most likely reason is because the encounters are associated to a location within the hex (e.g., there’s a specific troll who sometimes charges a toll on this specific bridge). But an encounter that’s so tightly associated with a specific location is just a detail of the location, not a random encounter.

There can easily be exceptions to this. For example, maybe only in this specific hex will one encounter the weird abominations created by the genetic magic Alburturan, which have escaped or been set loose near his tower. It can totally make sense to have an Alburturan Abominations table that only applies in this very specific area. (And maybe you could find some other use for that table in the tower itself, thereby increasing its prep value?)

The point is that, if you’re tempted to do this, double check to make sure it’s really necessary.

Another option to consider is that special features like Alburturan’s abominations might be hex features separate from the random encounter system. (You can find another example of this in the original 1974 edition of D&D, which included a separate check to determine whether or not the owner of a stronghold will “ride forth” to meet any PCs passing through the stronghold’s hex.)

DESIGN NOTE: FOLLOW YOUR PLAYERS

To return to the beginning, the easiest way to handle random encounters in your hexcrawl is with a single encounter table.

In fact, if you’re designing your first hexcrawl, I highly recommend doing exactly that.

As you’re running your hexcrawl, though, pay attention to where the PCs go and what they’re interested in: Are they spending a lot of time in the Old Forest? Are they asking a lot of questions about the Azure Fields? Then you might consider defining those regions and creating specialized encounter tables for them.

This doesn’t mean that you also need to immediately create encounter tables for every other region on your hexmap! You can just continue using your general Random Encounters table for all those other areas. Add complexity over time and let your players and actual play guide your focus to where your efforts will be best rewarded.

If you’re looking for an intermediary step, consider adding a “Regional Encounter” entry on your general Random Encounters table. You can then key a single appropriate encounter (or, alternatively, a smaller 1d4 or 1d6 table) to each region, which will be triggered when you roll that Regional Encounter on the general table. This can, of course, also serve as the seed for a full regional encounter table when the time comes.

Back to Hexcrawls

Go to Part 1

The next stage of Call of the Netherdeep are the faction missions: Each faction has a series of six missions which start in Ank’harel, take the PCs into the sunken city of Cael Morrow, and eventually lead them into the Netherdeep. But we’re going to skip ahead to Cael Morrow itself, because — as the setting for half of the faction missions — we really need to get it straightened out before we can meaningfully work on the missions.

(Ank’harel itself is just fine, except for the fact that locations weren’t keyed to the map for some reason. So you’ll want to do that.)

This is, unfortunately, where your remix of the campaign is going to start getting harder. The key thing here is that:

1. Cael Morrow is a vast sunken city; but
2. The mapped section of Cael Morrow designed for the PCs to actually explore is a very, very tiny archaeological site (barely a few hundred feet across).

And the elephant in the room is that all the faction missions are written as if they were set in the entire, vast city of Cael Morrow, despite the fact that, in reality, they’re only set in the tiny, tiny archaeological site.

For example, in one mission the archaeological dig leader is concerned because one of his researchers has been missing for three days and he has no idea where she might be.

Where is she?

Two hundred feet away, straight down a linear corridor.

On a broader level, all the faction missions set in Cael Morrow are framed the same way:

Seven days after the end of their last mission, the characters are invited to meet Aradrine…

Seven days after the PCs successfully complete mission 4, Aradrine invites them…

Seven days after they successfully complete mission 5, Aradrine briefs the characters on their next assignment…

All three sets of factions are set up in the same way: The PCs do a short mission, then a full week passes, and then they’re given another mission.

But this is never going to actually happen because (a) the PCs have nothing else to do between missions and (b) the entirety of Cael Morrow consists of only seventeen keyed locations, so even if they haven’t fully explored the entire site during their first mission to the sunken city (which is quite plausible), they’ll certainly have done so before they get their next mission.

So you’ve got a couple choices here.

OPTION #1: REWRITE THE FACTION MISSIONS

The problem with Cael Morrow isn’t, necessarily, that it’s set up as a tiny archaeological expedition in the midst of a vast sunken city. The problem is that everything else in the campaign — the NPCs, the faction missions, the lore — is designed as if this wasn’t the case.

So your first option is to leave Cael Morrow more or less exactly the way it is and simply redesign the faction missions from the ground up to reflect the actual reality of the sunken city. Unfortunately, this almost certainly means more or less completely throwing out the faction missions as they exist and redoing them from scratch. (On the other hand, this may not actually be a terrible idea in any case, for reasons that we’ll discuss below.)

OPTION #2: REMIX CAEL MORROW

The other option, of course, is to do the opposite: Remix Cael Morrow so that the archaeological expedition — and the PCs’ explorations — encompass the entire sunken city. You’ll still need to make at least some tweaks to the faction missions, but you can hew much closer to the original structure of the campaign.

The trick, of course, is that you probably don’t want Cael Morrow to be a megadungeon with hundreds and hundreds of areas for the PCs to explore. (You could do that, but it would be a lot of prep, a lot of playing time, and almost certainly a huge, pace-killing distraction from the primary thrust of the campaign.)

The solution is probably an underwater pointcrawl. So let’s take a closer look at that option.

THE CAEL MORROW POINTCRAWL

If you’re unfamiliar with pointcrawls, you may want to check out the Pointcrawls series. The short version is that you’ll create a node map of locations that are connected with paths. The locations are the “points” of the pointcrawl and, during play, the PCs in a location can choose one of the paths connected to that location and follow it to another location.

The scale of a pointcrawl can vary from a local neighborhood to a small kingdom to an interstellar empire. Similarly, you key to each point can vary from a single landmark (e.g., a sunken statue) to a mini-dungeon (e.g., a small building) to a large dungeon (e.g., the Netherdeep). (Or planets or entire solar systems, although that’s probably more than we’ll need at the moment.)

Our pointmap here, obviously, would encompass the entirety of Cael Morrow. That’s the entire point of the exercise, after all. (Pun intended.) Cael Morrow was a massive metropolis, and its ruins now lie “in a vast underground cistern.” Structurally, our goals are:

• To increase the amount of time the PCs need to spend exploring Cael Morrow, so that they can’t knock the whole thing off in a single afternoon.
• Make the sunken city feel large enough that plot hooks like “somebody is lost down here, rescue them” or “an enemy faction has snuck into the city, hunt them down” make sense.
• Ideally, give the PCs the opportunity to actually explore the ruins and discover things people haven’t seen in centuries.

TRAVEL INTERVAL: The first thing we’ll want to do, therefore, is set the standard travel interval for the Cael Morrow pointcrawl to be large enough that it would take days to explore all of our keyed locations. (And, in practice, it will take even more with the PCs backtracking, getting lost, returning to base, and so forth.) Depending on exactly what your final pointmap looks like, I’d recommend at least a 1 hour as your base interval, possibly even 2 hours.

(Remember that, as needed, you can indicate that certain routes require multiple intervals.)

KEYSTONES: In Call of the Netherdeep (p. 122), the Allegiance of All-Sight has installed magical keystones which create “thick magical barriers of shimmering, light blue force around certain areas of Cael Morrow” which “have forced the water out of those areas, leaving behind dry, air-filled chambers and hallways.”

We’ll take that concept and, rather than having all the keystones create a single air-pocket, we’ll have them installed around specific buildings or small complexes that have archaeological or logistical significance to them. Each of these air-domed buildings, of course, is a location on our pointmap; and if the PCs get briefed by the Allegiance of All-Sight (or steal their survey charts) they can get access to the routes used between these locations (i.e., a chunk of the pointmap).

PATH TYPES: Off-hand, I can think of three different path types we might find in Cael Morrow.

• Keyway. The Allegiance of All-Sight may have used keystones to create traversable “roads” through the sunken city. This seems rather expensive at long distances, but would also considerably speed up travel (so they might be used to connect a few key hubs). The existence of keyways also opens up the possibility of a faction mission to either (a) install the stones necessary for a new keyway (speeding travel to a new section of the pointmap) or (b) disable one of the keyways.
• Flared. Some paths might be more clearly marked by the Allegiance. (Or, similarly, hidden signs used by other factions?) Might be cool to use some sort of bioluminescent technique.
• Sunken Paths. These just represent “standard” travel through the cold, dark waters of Cael Morrow. Unlike flared or marked paths, these might require some form of navigation check to avoid becoming lost while following them.

Having hidden paths, particularly those leading to sites which have not been discovered/identified by the factions, also seems appropriate. As the PCs push beyond the current excavations of the Allegiance, it makes sense that they’ll have to poke around the ruins.

DEEP DECONSTRUCTION

You can get started by simply grabbing the various rooms and buildings from Chapter 5 of Call of the Netherdeep and spreading them out across the ruins. (So, for example, the Allegiance Base Camp is not directly next to the Royal Guest House.)

I suspect you’ll want to flesh out your pointmap with additional locations. This doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking. Take your cue from the locations you’ve already got: New buildings don’t need to be more than one or two or a few rooms. And you can mix in a number of locations which are just singular points of interest (e.g., a statue or mural or strange artifact lying amidst the ruins).

As you’re expanding your pointcrawl, seize the opportunity to lock in more campaign lore.

You’ll want to give particular thought to the location of the Rift to the Netherdeep. My impulse is that this should basically be as far away from the Allegiance Base Camp as possible on your pointmap. The other thing to consider is: Who knows where the Rift is? The Allegiance, certainly, but is it limited to only certain members of the Allegiance or is it a secret kept by only a few? Should you add defensive measures around the Rift? (Would the PCs be asked to assist in those?)

And what about the other factions? How much do they know when the PCs first arrive in Ank’Harel? And what actions will they take (or ask the PCs to take) to find out?

Obviously the PCs can also just explore the ruins until they find the Rift for themselves. Although there will likely be those who try to stop them from doing so.

CAEL MORROW ENCOUNTER TABLE

I would recommend creating an encounter table for your pointcrawl. There are a number of cool monsters already keyed to the ruins that you can use here, but try to push your thinking beyond combat: Think weird magical effects emanating from the Netherdeep. Encounters with the Rivals. Archaeological teams moving through the ruins. And so forth.

Cael Morrow really doesn’t need to turn into a combat slog. There are strange dangers down here, of course, but keeping the focus on the enigmas of these dark depths will probably give you bigger payoffs.

ACCESSING CAEL MORROW

A final thing to consider is how difficult it should be to access Cael Morrow in the first place. In the campaign as written, a big deal is made out of the PCs needing to get an Allegiance of All Sight badge that gives them permission to access the site, but there’s no meaningful security enforcing that. (There’s like a half dozen people down there that can theoretically summon a handful of CR 1 and CR 3 security guards that the PCs can easily curb stomp.)

My gut says that it should be tougher than that, particularly since so many of the faction missions (which we’ll talk about in just a moment) are aimed at gaining access. This might include:

• Redesigning the Allegiance Base Camp to be more supportive of heist-style hijinks.
• Giving some thought to what the Allegiance’s security response will be if they detect a breach.
• Potentially adding roving security patrols within the ruins (either immediately or in response to the security response being increased).

Alternatively, maybe you go the other way and just accept that it’s trivial to access Cael Morrow and the badges just don’t matter. Maybe get rid of the badge concept entirely. Or maybe the real security perimeter is around the Netherdeep Rift.

The right answer here will almost certainly become clear to you as you start dialing in your pointcrawl and the Ank’Harel section of the campaign in general.

Go to Part 8: Faction Missions in Ank’Harel

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 30C: The Two Letters

The next morning Tellith gave Tor two letters that had arrived for him during the night. One of them was from Sir Gemmell of the Order of the Dawn.

The other was from Sir Kabel.

“I think I just wasted two hundred gold pieces,” Tor muttered to himself.

We’ve got a couple of things I’d like to highlight here.

First, the setup.

As we discuss in The Art of Pacing, meaningful choices are the beating heart of a roleplaying game, and as a GM you really want to put the spotlight on those choices by strongly framing scenes around them. In this case, Tor had put himself in the middle of the Order of the Dawn, and now the Order of the Dawn was splitting between two leaders: Sir Kabel, who was remaining loyal to Seyrun, and Sir Gemmell, who was loyal to the self-appointed Novarch Rehobath.

The core question, obviously, is: Who is Tor going to support?

I certainly had my suspicions (and you probably do, too) based on the party’s reaction to how Rehobath had handled Dominic. But the party was also technically working for Rehobath at the moment, so there was absolutely nothing simple about the situation. It was pretty muddy and very complicated, actually, which is precisely what made it such an interesting question.

Having the letters from both Kabel and Gemmell arrive at the same time was, of course, a way of slicing through all that complexity: Kabel. Gemmell. Who do you respond to? How do you respond? What’s your choice?

What Tor actually chose to do blew my mind.

But that will have to wait until our next update.

HONOR CHOICE, BUT USE YOUR PREP

The other factor here was Tor’s choice, earlier in this session, to seek out Shim and hire the information broker to deliver a message to Sir Kabel. I hadn’t anticipated this at all, but it was an inspired bit of gameplay.

(It somehow hadn’t occurred to me at all when I decided to reveal that the PCs had hired Shim during their period of memory loss that they would then continue hiring him for various tasks.)

The problem this created for me, however, can be neatly summed up by what Tor says: “I think I just wasted two hundred gold pieces.”

The logical response to Sir Kabel receiving Tor’s letter, after all, was for Sir Kabel to send him a reply telling him how they could meet… which was, of course, the letter I had already prepped and which was scheduled to be delivered shortly thereafter.

Stuff like this can actually happen quite a bit: You know that something is going to happen. Then the PCs do something completely unexpected, but which logically would result in the same thing happening (with perhaps minor differences). This is just a particularly clear-cut example of it.

And, as a GM, it feels a little weird when this happens. The PCs did something unexpected, so… something unexpected should result, right? But instead the exact same thing happens?

… is that railroading?

Well, sometimes, yes. It is. If you’re forcing things to play out according to your prep, that’s negating player choice and that’s railroading.

But sometimes it’s just a weird coincidence: You are, in fact, honoring their choice. There’s just a weird act of judo where their own momentum throws them right back where they started.

When you find yourself in the position of performing this weird judo, one thing you can do is really focus in on how their choice did make a difference and then think about how that could be significant.

For example, in this case Sir Kabel’s letter was literally identical. (I didn’t rewrite the prop.) But there was a key difference: In the “original” continuity (which never actually existed), Sir Kabel made the decision to reach out to Tor without truly knowing where his loyalties might lie. But in the actual continuity, because of what Tor’s player had done, Sir Kabel sent his letter because Tor had reached out to him; had, in fact, taken great risk to make contact.

That’s actually a huge difference! It meant that Sir Kabel would be far more confident of Tor and far more trusting of their alliance. (Assuming that’s how things played out.)

So even in a moment like this — where the prepared prop of the letter made my player say, “I think I just wasted two hundred gold coins” — I was still able to, a little while later, show them that their actions had been meaningful.

Campaign Journal: Session 30D – Running the Campaign: The Undead Sequel
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 30C: THE TWO LETTERS

September 20th, 2008
The 16th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

THE AFFAIRS OF THE PALE TOWER

Tor left with the intention of returning directly to the Banewarrens, stopping only long enough to collect Blue from the Ghostly Minstrel so that he might ride more quickly.

But as he passed through the doors of the Ghostly Minstrel, Tellith called him over to the front desk. A letter had arrived for “Mistress Tee and her companions”. Tor opened it and read—

Please come to me at the Pale Tower. You have filled my heart with great concern.

Aoska

So instead of riding directly to the mansion on Nibeck Street, Tor stopped first at the Pale Tower.

He was greeted at the doors of the tower by the Graven One, who led him to a small, domed room. There Tor was forced to stoop to step through the doors. The walls and floor were built of blue jade, the surface of which seemed to subtly swirl with whirlwinding eddies of multi-hued colors. In the center of the room nine small idols of the same blue jade – each depicting one of the holy animals of the Nine Gods – formed a circle on the floor. In the circle, Aoska sat in meditation.

“Please sit, Master Tor.”

Tor knelt on the floor, keeping a fair distance from the circle of idols.

Aoska opened her eyes. “We have received the message that Mistress Tee left for us regarding the Great Warrens of Danar. I have summoned you here to tell you that we cannot help you. And to offer our apologies.”

“That’s all right,” Tor said.

“Nonetheless, I think some explanation is deserved. We among the Malkuth have been honored to stand before the Nine Gods themselves. But for that honor we pay a price. Each of us has been sworn not to interfere in the matters of the mortal church. And since the Imperial Church has involved itself with this affair, we can have no part of it.”

“I understand.”

“I offer, too, a warning,” Aoska said. “Be wary of removing anything from that place. The wards which Danar raised suppress the effects of the taint and prevent the Warrens themselves from becoming tainted. But the items are no less dangerous in their use. And if they were to be removed from the Warrens, the full effect of their corruption would be felt.”

“We would like nothing more than to seal that place and never set foot in it again.”

“That would be wise.” Aoska smiled. “I thank you, Sir Tor.”

“Thank you, milady.”

THE TALE OF A CONFESSING KNIGHT

From the Pale Tower it was a short ride to the Nibeck Street mansion. Tor used a door to create a ramp of sorts down the stairs and led Blue all the way to the cusp of the Banewarrens.

When he rejoined the others there were greetings all around.

“What happened?” Elestra asked.

Tor quickly explained what had happened at the Godskeep, at the Cathedral, and at the Pale Tower. He gave the Ranthir the scroll that Thad had given to him… And then he took a deep breath. “There’s something else… I think you should sit down for this.”

Then Tor told them, for the first time, that he had secretly joined the Order of the Dawn.

“Congratulations!” Tee said, a huge beaming smile spreading across her face.

“Don’t congratulate me yet,” Tor said. “I also promised Sir Kabel that I would spy on Dominic.”

Dominic was confused. “What?”

“Oh! I didn’t tell him anything! And it wouldn’t matter if I did. He’s looking for allies.” Tor quickly explained Sir Kabel’s opposition to Rehobath’s claim to be the Novarch. “I hope you still feel like you can trust me.”

“It’s all right,” Tee said. “Of course we do.”

“Thank you,” Tor said. “But what should we do? I don’t know what to do next. I wish I knew why Sir Kabel had tried to assassinate Rehobath.”

They continued discussing the situation. None of them were quite sure what to do, but it became even clearer that none of them trusted Rehobath.

“Then what are we doing down here?” Elestra asked, looking around at the walls of the Banewarrens.

“Working for Jevicca,” Tee said.

“And what happens if we do find the Sword of Crissa?”

“I don’t think we should give it to him,” Tee said. “Not if he’s going to use it the same way he used Dominic.”

Tor grew thoughtful. “So… what would the reaction be if Dominic killed Rehobath?”

None of them had an answer for that. Least of all Dominic.

THE CASTING OF THE LORE SPELL

While they talked, Ranthir had been examining the scroll that Tor had brought. He confirmed that it would do what Brother Thad had told them it would do.

“At least they were telling the truth about that,” Tor said.

“The casting of the spell could take awhile,” Ranthir said. “Maybe as long as an hour.”

They set up a defensive perimeter in the generator room. Each of them guarded one of the upper passages into the chamber while Ranthir began casting from the scroll.

For more than half an hour they kept watch, letting the soft drone of Ranthir’s words wash over them. They had actually begun to suspect that they would be able to finish the casting of the spell without interruption when, out of thin air, a hulking monstrosity of dark, blue-black flesh seemed to step out of thin air next to Elestra.

Before she could even shout a warning, Elestra was slammed up against the wall, torn up badly by the creature’s long, yellow claws. Its yellow eyes glowed with malicious and sinister glee, framed by its lanky black hair.

Dominic, whirling with the others at Elestra’s scream of pain, recognized it as some sort of troll-spawn – common enough in the mountains near his village – but of a variety he’d never seen before.

Agnarr moved quickly to protect Ranthir. Tor, meanwhile, closed with the troll-spawn while Tee circled around it. The creature lashed out at Tee, but the elven maid narrowly avoided the blow by virtue of the enchanted armband she wore (which skittered her slightly through time and space).

Agnarr hurled an axe from where he stood. The blade buried itself in the troll-spawn’s back, but with a shrug of its shoulders the creature shook it free. They could all see that the wound was already closing.

Tor, meanwhile, was struggling. Whenever the creature landed a blow, his thoughts filled with black and terrible things – a void of horror that drew itself across his mind. He could feel it deadening his limbs – threatening to overwhelm him.

While Tee and Tor kept the troll-spawn at bay, Elestra – badly hurt – fell back to where Agnarr was waiting by Ranthir’s side. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” she said. “You go.”

Agnarr raced around the iron catwalk, arriving barely in time. Tor had, at last, been overcome by the rapacious blackness working its way through his mind – his joints seized as his thoughts retreated to the safety of his inner soul. The troll-spawn surged forward, looking to finish Tor off… but then Agnarr’s burning blade struck true, eliciting the first cry of real pain from the creature as it ripped through its chest.

The force of Agnarr’s blow drove the troll-spawn stumbling back, adding to the force of Tee’s blade as she drove a precisely placed blow between its shoulder blades. The tip of Tee’s longsword actually thrust out the front of the creature’s chest. It stumbled forward again, ripping itself off her blade in a gush of blue-black blood.

Elestra, still standing guard by Ranthir on the far side of the catwalk, placed a precise shot from her dragon rifle, nearly ripping the creature’s arm off at the shoulder. It collapsed into a bloody heap…

… but it’s wounds were still healing at a preternatural pace, and before anyone could react it had simply vanished back into thin air. With a howl of frustration, Agnarr smote the floor where it had lain.

… and in that moment, Ranthir turned – his eyes glowing bright – and chanted aloud:

Only the hand of creation can undo the seal which it has wrought.
Those who wish but for a moment can undo the creator’s work,
But those who would be his heirs must first wield his hand.
Into the heart of darkness they must follow him.

Seek the hand in the heart of the shard.
There all paths begin.
Thus all things shall be done or undone.

RETRENCHING THE DEFENSES

Ranthir sagged forward as the magic of the spell left him. A moment later, however, he was scrabbling through his many pouches and bags to find paper and pen. He hastily jotted down the words that he had said.

“Did that make sense to anyone else?” Elestra asked.

“A little,” Tee said, frowning thoughtfully. “But not really.”

There were no clear answers written in the words that Ranthir had spoken. And with Tor still paralyzed, they had no choice but to seek more powerful magical aid. They let the Banewarrens, meeting Kalerecent where he stood guard in the cellar of the mansion.

They quickly explained to the knight what had happened. With Tor strapped to his saddle, Tee led Blue up the stairs (“Ah,” Kalerecent said. “So that’s why the door was there.”) and then mounted himself. Agnarr walked alongside as the three of them headed to the Temple of Asche to receive healing from Mand Scheben.

Ranthir, Elestra, and Dominic, meanwhile, returned with Kalerecent to the excavated cave nearest to the Banewarrens. Kalerecent had hoped to keep his guard in the cellar itself, but the others were concerned that the caverns where they had fought the umber hulk might lead to another exterior access point.

Once they were healed, Tee, Tor, and Agnarr returned to the Banewarrens, as well. After a brief discussion, they agreed that all of them – except for Tor, who had business early the next day – would camp there for the night on a rotating guard shift.

SEEKING SIR KABEL

Tor left the Banewarrens. But instead of heading directly back to the Ghostly Minstrel, he turned south towards the alley where they had met with the mysterious, shadow-like Shim.

Tor  touched the symbol at the alley’s dead end. A few moments later Shim exuded himself from a crack in the wall.

“How can I help you, Master Torland?”

“Can you find Sir Kabel of the Order of the Dawn and deliver to him a letter?”

“I can,” Shim said. “The real question is, ‘Can you pay for it?’”

“How much?”

“Two hundred gold pieces.”

Tor agreed and quickly wrote out a note for Sir Kabel.

Sir—

Please know that you have friends in Ptolus. Vehthyl is not fooled, but it is crucial we know what has occurred.

Send word back if you are able. The safety of the city is in the balance.

Tor very specifically neglected to sign it, hoping that his elided reference to Dominic as the Chosen of Vehthyl would be enough to identify who the letter had come from without betraying him if it should fall into the wrong hands.

Shim took the letter and disappeared back into the wall. Tor left and returned to the Ghostly Minstrel for the night, satisfied that he had done all that he could. If all the might of the Imperial Church and the Order of the Dawn couldn’t find Sir Kabel, it wasn’t likely that wandering randomly around the city would do much good.

A NIGHT IN THE BANEWARRENS

Back in the Banewarrens – or, rather, the small excavated cavern just outside of them – Kalerecent and the rest of the party settled on the order of the watch and bedded down.

A few hours passed and the watch shifted twice without any cause for alarm. But then, about an hour before midnight, Tee’s sharp eyes spotted movement coming along the passage leading to the Banewarrens. She quickly roused the others, whirling back towards the tunnel entrance in time to see the purplish-red wraith they had encountered before floating with sinister serenity into the cavern.

Kalerecent, who had been sharing the watch with her, moved to engage it. The engagement didn’t last long: Kalerecent’s magical blade ripped through its ethereal substance and then, a moment later, a single blast from Tee’s dragon pistol tore it apart.

The others had barely even woken up.

After some mild complaints, Tee and Kalerecent resumed their watch while the others rolled over and went back to sleep.

A few minutes later, however, the wraith returned again. Dominic, rising impatiently from his bedroll, banished it with a burst of divine power, sending it fleeing back down the tunnel.

The group mustered their defenses and waited anxiously for its return… but after a quarter of an hour there was still no sign of it.

Agnarr eventually got tired of waiting and rallied an expedition back into the Banewarrens. They headed straight to the area where they had first encountered the wraith and the gem that spawned it. They found no trace of the wraith itself, but were entirely unsurprised to discover that the gem had somehow reformed itself. Without a second thought, Agnarr smashed it again.

Dominic raised the possibility of taking some of the shards of the gem with them – and thus, perhaps, preventing it from reforming again – but Tee and Elestra were both wary of the idea of carrying around shards from an artifact of clear and potent evil. (Hadn’t they just been warned by Aoska not to risk removing anything from the Banewarrens?)

Ranthir couldn’t even hazard a guess on what might happen (or not happen) if they took pieces of the gem with them. He did briefly ponder the possibility of storing the gem in the stasis box they had recovered from Ghul’s Labyrinth, but he couldn’t guarantee that it would actually stop the gem from reforming.

And so, in the end, they settled for simply shutting the once-warded door leading into the area – hoping, even though the ward had been broken, that this would stop the wraith from escaping.

“Aren’t we just locking the wraith out?” Dominic asked.

“Well, next time we see it we’ll kill it and then it will be trapped,” Agnarr said.

While the others settled back down, Tee left for her guard duty at the “new project” of the chaos cultists. The rest of the night – both at the project site and in the Banewarrens – passed quietly.

THE TWO LETTERS

(09/17/790)

The next morning Tellith gave Tor two letters that had arrived for him during the night.

SIR GEMMELL’S MESSAGE

Master Torland of Barund—

I know that that the recent chaos surrounding the Order must have proven quite distressing to one so recently squired among our ranks. I pray to the Gods that this letter shall find you in good health and that no untoward danger has fallen upon you as a result of the treacherous actions of a handful of discontents.

I wish to assure you, however, that the Godskeep remains secure. I know that you were to receive training this afternoon, and I would like to avail myself of this opportunity to meet with you personally and make the proper arrangements.

My humblest thanks,

Sir Gemmell of the Order of the Dawn

SIR KABEL’S MESSAGE

Tor—

The days are darker than I had imagined. Come tomorrow at dawn to Nadar’s Pub in Rivergate. Ask for Patrim. Bring Dominic if you trust him still.

                                                                                -Sir K.

“I think I just wasted two hundred gold pieces,” Tor muttered to himself.

Running the Campaign: Honor Choice with Judo  – Campaign Journal: Session 30D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 30B: Golems & Ghouls

As Agnarr leapt into their midst, he could see one of them peeling flesh from its own arm and chewing on it.

“They’re eating themselves?!” Agnarr could hear Elestra’s horrified gasp from behind him, but he paid it little heed as he hacked his way through the ghouls.

For a moment it seemed as if Agnarr would dispatch them all – his flaming blade tore easily through their frail frames. But then the last of them leapt suddenly upon him and got its teeth into him.

This might be a little early to talk about this, but over the rest of this session and the next few sessions you’re going to see a lot of horrific beasties and strange curses get unleashed in the Banewarrens, by both the PCs and NPCs.

Something you’ll notice (albeit not with these ghouls), that most of these banes will either (a) attempt to flee after engaging the PCs or (b) target someone other than the PCs as their first (or subsequent) action. This, of course, creates long-running problems for the PCs, as they deal with the consequences of these ancient evils breaking loose into Ptolus or just wreaking havoc on their allies.

This is, of course, thematically appropriate for the Banewarrens, which were originally built to lock all of these banes away from the world; sealing them in a prison from which they were never meant to escape. Whether you agree with the Banelord’s belief that there’s a Principle of the Conservation of Evil that the universe abides by or not, there’s little question that mucking around down there not only risks releasing a whole bunch of evil stuff, but also a whole armada of ethical questions about your responsibility for having done so.

But this also reflects a broader GMing tenet I believe in: Spray your bullets.

What I mean by this is that when we think about releasing something into our campaign, we have a tendency to think about it strictly in terms of how it might intersect and affect the PCs: There’s a phase-shifting troll loose in the Banewarrens, when will it attack the party?

In other words, we aim it very precisely at the PCs.

This makes a lot of sense, because, of course, the other players are sitting at the table with us. Our entire focus is on continually generating and communicating the fictional game space for them to take their actions in. So there’s an obvious predilection, whenever something might happen in the game world, for us to aim it at the PCs. It’s target fixation.

What I’m suggesting is that, when we shoot stuff into the campaign, we should get a little sloppier with our aim: Don’t just hit the PCs. Start hitting stuff all around them. Their friends, their allies, innocent bystanders, even their enemies. To continue our metaphor, let stuff ricochet around a little bit and see what happens.

The ricochet is actually quite important, though, because if stuff happens and the players never learn about it (or its consequences), then it’s probably wasted prep. So you want to have stuff impact things around the PCs, but then you want the consequences of that to ricochet into the PCs: they read the newspaper headlines, they find the body, their friend calls them for help.

The benefit, of course, is that this makes the game feel more dynamic and believable: The PCs aren’t the only people who exist, moving through a world of shadow puppets. Instead, the world is filled with people who seem to be living lives of their own.

And this will also mean, when the bullets in question are being shot in response to the PCs’ actions, that their choices will become even more meaningful.

Campaign Journal: Session 30C – Running the Campaign: Honor Choice with Judo
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index