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How quickly can you complete a run of the Dragon Heist remix?

This is a question I get asked fairly frequently.

Personally, I like this campaign a lot, and I don’t recommend rushing it. One of the things that makes it special is how the PCs can become entwined in the fabric of the city — invested in Trollskull and its community; linked to friendly factions; becoming the nemeses of other factions. Weaving a campaign like that, though, takes time. You have to give yourself (and your players) the space to explore all of those threads. If you rush it, those connections will never get formed and will never have a chance to grow and interact with each other.

But, of course, there’s all kinds of reasons why you might need to speed things up: Maybe you want to run it for a D&D summer camp and you only have a limited amount of time. Or you’re midway through the campaign, a player is moving away, and you’d like to wrap things up before they leave.

Whatever the case may be, how can you make sure you reach the finish line before you run out of time?

HOW LONG IS THE REMIX?

Let’s start by establishing some baselines.

When I ran Dragon Heist, the campaign lasted for twenty-two sessions. Several of these sessions, however, were 8-hour marathons. Looking at my recordings, it appears that it took us approximately 120 hours to complete the campaign (as described in Dragon Heist: The Final Session), which would translate to roughly thirty 4-hour sessions.

I’ve talked with a number of DMs running the remix campaign, however, and its length can vary quite a bit: The longest I know of ran a 300-hour version of the campaign (with a lot of extra material). Most seem to cluster between 80 and 150 hours.

One of the biggest variables seems to be Chapter 2: From the time they get Trollskull Manor from Volo to the point where the fireball goes off and the next phase of the campaign begins is a very sandbox-y period. The PCs are repairing their inn, interacting with the NPCs of Trollskull Alley, meeting faction reps, dealing with Emmet Frewn, and going on faction missions. The number and detail of the faction missions, in particular, can vary a lot depending on how much interest the PCs have in the factions and how much effort the DM puts into the missions. The PCs might also be following up on questions they have from Chapter 1 (possibly getting a jump start on the Grand Game), and it’s also not unusual for DMs to add brand new adventures (like The Lady of Trollskull Priory, Blue Alley, The Veiled Society, or something of their own creation) here.

As a result, groups can easily spend dozens of hours in Chapter 2. I know of one group who spent over a year of biweekly sessions on just this one section of the campaign. (Personally, my group spent 20 hours here.)

On the other hand, it’s also quite trivial to speed run Chapter 2: You can skim past or even completely cut a lot of stuff here without fundamentally sabotaging the rest of the campaign. (The players will likely feel less connected to the city and the PCs will have fewer resources to call upon during the Grand Game, but these aren’t crippling problems.) I know of several groups who have rescued Floon & Renaer in one session and then triggered the fireball just one or two sessions later.

The other major variable, of course, is the heists. Each heist itself generally takes less than four hours and can be wrapped up in a single session, but you also need to consider the set-up (i.e., as described in Part 7 of the Remix, tracking faction activity to faction outposts, following the leads from the faction outposts back to the faction lairs, and planning the heist).

In practice, it looks like each heist will take 10-15 hours of playing time (including the heist itself). This generally won’t be sequential, though — i.e., 15 hours on one heist and then 15 hours on the next heist. Instead, the investigations and interactions with the various factions will weave around each other.

Although slightly different in form, this timeline also seems to roughly apply to the Gralhund Raid (with the setup time being spent on the fireball investigation). In practice, this might be a little quicker, but it’s close enough for our purposes.

Wrapping things up, Chapter 1 took my group about 5 hours to complete and the finale of the campaign after the PCs have reassembled the Stone of Golorr — i.e., breaching the vault, getting the gold, and then dealing with whatever the aftermath of getting the gold is — seems to take another 5-10 hours.

To sum that up with a conservative estimate:

• Chapter 1: 5 hours
• Chapter 2: 20 hours
• Gralhund Raid: 15 hours
• Heists: 15 hours x 4 heists
• The Vault: 10 hours

To this, you’ll probably want to add another 10-20 hours of miscellaneous activities. (In my campaign, that included a romance subplot, setting up an orphanage, and running additional faction missions after Chapter 2, among other things.)

So our baseline running time for the Dragon Heist remix is roughly 120 hours, or 30 four-hour sessions.

DRAGON HEIST: THE FAST VERSION

Now, let’s speed things up. For this discussion I’m going to refer to 4-hour sessions, but the advice should hold regardless (e.g., if you have 2-hour sessions, then when I say something should take one session, it should take you two sessions).

Chapter 1: Set a tight pace here to make sure you wrap this chapter up in a single session. To make this happen, you probably want to be exiting the Yawning Portal no later than the 45-minute mark in your first session. (You may need to skip the troll fight to make this happen.)

In this version of the campaign, the PCs will only be aligned with a single friendly faction. Pre-select that faction and use them as the contact who hooks the group up with Volo.

Chapter 2: You’ll also want to wrap this chapter up in a single session. For me, that probably looks like this:

• Hello urchins! (In the scene where the PCs arrive at Trollskull for the first time, introduce the urchins.)
• This Old Tavern (Establish a budget for repairs, then have one or two roleplaying interactions with guilds and/or people they’re trying to borrow money from. This will create a personal investment in Trollskull Manor.)
• Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It. (Have the friendly faction reconnect with the PCs and give them a single simple faction mission. This mission should be resolved in one scene.)
• Opening night! (Establish some of the neighborhood personalities.)
• Fireball! (End the session on a cliffhanger.)

Miscellaneous Activities: Eliminate as much of this stuff as possible. After Chapter 2, I’d recommend bringing in just one additional faction mission. Keep the Trollskull-related roleplaying to a minimum. If the PCs are getting distracted by non-essential activities, try to frame hard, resolve it quickly/decisively, and redirect them away from it.

Heists: Try to keep the faction investigations as tight as possible. Frame aggressively and don’t let the players dither too much in their planning. If they’re in any way confused or suffering analysis paralysis, bring in a faction response team with a bunch of explicit clues in their pockets. You don’t need to pare things down to the bone here; just keep it tight.

Vault Keys: For the finale, eliminate the vault keys. Once the PCs know where the Vault is, they can just go there and enter.

Doing all of this should result in a campaign that looks more like this:

• Chapter 1: 4 hours
• Chapter 2: 4 hours
• Gralhund Raid: 12 hours
• Heists: 12.5 hours x 4 heists
• The Vault: 5 hours
• Miscellaneous: 5 hours (including post-Vault epilogue)

So we can run a fast version of the Dragon Heist remix in roughly 80 hours, or 20 four-hour sessions.

DRAGON HEIST: THE SPEED RUN

But that’s not good enough! Suzie just got a new job in a different country and we need to wrap things up ASAP!

This is the point where we’re going to make some very deep cuts and even fundamentally alter the dynamic of the campaign.

Fast Version: Start, of course, by implementing everything from the fast version of the campaign described above.

Goodbye Gralhunds: We’re going to get rid of the Gralhunds by replacing them with the Cassalanters.

• The nimblewright who triggers the fireball belongs to the Cassalanters. (Which means, of course, that the fireball investigation leads directly to the Cassalanters.)
• The Cassalanters have the Stone + an Eye.
• To keep things simple, I recommend just having the Cassalanters live in the Gralhund Villa and using the Gralhund Raid as described in the Remix.
• I recommend simplifying things even further: The Cassalanters are not Asmodean cultists. (Whether you use the Gralhund Villa or Cassalanter Villa maps, this lets you eliminate the Asmodean temple. Their faction outposts will also not come into play in this version of the campaign.)
• You can still have the Cassalanters try to sell the PCs a sob story about their kids as their reason for doing all this. If you’ve decided that they’re not cultists themselves, then this is even more straightforward: Their kids really WERE cursed by cultists (or maybe it’s a legacy from an ancestor) and this is the only way the Cassalanters can save them.

Fast Heists: To speed up the heists as much as possible, we’re going to run each heist in a single session. This means that we need to eliminate the faction investigations and most or all of the groundwork. We have a couple options for this.

First, we can give the Cassalanters have much more actionable and comprehensive intelligence about the Grand Game: They know that Xanathar has one Eye and Manshoon the other. They also have blueprints and locations for both lairs.

The PCs can now go directly from the Cassalanter Raid to performing the other two heists back-to-back.

If the PCs miss the Cassalanters’ Grand Game report (and, therefore, all this heist-related intelligence they need), you can backstop this by having a friendly faction — e.g., Force Grey — sweep the Cassalanter Villa after the raid, discover the intel, and then bring it to the PCs.

Alternatively, you can use the PCs’ friendly faction to frame up these heists as faction mission assignments. I prefer the Cassalanter intel solution because it keeps the players in the driver’s seat of the campaign, but if all else fails having someone show up and say, “We know you’re looking for the Eyes, and we think we’ve identified the location for one of them…” will certainly cut to the chase.

Option – Simultaneous Heist: You could speed things up even more by having an allied faction do one of the two final Eye heists at the same time the PCs are doing the other. This could be the Cassalanters, if the PCs have decided to help them, or it should be whatever friendly faction the PCs have allied with.

Option — The Final Eye: Eliminate the final Eye Heist entirely by having the faction holding the Eye come to the PCs with the Eye to negotiate. They can make whatever offer seems reasonable and makes sense given the circumstances.

Whatever the offer may be, either:

• The PCs cut a deal, the Stone is reunited, and everybody heads to the Vault.
• The PCs double-cross the enemy faction and take the Eye without a heist.
• The NPCs try to double-cross the PCs, and then the PCs take the Eye after righteously thrashing the double-crossing knaves.

Mix-and-Match: You do not, of course, have to use all of these options at the same time. Depending on just how breakneck you need the pace to be, you can mix-and-match whichever options make the most sense.

If you were to use all of these options, however, your campaign would likely look something like this:

• Chapter 1: 4 hours
• Chapter 2: 4 hours
• Gralhund/Cassalanter Raid: 10 hours
• Optional – Sea Maidens Heist: 4 hours
• Eye Heist: 4 hours (including simultaneous heist or Final Eye negotiation)
• The Vault: 4 hours
• Miscellaneous: 2 hours

This gives you a lightning-fast 32 hour version of the Dragon Heist remix, which can be played in 8 four-hour sessions.

TRANSITIONING MID-CAMPAIGN

If you’re midway through a run of the Dragon Heist remix, there are any number of reasons why you might need to transition to a high-speed wrap-up. The options above should give you the tools to figure out how best to tighten things up and focus on what’s essential for a satisfying conclusion, but a lot of the specifics will depend on exactly what’s going on in your campaign.

For example, if you’re in the middle of Chapter 2, then it’s probably best to trigger the fireball at the beginning of your next session and then chart a course from there.

On the other hand, if you’re in the middle of the Eye heists and now running out of time, you might be best served considering an option like having a friendly faction run one of the remaining heists for the PCs. Or put a twist on that idea by having whichever faction the PCs are targeting next carry out a successful heist on one of the OTHER factions, resulting in them having two Eyes onsite when the PCs arrive.

Whatever form your campaign takes, I hope it has an epic conclusion for you and your players!

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 38B: Nasira’s Story

The next morning, as was her familiar custom, Tee arose a few hours before the others and went down to the common room to break her fast. While she picked at pieces of cold mutton, a young woman approached her table. She was a wiry thing — rather plain, and generally brown: tanned skin, light brown eyes, brown hair, and with a dress of pale brown.

“Is your name Tithenmamiwen?”

Tee nodded.

“My name is Nasira. I’ve been told that you were asking questions about a woman named Silion.”

Tee palmed a dagger.

Back in Session 8, we added a new player to our group.

In Session 37, we sadly lost a player.

Now we’re adding a new player to replace the one we lost. The basic procedure we’re following hasn’t changed much, but there are a few twists that I think are worth mentioning.

First, for the reasons we looked at during the last session, the group wasn’t just looking to add any new character: They were specifically interested in filling the gap left by Dominic’s departure. They wanted a healer.

Generally, I don’t like putting any limits on what characters a new player can play. I also don’t put a lot of stock in the idea that every group needs to conform to some “standard” set of roles. (See our previous discussion about non-standard groups.) But this was a very specific circumstance and, as I’ve noted, it was being driven by the group’s desire to fill a very specific need.

With that being said, I didn’t want this new character to just be a carbon copy of Dominic with the name scratched out and a new one written in: That would be boring. It also wouldn’t be fair to the new player.

To make sure she felt creatively free to make the character she wanted to play, (a) I made sure the remit was as broad as possible and (b) I also tapped my own system expertise to offer her a wide variety of build concepts that could potentially deliver the healing the group was looking for.

If I recall correctly, there was a point where we considered making “let’s find a replacement” diegetic — i.e., the PCs would actually go looking for a new compatriot. As I began exploring Nasira’s background with the new player, however, it was clear that this character wasn’t a “healer for hire” or anyone else who could be logically recruited by an adventuring party.

So how could Nasira be introduced to the campaign?

I used a combination of the collaborative methods for creating campaign characters described here, taking the background Nasira’s player had given me, fleshing it out with additional lore, and tweaking elements to provide hooks (including the big, obvious hook featured in this session) that would not only bring Nasira to the current PCs, but also naturally align her goals with theirs.

As described in GM Don’t List #19: Ignoring PC Backstories, this went both ways: I harvested elements introduced by Nasira’s player in her backstory and seized the opportunity to flesh out my campaign notes.

During this back-and-forth process, I also took the opportunity to seed some stuff into Nasira’s background that wouldn’t turn up in campaign until later. (As it turned out, much later: It wasn’t until around Session 100 that some of this stuff started paying off.)

OPEN TABLE RECRUITMENT

The other big twist was that this was the first time I’d recruited a new player to a long-term campaign since I’d started running my first open table.

Holy shirtforks! It was amazing!

Not only had I been running games for this new player for several months, but the other players in the Ptolus campaign had been playing games with her. So when we asked the question, “Who should be the new player?”, not only did we all know exactly who we wanted, we were also absolutely sure she’d be the perfect fit for the group (and vice versa).

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: Running an open table would be worth it even if the only thing you liked about it was recruiting new players to your dedicated campaigns.

Not only have I repeated this process of adding a new player from my open table to an ongoing campaign several times since this inaugural example, it’s also the primary method I use for recruiting players to brand new campaigns too (like Eternal Lies, Dragon Heist, Blades in the Dark, Night’s Black Agents, and so forth).

The results are exemplary every single time.

Campaign Journal: Session 38C – Running the Campaign: Expanding Dungeons
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 38A: The Arathian Job

Once Agnarr’s tail-lopping duties were completed, they loaded the various ratmen corpses – along with the Iron Mage’s crate – into the cart Elestra had procured and started the long haul up the Dock ramp.

As they went, they mulled the question of how they could protect the Iron Mage’s crate. It was too large and too dangerous for them to haul around with them, and it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing they could just leave lying about their room.

They rejected a plan to place illusions on the ratbrute corpses to make them appear like duplicates of the real crate before dumping them in the Midden Heaps or scattering them around town. They felt it was a ruse too easily penetrated… and once the illusions lapsed the corpses might lead to some unwanted questions on their own account.

“Besides,” Tor pointed out. “I promised to dispose of them properly.”

What the players decided to call the Arathian Job (it’s like The Italian Job, but we’re in Arathia!) isn’t the classic image of what a heist looks like, but it has the same attitude: Planning, prep work, execution.

And as you look at the Arathian Job as a heist, you might find it remarkable that it just… works. The players simply put together their plan and executed it.

If you look back at Session 8, when the PCs were hired to sneak a scrying cube into Linech Cran’s office, you’ll see a similar dynamic:

Once there, Tee went down the narrow alley between the Yebures’ and the house next door. From there she climbed quietly onto the Yebures’ roof. She had some difficulty climbing the next section of wall up to Linech’s window – falling and cracking her head once – but she eventually secured a grappling hook in the chimney on Linech’s roof, climbed the rope, and then rappelled over to Linech’s window.

The lock on Linech’s window yielded to her thieves’ tools easily enough and she slipped inside, falling to the floor next to the life-size gold statue they had noticed the last time they were in the office.

In looking for a place to hide the scrying cube, Tee’s eyes were naturally drawn to the bookshelves along the room’s north wall. Clearing some of the books away she reached back to place the scrying cube behind them… only to find a crumpled up sheet of paper lying there. She pulled this out, glanced at it, and then stuffed it into her bag. Placing the scrying cube and then carefully replacing the books she had moved, she went back to the window, shut it behind her, and climbed down.

Tee gave the signal that the others, scattered around the lower burrow, could disperse. It had all gone as smoothly as anyone could hope.

They’d done their legwork, come up with a plan that worked, made their skill checks, and walked away clean.

It can be tempting, as a GM, to think that if we don’t make things hard for the PCs or complicated in some way that the game will be “boring.” That might be true if every challenge is trivial and the PCs simply streamroll their way through the campaign, but the reality is that coming up with a strategic plan, executing it, and having it work is immensely satisfying.

So when the players earn a victory, let them bask in it.

These successes also create great contrast for when things DO fall part. You can see a very clear example of this in the case of the Linech Cran job because in Session 9 the PCs had to come back and break into his office all over again, this time to steal the gold statue he had on display there. This time there were new complications (someone else was trying to break into the office at the same time), and the PCs ended up flubbing one of their skill checks and dropping the statue, creating a loud noise that raised the alarm and created even more complications. The PCs were still ultimately successful, but it was a much more stressful heist.

The great thing about this contrast is — if you’re playing fair — then the players truly feel like they earned their victories (because they did), which makes them even sweeter. And the players also own their struggles and even failures: There’s no reason the second Linech Cran job couldn’t have gone smoothly. (The first job proves it, after all.) The complications they need to overcome (like dropping the statue) feel legitimate, partly because they are and partly because they’ve seen the proof of that. That legitimacy keeps the players immersed in the scenario, and also makes their ultimate success (assuming they achieve it) all the more satisfying because they earned it.

By contrast, when the players become convinced that they can never truly succeed because the GM will always find some way to thwart their best laid plans (whether in the name of “making things interesting” or otherwise), it steals the luster of the campaign. It’s the reason some players don’t enjoy making plans; after all, what’s the point when every plan is doomed to failure whether it’s good or bad? And other players will respond by spending even more time making plans in a Sisyphean and ultimately doomed effort to make them perfect. (And this, too, becomes a reason why players don’t enjoy making plans.)

The same thing is even more, in my experience, if the players becomes convinced that they can never fail because the GM will always twist things to make sure they succeed. Again: Why bother making plans if making the plan has no meaningful impact on the outcome?

And what happens as a result is that the tactical and strategic elements of the game become deeply weakened: Figuring out what you need to do and then doing it is in fun in games, it’s fun in life, and it should be fun in an RPG.

When that thrill gets pulled out of your roleplaying game, it’s a sad loss.

Campaign Journal: Session 38B – Running the Campaign: Adding a New Player (Part 2)
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 38A: THE ARATHIAN JOB

June 7th, 2009
The 21st Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The commotion had inevitably attracted the attention of the Watch. A small squad of them cautiously approached the end of the dock. Agnarr, busily chopping off ratmen tails, glanced up. “It’s about time you got here.”

Fortunately, several members of the Watch recognized Sir Tor. Tor, humble yet quietly quite pleased with the recognition, took advantage of the situation. Offering a brief (and well-edited) accounting of the situation, Tor offered to dispose of the bodies. The watchmen were delighted to have this unpleasant duty taken off their hands. They quickly pointed them in the direction of the Midden Heaps (“that’s where we dump all the bodies”), waved their goodbyes, and headed on their way.

Once Agnarr’s tail-lopping duties were completed, they loaded the various ratmen corpses – along with the Iron Mage’s crate – into the cart Elestra had procured and started the long haul up the Dock ramp.

As they went, they mulled the question of how they could protect the Iron Mage’s crate. It was too large and too dangerous for them to haul around with them, and it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing they could just leave lying about their room.

They rejected a plan to place illusions on the ratbrute corpses to make them appear like duplicates of the real crate before dumping them in the Midden Heaps or scattering them around town. They felt it was a ruse too easily penetrated… and once the illusions lapsed the corpses might lead to some unwanted questions on their own account.

“Besides,” Tor pointed out. “I promised to dispose of them properly.”

This plan, however, spawned another and they quickly sketched out a scheme for protecting the crate through a combination of both security and obfuscation. While the rest of them stuck with the slow-moving cart, Ranthir and Elestra hurried ahead into the city.

Ranthir went to the Exotic Market, which specialized in one-of-a-kind items, strange livestock, miscellaneous magical trinkets, alchemical compounds, magical reagents, and the like. Amid its odd jumble of small wooden stalls and tents, he was able to find – as he had hoped he might – someone who could sell him five identical lead-lined crates. The lead-lining, as Ranthir had explained to the others, would block even the emanations of the powerful magical aura exuded from whatever artifact was hidden within the stygian darkness of the Iron Mage’s crate.

Elestra, meanwhile, headed to the Stockyards and hired five identical (or, at least, near-identical) carts. She had them driven to the Exotic Market, where Ranthir directed the loading of one crate into each of the carts. Then all five carts were driven back to meet the rest of the party at the Midden Heaps.

There they found Tee and Tor in a frustrated negotiation with the scrap merchants who ran the Midden Heaps. Apparently there wasn’t any profit to be had in scrapping bodies (“these don’t even have their tails!”), and the scrap merchants were inclined to either refuse the bodies entirely or charge a hefty fee for their dumping.

Eventually they talked their way to Delloch, an ornery dwarf who apparently ran the Heaps. Although he grumbled about “having enough ratmen running live about these Heaps”, they managed to talk him down to a reasonable fee and were able to dump the bodies, according to his directions, deep in the Heaps (making their way between and over heaping piles of slag, scoria, scrap iron, and other guildcraft chaff).

Then they were able to turn their attention to their more immediate and important affairs: Removing the outer crate they had placed over the Iron Mage’s original crate, they plunged the street near the entrance of the Midden Heaps into darkness. Under the convenient cover of this darkness, they placed the original crate into one of the five lead-lined crates. Ranthir also took the opportunity to create additional illusionary doubles of the crates, carts, and themselves. Then they sealed up all 5 crates (disguising the identity of the actual crate), dismissed the cart drivers, and clambered aboard the carts themselves.

And off they went.

THE ARATHIAN JOB

Their first stop was the Foundry. The elaborate caravan they had constructed pulled up across the street. Ranthir led (and directed) illusionary versions of Agnarr and Tor to the front door and oversaw the delivery of an illusionary crate into the front hall.

“What will they do when they find that its disappeared?” Elestra asked.

“Well, nobody is expecting it. So they might not miss it at all,” Tee said.

Their plan was to put some of the crates where they might not be found; some of the crates where they might force a confrontation between their enemies; and some of the crates with their most powerful allies. They felt a little guilty about potentially putting their friends at risk for the sake of an empty crate, so they were careful to only approach those they felt could handle the cultists and ratmen.

They left the Foundry and headed north into the Temple District. They weren’t sure if they should count the Church among their enemies or their allies, but it seemed like a good place for ensconcing a crate. Tor spoke to Sir Gemmell, who readily agreed to keeping the crate in a locked room on the third floor of the Godskeep (one of the rooms recently vacated by the knights relocating to the Holy Palace).

They were worried that anyone spying on them might notice that the crates were empty, so they decided to make sure that they pretended there was something heavy in them. This actually proved an unwarranted worry: When Tor and Agnarr tried to lift the heavy, lead-lined crate they found it almost impossible and eventually needed to get help.

Next was Greyson House, where they took an illusionary crate into the basement and “hid” it among the other crates in the basement. (In reality, Ranthir simply let the illusion drop away after they had reached the basement.) Then they crossed the bridge into Oldtown and headed towards the apartment complex above the Temple of Deep Chaos where an illusionary Ranthir levitated an empty crate into one of the rooms on the ground floor. Ranthir grinned at Tor and Agnarr. “I don’t know why you’re having so much difficulty moving them.”

As they dropped off the crates, the empty carts would peel away from the caravan – some disappearing a few blocks away as they exceeded the range of Ranthir’s spell, others being driven back to the market.

Staying in Oldtown they went to the Pale Tower and spoke with the Graven One. He agreed to keep a watch over a crate and easily heaved it out of the cart with one hand. (Tor and Agnarr reflected on the basic unfairness of the universe.)

Once they were safely through the Tower’s doors, they confided in the Graven One, telling him that the crate was empty. He nodded his understanding. “We will keep it safe. What is in it – or not in it – is of little consequence.”

Their impromptu caravan had some difficulty passing through the Dalengard, but once they had identified themselves and given Castle Shard as their destination the gates to the Nobles’ Quarter were quickly opened to them.

Tor had been thinking. “What do we really know about the Iron Mage?”

“Not much.,” Tee said. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m just wondering if we should really be doing this,” Tor said. “For all we know, we’re working for the bad guys.”

“If it turns out that the Iron Mage is just going to give it to Wuntad, I’m going to kill somebody,” Tee said.

They decided that was unlikely. Why would he tell Silion to steal the crate if the Iron Mage was going to deliver it to him? (“Maybe he didn’t want to pay him,” Elestra suggested.)

“Maybe you knew him before?” Tor suggested.

“You mean before we lost our memories?”

“Yes,” Tor said. “Why else would he keep coming to you with a list of chores?”

“Maybe,” Ranthir said.

“Or maybe that’s just the Iron Mage,” Tee said.

On the other hand, maybe not. They ran through a list of people the Iron Mage might be: Wuntad. Zavere. The Surgeon in the Shadows. The Banelord. The mysterious Ritharius. Or all of the above. Or some combination thereof.

They hadn’t reached any sort of a conclusion by the time they reached Castle Shard. Kadmus, of course, was waiting for them. He easily hefted one of the crates in one hand and carried it across the drawbridge. (Tor and Agnarr groaned.)

Zavere greeted them with a friendly smile. They had decided to leave the real crate with Zavere and, for that reason, not to hide anything from him. They explained everything that had happened and Zavere readily agreed to keep the crate safe.

They thanked him and left. There were only a few of the crates and carts left now. They hired a messenger to anonymously deliver one of them to the front gate of the Balacazar’s mansion and then they headed back down into Oldtown.

There the illusionary remnants of their caravan split apart in a final effort to lose and confuse any potential spies. Ranthir led the illusionary remains down into the Guildsmans’ District where they winked out one by one. Meanwhile, Tor and Tee drove the last of the real carts to the Hammersong Vaults. There they rented a vault for a month and placed an empty crate inside.

The Arathian Job was done.

Running the Campaign: Heists That Just Work – Campaign Journal: Session 38B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index