SESSION 40A: RATS OF KENNEL AND OF BRAIN

July 25th, 2009
The 22nd Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The tunnel was long enough to take them out of the bridge, and, judging by the damp stench filling the air, they suspected they were drawing near the sewer system. A little further on the tunnel dipped steeply and Tee, who was scouting ahead of the others, found herself entering some sort of warren-like antechamber: More of the ratmens’ refuse nests pocked the corners of the room, but the filth here was thicker and viler, forming a thick and treacherous carpet of trash on the floor. There were two archways in the far walls of the room, each veiled by a ragged tapestry of blue fabric.

A closer inspection revealed that there were actually two or three ratmen sleeping here and there amid the refuse piles. With a smile, Tee notched an arrow in her bow and fired at the nearest one.

The arrow neatly pierced its jugular, ending its life silently. Tee turned her bow to the next—

Unfortunately, there was a fully awake ratling crouching in one corner that Tee hadn’t noticed. He gave a cry and fired a dragon pistol at her head. Tee narrowly dodged the blast, but the other ratlings were beginning to stir.

Agnarr and Tor came charging into the room. They converged on the ratling firing on Tee, even as he fled towards one of the veiled archways. They easily cut him down as Tee caught another ratling in mid-charge with a second arrow.

Unfortunately, the last of the ratlings managed to duck out of the other archway before they could stop him.

Tor quickly took up a watchful station in the second archway. Agnarr called out for Tee to wait, but she was hot on the heels of the escaping ratling. Passing through the arch, she found herself in another trash-filled chamber –  this one nest-less, but with deeply-rutted paths leading through more tapestried archways. One of these tapestries was still rustling and, in the absence of any wind, Tee guessed that the ratling had gone that way.

Passing through this second archway, however, Tee came face-to-face with nearly half a dozen ratlings who were being rallied in a squeaking, gibbering mass by the ratling she had been pursuing. With a little squeak of her own, Tee backpedaled into the antechamber.

Agnarr, Nasira, and Ranthir, meanwhile, had quickly gathered themselves. As Tee fell back, they came charging forward. A brief and chaotic skirmish erupted as more ratlings – attracted by the sound of the battle – came pouring into the antechamber from the other archway. But once they managed to bring their full force to bear they were able to quickly overwhelm the terrified ratlings.

With Tor and Elestra keeping an eye on the explored archway (to make sure they didn’t have any more uninvited guests), Tee performed a quick, cursory search through the nesting chambers.

She found nothing of interest. But Agnarr, who had been following her around, grunted. “Don’t you want to search more of that?”

Tee eyed the fecal-filled refuse piles. “I want to keep moving. Why don’t you search them?”

Agnarr shrugged. “You search trash better than I do.”

Tee turned towards where the others were waiting, but Agnarr was now convinced that there must be something valuable hidden somewhere under the refuse piles. He started digging through them with gusto and seemingly endless enthusiasm, sending trash flying through the air.

“What’s going on?” Nasira asked.

“Agnarr’s throwing trash around,” Tee said, watching the whole thing with a bemused look on her face. She was trying to keep a safe distance, but Agnarr was achieving some impressive distance on his flurrious cloud of trash.

But it may have been for the best that Tee was watching. A piece of crumpled paper flew past her head and something about it caught her eye. Snatching it out of the air, she unfolded it to reveal a crude map:

Tee cleared her throat and held up the map. Agnarr turned around. His face split into a huge grin. “You see? You do search trash better than me!”

Tee wasn’t sure whether she should think of that as a compliment or not. She suspected not.

RATS OF KENNEL AND OF BRAIN

The archway Tor and Elestra had been watching opened into a much larger chamber. Much larger mounds of garbage were piled high near their end of the chamber, but these petered out a little further to the south, allowing clear access to a western and a southern tunnel out of the room.

The southwestern corner of the chamber had been boxed in with an eclectic assemblage of wooden slats and this immediately attracted Tee’s interest. She stole her way across the chamber (pausing only for a moment when she noticed a green, effervescent glow at the far end of the western tunnel) and peered over the edge of the make-shift fencing.

Inside were several dire rats with leather hoods tied around their heads. She grimaced and pulled out her dragon pistol: The last thing they needed were trained attack rats being used against them.

But then a sudden realization made her stop.

Elestra, who had carelessly followed her across the chamber, looked over her shoulder. “Why don’t you shoot them?”

“I think they’re the kennel rats,” Tee said. “They can take us to Malleck.”

They resolved to come back later and use one of the kennel rats to reach the Temple of the Ebon Hand, but first they wanted to finish routing out this nest. “We don’t want to give them time to reinforce,” Ranthir said.

Tee nodded. “They aren’t expecting us right now. That gives us an edge. Next time they’ll be waiting for us.”

Tee didn’t trust effervescent green lights, so they decided to explore the western tunnel next. The roof and walls of the tunnel were slick and wet, and a thick, turgid liquid was slowly dripping down onto the floor below to form deep puddles. Tee, not wanting to risk an untimely splash, used her boots of levitation to pull herself along.

She stopped at the far end tunnel, looking into a long cavern. Toxic sewage seeped down into a long crevasse that ran the length of the chamber, and it was from this that the sickly green light emanated. Every surface glistened with moisture, and sopping wet refuse had been gathered into mounds here and there.

Situated around the cesspool crevasse were five massive ratbrutes sitting in what appeared to be meditative trances: Their eyes were open, but milky white and seemingly sightless. Crawling over these ratbrutes were swarms of large, over-sized rats – the tops of their skulls translucent, revealing swollen, enlarged brains which glowed with an unearthly blue aura.

“That’s disgusting,” Tee murmured. “Disgusting and disturbing.”

She returned to the others and they decided to try mounting an assault.

They made their way back down the dripping tunnel as quietly as they could, but the rats were waiting for them. As the twisting swarm of bulbous-brained rats rippled towards them, blasts of distorted air struck at them. Agnarr’s senses were immediately dulled at their touch, sending him into a kind of dazed stupor.

“They’re mind blasts!” Ranthir cried.

“Wait,” Tor said. “Mind blasts? Why is Agnarr affected?”

The transparent skulls of the rats revealed brains seething with bursting pulses of pure energy.

Ranthir was the next to feel their stupor-inducing telepathic assault overwhelm his mind, and then the swarms began sending out blasts of magical blue energy – their collective mental might serving as some sort of living focal point.

The cranium rats swarmed under Tee’s floating feet and climbed up like furry fountains around Tor and the quiescent Agnarr – their filthy claws and yellowed teeth tearing at any bit of exposed flesh, while others burrowed into their armor.

“Should we attack the ratbrutes?” Tee asked, trying to dodge the blasts of blue energy.

“I don’t want to risk waking them up!” Tor said, staggering in a desperate effort to keep the rats from reaching Nasira and Elestra.

“I don’t think they’re sleeping! I think they’re controlling these brain rats!”

Tor could give no answer: The mind blasts of the rats had overwhelmed him.

Elestra rallied briefly – in the process managing to blast the swarming rats away from the stupefied fighters – but in that instant Tee saw the blind ratbrutes stagger to their feet.

“We’ll leave!” she shouted. “Call off your rats and we’ll leave!”

Everything suddenly fell perfectly still. The moment stretched for a tense eternity, and then the cranium rats swarmed into the middle of the slippery tunnel and stared deliberately up at where Tee clung to the ceiling.

Keeping her eyes focused on them, Tee carefully levitated over them and picked her way back down the tunnel. The cranium rats followed her with their eyes, but held their place. Tee lowered herself to the floor and directed Nasira and Elestra in gathering up Agnarr, Tor, and Ranthir. Together they led them out of the complex and back the way they had come.

Running the Campaign: Show the Help – Campaign Journal: Session 40B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 39C: Liberation of the Slaves

Tor became a whirling dervish – a one-man electrical storm – at the top of the stairs, holding off the churning wall of fur. Several of the ratlings leapt down onto the stairs behind him, surrounding him utterly, but they were no match for the speed or ferocity of Tor’s electrical blade.

When the furious job was done, Tor and Elestra quickly got the prisoners up the stairs and out the front door of the temple. They sent them, with money in their pockets and food in their bellies, to the watch station in Delvers’ Square.

Particularly in campaigns where the PCs are Big Damn Heroes™, I think it can be really powerful to show how their actions have earned them a reputation.

You save the world a few times and people start taking notice, ya know?

One technique I particularly like is the Big Social Event, as we saw back in Session 12: A Party at Castle Shard. As I discussed in Game Structure: Party Planning:

I’ve … found them to be effective as a way of signaling when the PCs have changed their sphere of influence. You rescued the mayor’s daughter from a dragon? Chances are you’re going to be the belle of the ball. And you’re going to discover that powerful and important people have become very interested in making your acquaintance.

When these events work, they’re exciting and engaging experiences, often providing a memorable epoch for the players and spinning out contacts and consequences that will drive the next phase of the campaign.

But, more broadly, the attitude of the world towards the PCs should shift. Partly because the players get a huge thrill out of their actions being recognized. Partly because it just makes sense.

One thing I find frequently useful for this is some form of Reputation system. For In the Shadow of the Spire, I’ve been using a streamlined variant of the Reputation mechanics from the 3^rd Edition Unearthed Arcana sourcebook.

The short version is:

1. Stuff that the PCs do earn them Fame or Infamy points, which collectively create a reputation bonus.
2. When the PCs meet a new NPC for the first time, the NPC makes a DC 25 skill or Intelligence check + the PCs’ reputation bonus.
3. On a success, they recognize the PCs. Their reaction depends on their opinion of the actions the PCs’ took to earn their Fame/Infamy (and this may also inflict bonuses or penalties to subsequent social skill checks equal to the reputation bonus).

I can also flip that around and give NPCs a Reputation score so that PCs can recognize them with a successful Knowledge (Local) + reputation check.

In this case, I decided that recusing the slaves from the Temple of the Rat God would create a big enough splash that it would add a half point to their PCs’ reputation. To track this, I have a short section in my campaign status document that looks like this:

REPUTATION

FAME: 5.5

INFAMY: 0

FAME: Rescued Phon. Recovered Jasin’s body. Castle Shard party. Shilukar’s bounty. Association with Dominic. Tavan Zith riot. Freeing slaves and children from Temple of the Rat God.

The quick rep reference basically gives me a menu of stuff that I can have NPCs who recognize the PCs mention. (“Didn’t I see you at the Harvesttime party at Castle Shard?” or “Oh my god! You saved my brother during the riot in Oldtown!” or “I heard you helped us out on that Shilukar case.”)

In practice, I grade these on a pseudo-logarithmic scale: Rescuing the pregnant Phon was enough to get earn their first point of Fame (people might recognize them as “the delvers who rescued that pregnant woman!”), but after that they aren’t going to earn Fame for every single person they rescue.

In any case, I’ve found this minimalist reputation system to be pretty effective. It tends to only be meaningful once every few sessions (although as their Reputation grows, that becomes more frequent), but the maintenance cost is extremely low and the moments when it’s triggered provide nice little spontaneous pops of payoff and, in some cases, unexpected twists.

Campaign Journal: Session 40A – Running the Campaign: Show the Help
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 39B: Shivvel, Slaves, and Gold

“If they’re running a major drug operation here, this isn’t nearly enough money.”

It was clear, too, that there had once been much more of the shivvel stored here. Tee suspected that the destruction of Linech Cran’s operation was continuing to affect the ratlings’ supply.

Poking around the rest of the room she discovered that a section of the wall could be removed, revealing a detailed map of the Warrens with several locations marked with crude symbols.

When discussing node-based design, a lot of focus tends to be put on how it can be used for scenarios like the 5-node mystery. Which makes sense. It’s a very versatile scenario structure, easy to use and adaptable to a lot of different situations.

But I first came to node-based design as a campaign structure, as described in Node-Based Campaigns: Not linking together scenes in an adventure, but as a way of linking one adventure to another. In the Shadow of the Spire, a campaign I was actually running and designing when I wrote Node-Based Scenario Design, is almost entirely built using a node-based campaign structure.

You can see a pretty focused example of what that looks like in the current adventure.

I labeled each adventure with an alphanumeric code. So the PCs are currently in CC01 Temple of the Rat God. The “CC” stands for “Chaos Cults.” Act II of the campaign also includes BW and NOD adventures, for Banewarrens and Night of Dissolution, respectively. The distinction of “BW” adventures reflects that Act II of the campaign is built around two separate forks (the chaos cults and the Banewarrens), while having “NOD” and “CC” designators started as a convenient way of distinguishing “stuff from the Night of Dissolution campaign book” from the wide variety of additional chaos cult scenarios I was adding to the campaign.

But why have alphanumeric codes at all?

Mostly convenience and clarity.

For example, it made it easy to say that the Marked Map of the Warrens handout (as seen below) was pointing to CC01A Warren Shivel Dens.

Why “CC01A” instead of “CC02” or some other distinct number? Again, it mostly boils down to what I found most useful. I generally found it useful to group together scenarios that were more closely related to each other. For example, the adventures found in Ptolus Remix: The Mrathrach Agenda were originally NOD5 Mrathrach Machine and NOD5A The White House.

The warren shivvel dens directly operated by the ratling cultists were more closely/directly related to CC01 Temple of the Rat God than they were to, for example, CC07 Porphyry House of Horrors. In this case, I’d also “discovered” the warren shivvel dens existed while prepping CC01 Temple of the Rat God, so it just made sense to me to insert them into the numbering sequence here.

Other clues the PCs found here include:

• Sewer Routes to the Coast, a map which is an alternate clue to CC01A and also to 004A Slaver’s Enclave (an adventure from Act I).
• Questioning the slaves, which would also lead to 004A Slaver’s Enclave.
• Sewer Tunnels to Oldtown, a map leading to NOD4 Temple of Deep Chaos.
• Broken square symbols forming a trail in the sewer tunnels, which could be followed to CC02 Temple of the Ebon Hand.

And here you can directly see the dynamics of a node-based campaign in play. Having found all these clues, the PCs have to make a decision about which lead they’re going to pursue next. (And, in this case, that actually includes, “Do we keep exploring the dungeon we’re in? Or do we switch gears?”) The players are immediately drawn into this discussion (at least in part because they’re collectively puzzling out what the clues mean and how they’re connected to things they’ve learned elsewhere in the campaign), causing the group to collectively think deeply about the campaign and get drawn further into the game world.

Also, because of the redundancy of the Inverted Three Clue Rule, it would also have been fine if, for example, they didn’t question the slaves…

…which, from a structural standpoint, they didn’t.

Ranthir, meanwhile, was feeding the malnourished slaves while Tor gently questioned them. It turned out that most of them had been freshly captured off the streets of Ptolus, many from the Warrens. Several were obviously shivvel addicts and easily preyed on. There was an elven prisoner, however, who had a different tale to tell: He had lived in the village of Onsafal in the Teeth of Light. He and most (if not all) of his village were captured by slavers and then sold through the black markets of Freeport. He had arrived at the Docks, been taken to a warehouse, and then sold to the ratlings.

Ranthir heard from one of the slaves how they’d been kidnapped and taken to a warehouse in the Docks, but he never followed up by asking the elf where the warehouse was located. (A classic example of a player not realizing that a clue is actually a clue.)

In fact, as the campaign continues, you’ll discover that the PCs didn’t follow MOST of these clues.

There are a variety of reasons for this. For example, the redundancy between the Sewer Tunnels to Oldtown map and the Marked Map of the Warrens caused them to conflate the two. They chose to approach the shivvel dens above ground, and ended up ignoring the fact that Sewer Tunnels to Oldtown also included a tunnel leading to the Docks (and the warehouse the elf had mentioned).

(It’s particularly fun when something like this happens, they eventually find a different path, and then many moons later they’re reviewing their notes, discover the clue they ignored, and say, “Holy crap! We had the solution the whole time!”)

There are a few other connections to note.

The shivvel they find here is a payoff from previous foreshadowing. Way back in Session 9, the PCs had found a note indicating that Silion was getting shipments of shivvel from Linech Cran. This was an existential lead, as described in Running Mysteries: The Two Types of Leads – it told the PCs that Silion existed, but didn’t give them any way of actually finding her. That foreshadowing set up Silion as an antagonist, and here we complete the circuit.

The Deathmantle cult symbol the PCs find here is the opposite end of the same thing: The PCs learn the Deathmantle cult exists, but have no way of finding them right now.

The evidence that the cultists are having problems sourcing shivvel (which is further developed in CC01A) because the PCs took out Linech Cran’s shivvel operation is another form of payoff, this time showing the impact of the PCs’ actions on the game world.

Along similar lines, in Session 39C the PCs also find a note indicating that the Temple of the Rat God had begun investigating the Arathian Job, giving them a well-earned pat on the back for a job well done, while also making them just slightly paranoid that the cultists were on their trail.

Don’t worry: A little paranoia is good for the players.

Campaign Journal: Session 39C – Running the Campaign: Reputation
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index