SESSION 37B: AN UNEASY CITY

May 9th, 2009
The 20th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Elestra hit the streets. Rehobath’s claiming of the “Holy Palace” had become common knowledge. It turned out that Rehobath owned legal title to the Palace, having quietly acquired the property rights six months ago. (“Sneaky bastard!” Tee said upon learning the news.)

But Elestra also learned that the Commissar wasn’t pleased with Rehobath’s maneuver, seeing it as an attempt by Rehobath to consolidate a non-religious base of power in Ptolus. Earlier that morning the warrant of arrest for Sir Kabel had been publicly annulled, a move that was commonly seen to be the Commissar sending a message to Rehobath.

While the news of Rehobath particularly caught Elestra’s attention, it wasn’t the story at the forefront of public thought: Open war had come to Tavern Row. The night before, frustrated Balacazar enforcers had encountered Killraven recruiters on the street. The confrontation had turned to blows and attracted some other low-level enforcers. In the end, nearly two dozen gang members engaged in open violence on Tavern Row before scattering in response to the City Watch.

ASKING QUESTIONS

Meanwhile, Tee had gone down to the Docks. Speaking with the Dockmaster’s staff she learned that the Freeport’s Sword was likely to dock in the early afternoon of the next day.

Ranthir spent the morning hours at the Administration Building, seeking records of Alchestrin’s Tomb.

Unfortunately, most of that time was wasted as Ranthir was shuffled fruitlessly from one ministry to another. He eventually found his way to the Ministry of Public Works and a relatively friendly older woman who showed him to what she thought “might be the proper room”. It was stacked high with moldering stacks of yellowing, unorganized parchment. In some ways, it was Ranthir’s perfect heaven… but it still left him stymied in his search for the Tomb.

Shortly thereafter, Tee caught up with him, assessed the situation, and made a quick circuit. Leaving a few greased palms in her wake, Tee was able to secure him assistance in sorting through the papers. This sped his task somewhat, but despite the help he was no closer to finding the Tomb by the time he had to leave.

THE FURTHER TROUBLES OF ILTUMAR

Agnarr had gone to the Bull and Bear with the intention of finding some armor for Seeaeti. But when he arrived he found Hirus looking pale and wearied behind the counter, with large black pools beneath his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” the barbarian asked.

“Master Agnarr!” Hirus cried. “It’s Iltumar!”

“Of course it is,” Agnarr said. “What happened?”

“He’s gone! Last night I found this note in his room.”

Thank you for everything you have done for me. I go now to live a new life with a new body. I’ll make you proud. I’ll make everyone proud.

—ILTUMAR

“I came up to the Ghostly Minstrel to see if I could find Sir Tor or Mistress Tee, but you weren’t there. Lavis was, though – that’s another lass that’s a friend of Iltumar’s. She promised to find him. And maybe she did. She sent word by messenger that she had tracked him to some warehouse in Oldtown. But I haven’t heard from her since. I don’t know what to do!”

“I’ll look into it,” Agnarr promised.

“Thank you! Thank you so much!”

FALSE FEARS IN WELCOMING EARS

Tor, meanwhile, had ridden up to the Holy Palace. The three-story tall walls were crafted from baroque white marble and topped with crimson-red shingles. Doors two-stories tall parted without touch to give him admittance into a wide, long entrance hall.

He sought audience with Rehobath and was quickly granted it, being ushered into a grand throne room of sorts. Although the throne itself was only of plain wood, its opulent surroundings spoke loudly to Tor’s eyes.

Rehobath looked up at him as he entered. “Sir Tor. It’s a pleasure to see you.”

Tor bowed and smiled. After congratulating Rehobath on his new abode, however, his face drew in seeming concern.

“I’m afraid I come with bad news.”

“Oh?” Rehobath said.

“Dominic is gone.”

“Dominic is… gone?”

“Yes,” Tor nodded. “He didn’t come down to join us for breakfast. When we went to his room, most of his things were gone. We don’t know where he is.”

Rehobath seemed completely baffled by the news. He questioned Tor in particular detail, but there was little more to tell (and Tor was pleased to find that he had gotten through the ordeal without ever telling an actual lie).

“I actually came to see if perhaps you had summoned him. Or if he had contacted you.”

“No,” Rehobath shook his head. “But perhaps he went to the Godskeep. You should speak with Sir Gemmell at once.”

Tor agreed and excused himself. Leaving the Holy Palace, he mounted Blue and rode straight to the Godskeep. There he found things in total disarray – knights were packing, rearranging, and generally discombobulated.

Sir Gemmell, it turned out, was less than pleased with Rehobath’s sudden (and unexpected) move to the Holy Palace. But he was faithfully gathering together the final elements of the honor guard that would serve him there. He was short on patience and seemed to care little for the whereabouts of Dominic. So Tor, after making sure that he should come to the Godskeep for his training the next day, took his leave.

TRUE REPORTS FOR UNHAPPY HEARERS

Tee had confessed to the others that she had spoken to the Commissar on the eve of Rehobath’s convocation and warned him of what was coming. For similar reasons, she felt it important that the Commissar be warned of Dominic’s denunciation of Rehobath.

Somewhat to Tee’s surprise, everyone quickly agreed that it was a good idea. So while Ranthir returned to the Administration Building (with little success) and Elestra went looking for the word on the street regarding Illadras (there wasn’t any), Tor, Agnarr, and Tee went to see the Commissar.

When they arrived at the Dalenguard, Agnarr volunteered to wait outside while the others went in to meet with him. After only the briefest of considerations, Tee and Tor agreed that was for the best.

The Commissar, looking up from various papers spread across his desk, greeted them with a small smile and a nod of his head.

After exchanging brief pleasantries, Tee got to the heart of the matter. “May we speak safely here?”

“Of course.”

At this, Tor nodded, reached up, and removed the red sash hanging from his shoulders.

The Commissar became suddenly solemn. “I..  see.”

“We’re here to talk about Rehobath,” Tee said.

“So I would assume,” the Commissar said.

Having made their loyalties as clear to the Commissar as possible, Tor and Tee quickly went over the details of Sir Kabel’s plan. The Commissar said he had been aware of the approach of the new Silver Fatar from Seyrun, but he was surprised to learn that Dominic planned to denounce Rehobath.

“I don’t think Dominic has ever supported Rehobath,” Tee said. “He had no idea what was going to happen at the convocation.”

“Sir Kabel’s hope – our hope – is that, once the Silver Fatar arrives, this matter can be decisively resolved.”

“I would frown upon anyone seeking to take the law into their own hands,” the Commissar said. “We have had enough bloodshed in the streets of Ptolus of late.”

“Sir Kabel believes that – once the Silver Fatar arrives – many of those loyal to Rehobath will… see the error of their ways,” Tor said. “If Sir Kabel’s strength is large enough, I think bloodshed can be avoided.”

“Are you aware that Rehobath is hiring mercenaries?” the Commissar asked pointedly.

“Mercenaries?” Tee asked.

“And barracking them in the ‘Holy Palace’,” he said. At this revelation the room filled with silence. The Commissar let it rest there for a moment before continuing. “I want no disturbance of the peace. That, above all, is my duty.”

When they left the Commissar’s office, they found Agnarr dicing with the two guards who were supposed to be on duty outside. Although their meeting had been short, Agnarr had already managed to lose 23 gold pieces. He was in good spirits about it, though. He was beginning to truly enjoy the riches they were earning (or, at least, finding) here in Ptolus.

As they were moving off, however, Tee’s sharp ears caught the guards chatting amiably about what to do with their winnings that evening.

“With this run of luck we should head to the White House.”

“I dunno. There aren’t any dumb barbarians at the White House.”

Running the Campaign: No, But… – Campaign Journal: Session 37C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 37A: Dominic Departs

They had an almost impossible number of possible courses to pursue. First, there were the Banewarrens. They had been hired by Jevicca to seal them and by Rehobath to retrieve the Sword of Crissa.

Agnarr raised the possibility of following up on Demassac Tovarian, assuming that Jevicca hadn’t already done so. They knew he was experimenting with chaositech.

“He might even be the one who supplied the items that let the bone rings into the Banewarrens,” Ranthir said.

Ah! Demassac Tovarian!

He’s one of those roads untraveled that almost always crop up here and there in any campaigns that aren’t purely episodic.

(Spoilers: The PCs never actually pursue the Demassac Tovarian lead. Well, I guess at least not yet. We’re still playing the campaign, so I guess it could happen. But it seems extremely unlikely at this point.)

Tovarian was one of the scenario nodes forming Act I of the campaign. The PCs first encountered a reference to him while investigating the Cran crime family in Session 8, but despite frequently mentioning the lead, they never actually pursued it. I actually primed the pump a bit by having a patron (Jevicca) offer to hire them to check out Tovarian’s operation, but in Session 15 they turned down the job because they were too busy with other stuff.

At that point, I figured the Tovarian scenario was dead, and so I was actually a little surprised when it came up during this Second Meeting of All Things – what the players’ called their mega-planning sessions. That’s also something that’s fairly common in campaigns like this: The players will reach back and pull on the most unexpected threads.

In this case, of course, the tugging still didn’t go anywhere.

There were other clues that would have also pointed to Tovarian, but the PCs either missed those clues (because they got captured by Malkeen Balacazar and never explored the smuggler caves thoroughly) or actually missed the entire adventure those clues were placed in. (I don’t think the Ennin Slavers have even been so much as mentioned; the PCs missed them entirely.)

In fact, there were a BUNCH of Act I scenarios that the PCs skipped past. (And which the players remain unaware of to this day.) Tovarian and the Ennin Slavers collectively had a bunch of clues pointing to things like the Swords of Ptolus, Jirraith, and the Pale Dogs. Because the PCs missed both Tovarian and the Ennin, that whole wing of the campaign kinda just fell away.

And that’s just fine.

I’ve previously mentioned that one of the GM’s biggest friends is a simple question asked at the end of every session: “What are you planning to do next time?”

It’s not foolproof, but it will save you from a lot of wasted prep. In this case, I knew how Tovarian and the Ennin and Jirraith and the Pale Dogs and the Swords of Ptolus all connected to each other because I’d prepped a revelation list. But because the PCs never got anywhere near most of those nodes, I never actually prepped the scenarios. So the only thing I “lost” were a few scribbled concept notes.

(Some of which I would eventually circle back to: The Ennin Slavers had connections to the Vladaams, and so they eventually got hooked in from the opposite direction.)

Of these scenarios, the one I spent the most time on was Demassac Tovarian, because there were a few points where I thought the PCs were going to be heading in that direction.

This work included a map of the alley where the House of Demassac Tovarian was located:

I also mapped the house itself (A1), but as you can see, I never actually finished keying it:

I never got as far as mapping the Undercity located beneath the alley, nor the Tomb of St. Thessina. In the case of the latter, I’m not even sure what my intentions were: The only thing preserved in my notes is the name.

I did have a general vibe in mind for Demassac’s demesne, which was largely inspired by the slightly surreal fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith. He possessed a dream sifter – a piece of powerful chaositech that he used to steal dreams from people. I had several strong images which were the touchstone and inspiration for the adventure, and a handful of these I’d worked up into preliminary room keys, like the Room of Endless Night:

A perpetual gloom shrouds the room. Thick shutters and inky drapes cover the walls and window. The light seems to twist and turn beyond the threshold of the room, casting only a strange phosphorescence that barely illuminates the contents of the room: In one corner of the room stands a heavy basalt statue of a squat, reptilian beast with a grotesque, horned head, stunted bat-like wings, and crooked claws. In another corner there is a sphere of black glass standing on a pedestal of black stone. In the center of the room, a large stone pool or basin is filled with water. Stretched across the top of the pool is a stone slab. The slab has been fitted with manacles.

And the Corridor of Lost Dreams:

This corridor, with a hall at one end of it, is shrouded in a perpetual gloom. Dozens of small glass spheres are suspended on nearly invisible wires here and there from the ceiling. Ghostly sounds of laughter and merrymaking float through the air. Sparks of multicolored light seem to dance through air, leaping sedately from one glass sphere to another.

There’s just enough of Demassac that came into existence that I do sometimes think of him and wonder what might have been, and perhaps some day I will return to this strange alley of madmen, dark technomancy, and strange visions. But for the moment, much like the fleeting dreams Demassac fights so hard to preserve, he has tripped along merrily into a lost realm of imagination.

Campaign Journal: Session 37B – Running the Campaign: No, But…
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 36D: Crypt of Webs

“Maybe it’s a magic box. Maybe our memories are trapped inside,” Ranthir said, only half-joking. “We just open the box and we get our memories back.”

But wishing the box open wouldn’t make it happen…

… unless they’d been over-looking the solution.

“What about the key from Pythoness House?” Tor asked. “The one that can open any lock?”

“Would that work?” Tee asked. “There were no moving parts in the lock.”

Ranthir shrugged. “I don’t know. It might.”

This moment from earlier in Session 36 – where the PCs abruptly realize, completely out of the blue and more than a dozen sessions after getting the all-key, exactly WHY they were looking for the all-key in the first place – is the one of those moments that would feel completely “wrong” in a film or book. After a hundred pages, the detective just suddenly realizes something for no reason? Just because? That feels forced and unsatisfying.

Authors, therefore, feel compelled to offer some explanation for what prompted the character’s sudden insight or new idea: Another character will say something innocuous, but it has a double meaning that ignites a light bulb! Or a beam of a light falls on something that jars their memory. Or a burnt out neon sign transforms its meaning. Or, if all else fails, a montage of flashbacks reveals the hidden pattern.

At the game table, though, these moments feel completely natural and are often deeply satisfying. Because they are, of course, really happening, in a way that the events of a novel or film can never be.

On the other hand, you might be looking at this and thinking: “Hang on… They found the all-key in Session 23 on June 7^th, and then they just… didn’t do anything with it until Session 36 on January 24^th? And the campaign just stalled for seven months?”

Well, no. The campaign didn’t stall. As you can see from the campaign journals, lots and lots and lots of stuff was happening. But this can be difficult to wrap your head around if you’re used to prepping and running linear scenarios and campaigns. In those campaigns, if the PCs don’t trigger the next scene or scenario in the sequence, then the whole campaign runs into a brick wall.

What we have in this case is a meta-scenario that’s running alongside the primary campaign structure. One of the great about meta-scenarios like this is that you can just let them simmer — often for very long spans of the time — while the main line(s) of the campaign continue apace.

But you can get similar results from any non-linear campaign structure: For example, in a hexcrawl the clues pointing the PCs to Siren’s Cove can be ignored for almost any length of time while the players are exploring any number of the other hexes available to them. Similarly, in a node-based campaign, the hook to a scenario can lie dormant while the PCs are busy engaging with the other options they have.

In some cases, these lengthy delays will be entirely due to the decisions the players are making: They know those clues point to Siren’s Cove and they could choose to go there at any time, but they were simply more interested in the Fane of Pandemonium and, while they were trapped within the Fane, the situation in Bluewood has turned into a crisis that they need to deal with immediately.

In other cases, though — like the current session — the players literally haven’t solved the mystery yet: They haven’t figured out how to decipher the map to Siren’s Cove. They don’t make the connection that “M.R.” are the initials of Montgomery Rosemount. They haven’t realized the all-key can unlock the box.

Those are the times when you can get the big payoff — that ultimate moment where they decipher the map, abruptly discover who the mystery “M.R.” is, or open the box that’s tantalized them for months or years — by just being willing to give your players the space to struggle for a while.

And what is the payoff?

It’s that little thrill you feel in knowing that if you HADN’T figured it out, the GM was never going to give it to you. It’s the tingling little frisson that runs up the spine when you discover that your actions in the game truly matter. There’s no script and you’re certainly not following it. The good stuff happened because YOU made it happen, and if you don’t want the bad stuff to happen, you’re going to have to try a little harder.

I said that this moment works in an RPG because it’s really happening, and that’s also the root of what makes the payoff so satisfying.

What can make these payoffs feel HUGE for the players is literally the anticipation: They’d been wondering what was inside this box for nearly two years at this point!

Of course, I’d figured that the pay-off for that wait would have come when they snagged the all-key… but it didn’t. They didn’t make the connection. And I really wanted to see that payoff. I’d been waiting for it, too! It was so tempting — and so easy! — to say something like, “Do y’all have any locks you haven’t been able to open?” or, “Do you remember that box your woke up with?” Or maybe I could have had them make an Intelligence check to see if one of them had the idea to use the all-key on the sealed box? (Ugh.)

But I didn’t succumb to that temptation, and the payoff was even better for it. Because it was worth the wait. And because it was their reward. They’d earned it. I hadn’t stuck my nose in and undermined their moment.

Of course, not every instance of “missing the obvious” will burn low for multiple sessions. Often the payoff comes a lot quicker. For example, at the end of this same session the PCs went looking for Alchestrin’s Tomb:

It was only a couple of hours before dusk and the sun was already low in the sky, but they felt they had already wasted enough time. They headed to the Necropolis, aware that they would need to finish their work there before darkness fell.

Once they had reached Darklock Hill, Dominic used his connection with the gods to fixate upon Alchestrin’s sigil and locate its nearest occurrence. He led them to a crudely built crypt with thick walls built from heavy stone slabs. Elestra recognized that these slabs were, in fact, repurposed stone sarsens. Several of them had the distinctive – yet heavily worn – sigil of Alchestrin worked into them.

This scenario was designed to be deliberately deceptive: Someone had scavenged the sarsens from the stone circle above Alchestrin’s Tomb and used them to build their own tomb nearby. So somebody looking for the tomb would likely spot Alchestrin’s sigil on the false tomb instead, become confused, and go on a little mini-dungeoncrawl.

At the actual table, though, I was surprised when Elestra made a point of specifically examining the sigils. I don’t remember exactly what skill check I called for, but she rolled well and would clearly recognize that the sigils were carved into stone sarsens that had been repurposed for the walls of this tomb.

At this point, I figured the jig was up: If the sarsens weren’t originally part of this tomb, then obviously this tomb couldn’t be Alchestrin’s Tomb.

But then the players… just didn’t see it. They missed the obvious.

It was only later, as more and more stuff about the false crypt didn’t add up, that Ranthir suddenly realized the importance of what Elestra had seen and doubled back to check his hypothesis.

“I think I have the answer,” Ranthir said, coming back down the stairs from above. “The stones on which Alchestrin’s sigil is marked are stone sarsens – originally designed as part of a stone circle. They must have been scavenged to build the walls of this crypt.”

Now, in this case I could have been tempted to fudge Elestra’s original check so that she wouldn’t learn that the walls were repurposed sarsens.

Or, after she made that check, I could have been tempted to spell it out and make the connection for her: “No, no. I said they were repurposed sarsens from a stone circle! So the sigil doesn’t belong to this crypt, but to wherever those stone sarsens came from!”

But how much more satisfying was it for the players to not only (a) finally make that conclusion for themselves, but also (b) realize that they’d had the solution the whole time and could have avoided the whole fiasco!

This wasn’t something that I had, as the GM, had done to them. I hadn’t pulled a fast one. I hadn’t cheated. And so the outcome was infinitely more satisfying on every level.

(And, of course, if it had all played out differently, that would have been okay, too. That is, after all, the whole point.)

Campaign Journal: Session 37A – Running the Campaign: The Adventure Not Taken
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index