Red Frontier Campaign Session Report 37

 Red Frontier Campaign Session Report

Session #- 37 Session Date-  2/17/23 Time Passed-  5 days 2/17-2/21  

Roll Call- Laughing Fox- Druid 8

Dog Breath- Fighter 6

Laurentis- Cleric 7

Laurentis’ Henchmen

Ned- Magic User 1

Lucky- Illusionist 1

Dusty- Cleric 1

Alemondro- Fighter 1

Beacon- Cleric 4

Cindy- Fighter 2

Robin- Ranger 2

Neil Young- Fighter 1

12 Longbowmen

3 Pikemen

10 Light Foot

Adventure Log-  On 2/17, Laughing Fox and Dog Breath, Laurentis and his henchmen, and Robin gather in the party hideout in the ruins of Pottsfort.  The access to the hideout is no longer under water, making getting in much easier.  They wait a bit and Boldvay arrives ready to transport them to Nappendixia.  He brings a message from the advance party stating to bring the Bag of Holding from the party’s stash in the hideout.  It will be useful in a world where the party has no formal base of operations.  They grab it and Boldvay reminds Laurentis of the Censer of Control Air Elementals he gave the party a while ago, now that they have a magic user in the party, they can use the item.  He transports them all, along with Laughing Fox’s men at arms to the stone structure in Nappendixia the previous party arrived at, and points them in the direction of the haze and smoke of Bartertown.  

They make the 2 day journey almost without encounter, until the last 10 miles approaching Bartertown, they are met with 2 chariots and 5 cavalry riding out as if on patrol.  They are dressed in canvas jumpsuits and leathers and furs and wear creepy leather masks.  Their chariots and horses are adorned with spikes and bits of armor, the chariots accommodate 2 riders and have a heavy crossbow mounted at the rail.  The 2 groups regard each other as the chariots and cavalry half circle around the party.  They hail them, and the riders slow and approach.  They say they seek Bartertown, lodging, and information, and ask how the town operates.  They are told that visitors who offer skills and resources are valued, and the party assures them they have both.  They are told the group are called the Smegma Crazies, and their leader is called Papagallo, a healer and one of the community leaders.  They are about to escort the party back to that part of town when they notice a disturbance to the west, and ride off telling them to seek out Papagallo.  

They enter Barter town, seeing the town divided into 4 main areas, a common area at the front of the town where day merchants set up their wares, some preachers and pilgrims gather, and short term travelers can sleep or get a meal.  The other areas are more well guarded, and they have a policy of no weapons- all weapons are submitted, and reason for entrance is requested at these other areas of town.  They are also told dueling is part of the culture here, so to be mindful of others; duels are held outside the city walls.  Surveying the town, there appear to be 3 main types of inhabitants-  the smegma crazies as already described, and a group that wears leather jackets, small helmets and spiked leather masks, and a group that sports mohawks and piecemeal armor made of studded leather and plate.  Each group seems to be associated with a different section of the city, they are not totally segregated, some groups are mixed, some not. They don’t seem openly hostile to each other, but not completely friendly either.  

Beacon seeks out some of the other religious types that have set up in the common area, and finds a cleric of Beory (Mother Earth/ rain), one of Obad-Hai (Wildlands/ freedom/ hunting) and a third he does not identify.  Speaking to the priestess of Beory, he asks if there is any presence of lawful or good gods in this area.  He is told that it is far and few in this area, life is tough and cheap here, and it is difficult for goodness to take root here.  The party acquires lodging at the Moon Motel, a large inn catering to travelers.  

Laughing Fox asks for the name and location of the seediest tavern in town, and is told of the Rat.  That part of town is run by someone called the Master, and is mainly populated with the leather jacket/ helmet tribe called the Berserkers.  In this part of town, the master likes to provide entertainment to the people, they have a thing called Thunderdome, a dome arena where mortal combat is done to settle disputes and entertain the crowds.  They are also told of a new sport the Master is promoting called Blood Bowl, a team combat sport played on a big field or pitch.  He is currently in the process of building a pitch and wooden bleachers for the game in Bartertown.  They find the Rat and meet its proprietor Peter Wolf.  Laughing Fox pays him for information.  He tells them about Auntie Entity, the leader of the town and her rivalry with the master.  Laughing fox asks how to get an audience with auntie and he’s told that anyone with skills or resources will eventually be sought out by her, and presenting yourself to her and showing what you have to offer is a perfectly acceptable way.  He also tells them a little of the local land, of large strange mesas to the south, each with their own legends and rumors, they surround a central mountain that is constantly puffing out clouds of dust and gas that affect the local atmosphere and likely local fauna and flora.  They ask about a local megadungeon or ancient cults, but he knows not.  He refers them to the several sages in town, or the local runecaster, or arcanist. Laughing Fox decides to rest one night to memorize different spells in an attempt to gain an audience with auntie and impress her with his magic.  

Finally the party visits the area of the smegma crazies supposedly led by Papagallo.  They give up their weapons and ask for him, making their way to the interior, more defended area of the city and meet Papagallo.  He shares that he is a healer (cleric) and is able to train visitors who agree to be helpful to his people, training, however, will be more expensive than on Red Frontier, the economy is tighter here in Nappendixia and precious things like access to good training have more value.  He introduces them to Warrior Woman and Bearclaw, his sergeants, both fighters and available to train people.  They ask if he knows of any large dungeons nearby or legends of ancient dungeons and cults.  He knows a little of some ancient legends of a mountain to the west that had stories of caves and tunnels running through it and beneath it.  He also brings them to a room where there is a stone relief carving as such (see picture)  He tells them he has no idea the meaning of the carving, they are welcome to ponder on it, but it was retrieved by an advance patrol from a cave in a mountainside 50 miles west of Bartertown.  With much to ponder, they return to their lodging to rest and prepare for the next day.  

Beacon, Neil, and Alfred begin training, while the rest of the gang visit Auntie Entity’s part of town, and see a tall open sided structure looking down on the city, they see a menacing looking woman looking down on the people.  Laughing Fox says he has skills and wants to deal with Auntie, and they are granted entrance to her lair.  They meet Ton Ton, her Bard playing smooth jazz saxophone, and Ironbar, her assassin.  Laughing Fox planned the visit at the hottest part of the day, and casts a spell and magically brings down the temperature, chilling Auntie’s room.  Impressed but undeterred, Auntie says nice trick, but what are you going to hang out here all day and cast spells for me?  Also she says there are other druids in the area, so it’s not like his powers are totally unique, but nonetheless she likes his moxie and clearly he and the party have some skills that can be put to use.  She says she needs a spy, asks if the party can produce one.  The party tries to control the narrative making several counter offers, but auntie assures them she is in charge of the negotiations, and that trust is something built slowly over time.  She needs a spy, and Ricarda offers to do the job.  Auntie says that Ironbar will work with her for a week, provided she pays the training costs, train her, and take her through the intended spy mission.  If successful they can talk about further plans.  They agree and Ricarda will begin training tomorrow.  That evening the crew goes back to the Rat for some gambling and revelry.  Laughing Fox drunkenly loses 1000gp at dice, then thinking he’ll win it back loses 3000gp more.  Upset and drunk, he can’t take being laughed at by the drunken Berserkers who beat him at dice, he and Dog Breath start a bar fight, knock out a few of the berserkers, and take a few licks.  Then Cindy jumps in and Laurentis’ casters pop off a few spells.  With that Peter has his bouncers grab a few of the party and toss them out, screaming at the rest to get the heck out of there.  The barroom clears in chaos.  The following day Cindy begins training with Warrior Woman, and Ricarda goes over to Auntie’s part of town to start training with Ironbar. Session ends on 2/21/23.

Session Notes-  This was an “establish the setting” session.  The players were in need of figuring out the new town, finding trainers, finding lodging, and getting information.  It worked out fairly well, trying to follow 1:1 time with 2 groups traveling a few days apart who are about to meet up.  There was a little gap in that the first group “arrived in Bartertown” a few days before the first, but there was no easy way to coordinate it.  What I should have done is run the part where boldvay transports over the second group, then go to the players who were in session from the first group and have them have a day in Bartertown, then run the second group’s travel to Bartertown, then have the 2 groups unite.  Instead I just kept with the second group’s transport, travel, and arrival, and kept the first group “in limbo” for a day.  In the future I’ll slow down and figure these things out better in the moment when they arise.  It’s cool to have a large group that transported over, both in players and in PCs/henchmen/men at arms.  I was unsure if players would be willing to bring their main PCs over, or just bring over backups/henchmen, but people seem receptive to a longer form adventure in Nappendixia.  The same is true with running sort of free form town sessions.  Some players like to tool around and just interact with the npc’s and role play, and others prefer to stick to getting what they need, gathering information or what have you, and moving on to more adventurous parts of the game.  I was aware of both, letting players have space to do whatever they want but centering things around getting the info necessary to get the players making informed choices.  It was good to slow things down from heavy dungeon exploration and combat, the players so far have been very front loaded with xp and treasure, so it was good to have a session that focused on developing the group’s story and setting up the new world of Nappendixia for a set of future sessions and breathing life into the whole stargate mission.  I definitely was well prepped, which helped a lot, players had a lot of ideas and questions, and lots of things they wanted to check out.  Less defined npc’s and factions and places to visit would have made the session more clunky, I was pretty on top of whatever the players wanted to do and gave them total freedom to do whatever they wanted in whatever order.  I also rolled the wilderness encounter with the smegma crazies totally randomly off a random encounter table I made for Bartertown.  That could have gone a lot of ways and keeping it random was cool and so far has worked well for the party.  They got just enough role play, r&r, and information to set them up for a next session where they can pretty much head out with newly trained characters and do some wilderness travel and dungeon exploration.  I was able to put together a group snapshot of the whole Stargate Mission Party using the minis we use in sessions for each character.  Check it out.  

Treasure and XP-  Laughing Fox and Laurentis receive 7500gp half payment up front for the stargate mission.  7500xp each.

Graveyard-   (Death’s Door)- Robin- brought to -1 by the Caryatid Column, needs 1 week bed rest. #34

3 Mercenary Pikemen killed by a spiked pit trap in the Chambers of the Eyeless void, 1 at death’s door, needs 1 week bed rest.  #35