Nappendixia Campaign 2.0- Session 47

 Nappendixia Campaign Session Report

Session #- 47 Session Date-  6/8/23 Time Passed-  9 Days (arrive Bartertown 

 6/16, 1 day of rest, available 6/17)

Roll Call-  Harry- T2

Stig- Dwarf T1

Maximilion- F1

Godhard- C3

2 Med Cav

Bart- F2

2 Lt Foot

Tomas- F2

Adventure Log-  A few new adventurers join the party this week, Maximilion, a young fighter looking to make his way in Nappendixia, and Stig, a dwarf thief who tagged along with the caravan from Bartertown, and has found some company with the party sharing stories of their respective homelands. Most of the other PCs and side PCs will be traveling with the caravan relocating their base of operations to Bartertown.

 *This week’s Log is written from the perspective of 2 of the Bartertown mercenaries*  

• Man what a trip, we finally found this crazy place called Lancebrass, after the caravan’s 2 week journey across the scrub, desert, and plains.  After clearing our pretty well patrolled scrub terrain outside of Bartertown, we first encountered a weird stone caravan circled up, partly buried in the desert sands.  Wez went inside the most closed up caravan car and had a ghostly nomadic figure reach out to grab him.  He’s real quick, real mean too, the nastiest fighter in Bartertown.  That’s why Papagallo sent the Gyro Captain on the caravan to co-lead it with Dr. Deadgood, the Master’s magic user.  There’s an uneasy alliance between the major players of Bartertown- Master, Papagallo, and Auntie Entity, the self proclaimed sheriff.  She does a decent job keeping the peace and keeping things running, but the caravan was too big a venture for any faction to not be well represented and get their say.  After the ghostly nomad, we encountered a sphinx, and Gyro learned a few things from her.  Then it was like monsters got our scent.  WE got hit by stirges at the edge of the desert, giant lizards at an oasis we found, then zombies, and killer bees, which took out our 2 best scouts.  By the time we realized we were off course and bumped into this party of adventurers we had lost half our troops.  The adventurers led us into Lancebrass and we were able to rest and replenish our food and water.  We noticed the cleric Godhard make a plea/deal with some bigwig paladin over travel to Bartertown and setting up trade and relations, pretty well played.  We also noticed the thief Harry has a pretty big venture/scam with armor, he’s got a bunch of metal armor loaded up on horses and plans to try to sell it in Bartertown.  We haven’t had a chance to check out the new armor yet.  His big friend is abrasive and difficult to bear, despite trying, he’s also in on the armor business, and has lately been terribly playing sergeant to a pair of light foot, they seem tortured.  Godhard’s Med Cav seem well cared for and better armed than us.  

• On our first day out we encountered harpies.  First we found a big burn area, and the fighter Maximilion found some talons in the ashes, and Gyro ID’d them as Harpy.  He’s no fool, he gave those adventurers some wax to plug their ears, and sent them ahead to flush out the harpies and maybe their lair.  Gonna definitely be putting these adventurers to work this trip back, we took heavy casualties, and only hired on 6 longbows in Lancebrass as replacements.  They came back victorious, a little wounded, and grumbling at a not great bit of treasure taken from their stinking cavern lair.  Better them than us.

• The following day we got back to that oasis with the giant lizards, only this time we encountered some kind of cliff dwelling crabmen.  A patrol headed up the path we were on heading into the oasis, and we sent the adventurers ahead again, figuring a battle with the armored crabmen could be tough.  Bart, the crappy sgt, actually did a smart thing, he held out some silver pieces, and these crab guys went wild, instantly made friends with us as the party gave them a bunch of silver pieces.  He must’ve noticed they were panning the local pond for silver, good ploy, and saved a possible tough fight.

• At the beginning of our first day of travel through the desert, we came back to that small ruined pyramid where the gynosphinx lives, Tomas the fighter went ahead alone and asked her a question, when he returned he had a cold stoic look in his eyes, he said little for the rest of the trip.  

• The next day we came across some crazy looking hump backed beasts of burden, they stomped across the desert, the party paid them no real mind, but behind them as the dust cleared they saw a person, following the beasts then collapsing.  They rushed forward to assist, giving him water and shade.  He said his name is Halim, a desert monk.  Harry asks him about the wizard’s tower in the desert, and gets a possible location.  He also asks about the mountain megadungeon, and is given a possible location of that too.  Halim rides with the caravan in a cart for the rest of the day, leaving in the evening watered and rested.  

• The next day we get back to that weird stone caravan circle, and the party wants none of it, they don’t trust their ability to turn undead, they have met some very resistant undead lately, and move on.  Later in the day, they are out in front as we have had them all trip, and they spring an ambush of fire newts on giant striders.  They were dug in and camouflaged in the desert sand but didn’t surprise the party.  They did get several serious wounds in on them, Stig tried to get off a backstab, but the green thief was unable to connect, still brave for a fledgling adventurer.  Godhard’s 2 med cav also fell, despite his good tactics, he held them until they could make a flank attack, both newts were quick, and their blows were lethal.  Still, had they been just a little less, they likely would have survived, and would have had a cleric right behind them with healing spells.  

• After that we get out of the desert, and its a few days of travel through Bartertown scrub.  We take them past the Cubic Gate, and later that day bump into a Bartertown patrol.  They give us a resupply and escort us into town.  This is our opportunity to ask Godhard if we can hire on as replacement Med Cav.  We were only temporary hires for the caravan journey, and it might be better to work for a cleric, Wez was no fun to work under. This party is all right too, they work together well, and seem to share treasure and resources fairly.  We’ll see if we can get the job.

Session Notes-  This week we had 2 good patron/player interactions, and we had some 1:1 time interacting with the game.  First, it's great to get the PCs to Bartertown, but also that it happened organically and not in a rush.  The PCs had largely played through a lot of their adventure hooks they had gathered while in Brassmark, granted they could have stayed longer, not everything got fully explored, and there will alway be an infinite supply of new stuff, but overall they were done with Brassmark.  They were already talking about checking out Bartertown, figuring out a way to get there, when at the same time the Bartertown patron had an idea to send a caravan out to try to find Lancebrass.  The caravan got a little lost, and the PCs had some issues with training time that held them away from being able to complete their quest to find the magic shrine, causing them both to be delayed and both put on the road to Lancebrass at the same time.  I knew they were in the same vicinity, but a random roll of merchants cemented the encounter, and I had the lost caravan meet the PCs north of Lancebrass and they guided them into town.  This is going to be great having the PC based in the location being managed by my most involved patron.  He’s already come up with lots of stuff, and I’m looking forward to seeing more direct patron/ player interaction.  Just in the week since the session, the discord has been very active. It’s really great for me in that everyone is interacting directly with the discord, the various channels, and with each other.  I really don’t have to respond or adjudicate much, I don’t feel I really should, I’m trying to cultivate the group feeling more comfortable interacting without running everything through me, and people are being very responsive to it.  

The other great PC/ patron interaction was with Tomas at the sphinx.  In session, when he asked the sphinx about who killed his family, I said I’d figure it out later and get back to him, the next day I remembered I had already sort of talked about this with Resheph, a patron who has been around  a while, but a little more in the background.  He’s not too interested in getting into the nitty gritty of AD&D rules, he just sends me ideas every few weeks and has his domain mostly set up and is able to respond to my questions in a timely manner.  This is really the minimum I need from a patron.  Just someone who can feed me cool ideas, and has a vision for what their patronage is and where it's going, and can be consistently responsive when their area of the game comes up.  Now that a more clear link between Tomas and Resheph has been made, now he’s more motivated to get his domain more concrete, get some more ideas going, etc.  It feeds the game.

As far as how 1:1 time influenced the game, it gave me a good place to take a break.  I have been running weekly for a while, and plan to run weekly throughout the Summer, but I could use an occasional break.  This session, in that it took most of the existing PCs, and several new players, 9 days into the future, means that if we were to play next week everyone would need to roll up a new PC.  Instead of doing that I took the cue that this would be a perfect time to take the week off, and give the PCs a few days of downtime in Bartertown before the next session.  The downtime chatter is getting much more active, and I’m loving it just taking off on its own.  I think the game could use a week to breathe.

Treasure and XP-  Monsters- 2 Harpies 353xp, 4 Firenewts 441xp, 2 Giant Striders 192xp, Crabmen parley 400xp. Treasure- 400gp, 52sp, 16gp, 100gp gem (518xp)= 1904xp/ 6 PCs= 317xp each, add % bonus if appropriate.

Graveyard-   Rollo Tomassi-  consumed by a Bag of Devouring in Zelligar’s dungeon  #38

Ragenard- brought to Death’s Door by a stirge attack in Zelligar’s dungeon #39 (1 week bed rest)

Caolite- brought to Death’s Door by kobolds in Zelligar’s dungeon #40 (1 week bedrest)

Bart-  brought to Death’s Door by Firetoad breath in Zelligar’s dungeon #40 (1 week

bedrest)

Ragenard-  killed by Griffons exploring the plains west of Fort Turjmir #42

Vlana-  killed by Troglodytes in the 2nd level of Zelligar’s dungeon #43

Stigr’s 4 Lt. Foot- killed by Zombies on the plains of Lancebrass #45

Godhard’s 2 Med Cav- killed by Firenewt’s mounted on Giant Striders #47