D&D Adventure #3: Vicious Circle

[Roman Totale]

Meet my deputy, Elrond von Legolas

[Grimmie]

Elrond von Legolas

There's a strange mix of excitement and relief on her face, overshadowed with the toll of mourning her recently killed lodger and husband.

J-Justice? You've stopped the killer?

The basket almost slips from her fingers, but she catches it, and starts to walk the pair of you towards her residence.

[Roman Totale]

We apprehended and removed your husband's killer from the mortal coil. It was a demon, Mrs Pyn - and evil, feathery demon bird. We believe his name, whispered in darkened rooms by furtive magicians, was...Desmond. He was a shapeshifting sort of chap.

He, or it, appears to have been summoned by a cultist of Erythnul "The Many". Have you ever heard the name before? Did Steven or Arthur ever mention it? Did they ever throw stones at crows?

[Roman Totale]

Pyn!

[Roman Totale]

Grimmmmmmieeeeeeeeee!

[The Shutting Downs]

can't hear you, he's trapped in an infinite loop...

[fabyak]

At a time like this, we need a time lord...





hang on a second

[Grimmie]

Ahem. Sorry, just haven't felt very beardy, and didn't want to do a substandard reply for you guys.
I do however realise that I've stretched this on for waaaay longer than I had planned, so I'll give you the short version sans dialogue.

No, Emma doesn't seem to have heard of Erythnul before, and to her knowledge Stephen was as devoted to Pelor as she is.

At Emma's house is another woman who doesn't look entirely dissimilar to her, if a little more portly. She's introduced as her cousin, Lydia, who has come to comfort her for a few weeks.

[Roman Totale]

Unless Doggers' Spider-sense-motive is jingling, I'm stumped.

[Grimmie]

Okay, tying this one up then. You can always come back to Emma and co. later if you're feeling suspicious.
Sorry this has dragged on so long, next one will be a Skype affair, so we can get them done a lot faster.

Emma's thankful that you were able to help, relieved that the killer has been dealt with, and understandably confused that the culprit was of the extra-planar variety.

The town guard, once contacted, quite willingly hand over the reward of 150 platinum pieces (1,500 gold equivalent) without a word as to how much was donated by Emma and how much was from the town funds, it seems like quite the reward either way. It comes in a sturdy leather string-pull pouch with the strings tied in a bow. The coins are surprisingly shiny, possibly minted recently and kept by the town in their coffers for trading, most of you won't have seen so many in one space before.

It's up to you how you split it, and if Thoroar gets any.

Let's call that a neat 390xp per player!

Pants, if you want to haggle with the fletcher, poke me on steam. I can't remember where we left that.

Obviously, this is my first time doing investigation style adventure, so I probably over-planned some parts, and under-planned others. It's unlikely I would have been able to do this sort of thing on Skype as I had to effectively create NPCs as you went around town (Francesca, Dona et al). Hopefully it wasn't too painful, and the clues and leads weren't too obtuse! Feedback would be very, very welcomed.

Updated character sheets, please! If you're going to have a party kitty, someone keep track of it and upload that too.
www.dropitto.me/grimmie | password: orange

[fabyak]

Certainly made for a good read, and from the outside it ran well!

[FatherJack]

OMG level 2 - Thor is evolving!

[Roman Totale]

Let's call that a neat 390xp per player!

Ding!

Now let me tell you a story that'll fill you with dread
About a bird named Desmond who painted the town red.
His campaign of terror saw many people die
But lo when he faced us he had nowhere to fly

Naughty Desmond
He thought he was the best
But we fought and we plucked him
And we feathered our nests

Poor Steven Pyn was the first one to die
And Arthur his good friend was found by his side.
Though justice was swift, it was also very wrong
And the evil bird killed again - it didn't take him long!

Enkah Lahaed, the poor boy lost his heart
And I do mean that literally, not to some young tart.
But this time our killer he left us a clue
That pointed to the cult of one Erythnul.

Naughty Desmond
He thought he was the best
But we fought and we plucked him
And we feathered our nests

With the secret police now hot on his tail
Desmond struck again, though his spree would soon fail.
We heroes pursued him to the great library
Home of silence and wizards and frog sorcery.

But Desmond, oh Desmond, was not just a bird
When cornered and frightened his form did soon turn.
A monstrous demon all covered in scales
But against our valour, evil soon pales!

Naughty Desmond
He thought he was the best
But we fought and we plucked him
And we feathered our nests

So now he is slain the town can relax
Secure in the knowledge we'll protect them from attack.
All that is left is to hunt the cult down
But first we shall celebrate and invite the whole town!

Naughty Desmond
Now he knows we're the best
The saviours of Orhedge
As you all will attest

I'll do my leveling up skills later. When we split the money I think we should donate some to Emma Pyn.

[Dog Pants]

Woo! I've done all my levelling up (max hit points yay!) but I'll submit my sheet after we've divvied up the cash. I think cash to Thoroar is money wasted, as I don't think we're going to be seeing much of Bali any time soon, if ever. If we need an in-character reason for that he very well could have wandered off in-game too. How many of there were us? Four?

As for the adventure, you can see the weak points by where we faltered and bungled about. The set pieces, when we did stumble across them, were very good. The opening scene was evocative, the scene in the barn was tense, as was the break-in at the morgue. The end fight was pretty grim too, and kudos for seamlessly balancing it when it appeared that you'd accidentally over powered it. It was really just the information gathering that had us falling short, easily done in a forum game because of how lengthy and disjointed it is. I'm still trying to get the hang of that.

Was the XP you gave out purely based on the monsters? I don't know if it says so anywhere, but I've always played it that the monster XP is a baseline and the GM tweaks it based on the difficulty of the rest of the quest, how well people did at it, how well they roleplayed, and whatever else they feel is appropriate. I say this because usually characters would hit level 2 after the first adventure, and this was my third. On the other hand, previous versions I've played weren't capped at level 20, so maybe 3.5ed needs to have a little slower progression.

Final criticism; go faster! I really enjoy playing this campaign and want more of it.

[Grimmie]

The Quasit was a CR2 monster, which is like 600xp for a party of 4, so nooo.. There was a lot there for exploration, difficult terrain, bargaining with people, extra clues etc. I did however forget the ravens, so there might be a bit more to add.

[Roman Totale]

Gold! How shall we split it? Glib would still like to donate some to the widow.

[Dog Pants]

Donate Bali's share to the widow? Makes things nice and clean. I'd rather keep it, out of character, but in-character Shankley wouldn't object to donating it to bereaved relatives.

[Grimmie]

Roman, FJ, Bits - can you send me up to date character sheets pleasus?

[FatherJack]

sended

[Roman Totale]

I think I have successfully updated my character sheet - I'll ping it over later today.