The Side Quest Session 3 (Part 1)

Because of scheduling in the prior week and upcoming weeks, we played The Side Quest campaign in our last session even though we had a nearly full table. Jeremy played his first session with us and had a nice little backstory for his character, Ulfgar, that fit well with the game. Essentially, Ulfgar was seeking a book about his clan’s genealogy that had been stolen by some adventures and had, or so it was rumored, ended up in a secret library at Hell’s Haven. It is so nice to have players who work a new character right into the ongoing story and premise! As has been the pattern with our other sessions with The Side Quest (all two of them), the first half of the session was dominated by interaction and roleplaying while the second half was dominated by combat and dungeon-crawling.

This was also our first session with The Side Quest where I had to deal with the coming and going of the characters. In our first session, RJ, Theo, and Todd played. In our second session, Muse, Rachel, and Theo played. In our third session, Jeremy, Muse, Rachel, and RJ played. In the future, we’ll probably just handwave a lot of this but I tried to have it all make sense in this session.

Ulfgar arrived, by himself, at Hell’s Haven on the same day that the other PCs had arrived but much later in the day. In fact, it was late enough that heading off to adventure in the valley on his own was probably a bad idea. Instead, he paid the 1gp fee to stay the night in the common room and helped himself…really helped himself…to the buffet and unlimited mugs of ale provided to the guests at Hell’s Haven. [There is no skimping on the quality or quantity of food and ale provided…as it is often the last meal for many of the adventurers.]

You may recall that at the end of our initial session, that party was fleeing for their lives from an ogre bellowing about his lunch. At the beginning of our second session, Riordan seemingly became said ogre’s lunch as he was dragged into the beast’s cave. Gurdis and Aramil joined up with Callie, Grim, and Morgraen to go to Riordan’s rescue while Anders, Lavinia, Geth, and Gorstag all sprinted for safety. Safety, so to speak, is what they reached, making it back to the wall and the entry room. The “gatekeeper” and his cadre of crossbow wielding dwarves were not at all pleased that the quartet returned with naught but a handful of coppers and silvers.

To show her appreciation for the fine job that the dwarves had been doing (and to avoid pissing them off enough to make their trigger fingers slip), Lavinia tipped the dwarves a nice little sum…all of the gold she had arrived with. She and Anders did, at least, get to stay the night the for free. Geth and Gorstag, on the other hand, decided to head back to Hawk’s Nest for some reason that they did not share before leaving. Lavinia and Anders headed to the common room where they met with Ulfgar and spent a pleasant afternoon chatting, eating, and drinking.

The other characters started the session having arrived back at the wall and left the “gatekeeper” much happier with the loot they brought back. When Aramil and Gurdis heard that their other companions had headed back to Hawk’s Nest, they immediately set off to catch up with them. Of course, the dwarves, weren’t fully honest as only two of the companions had left and the other two were up in the common room. Hell’s Angels (as the dwarves are known) are not the biggest fans of Gurids. 😉

Once Callie, Grim, Riordan, and Morgraen headed up to the common room, we had this session’s PCs all in the same place. More introductions, chatting, eating, and drinking took place before it was noticed that someone was standing near the door into the room, watching the party. A woman, most likely human, dressed in gray doeskin with her head and face covered by an obscuring veil. Ulfgar grabbed to mugs of ale and walked over to her, offering one of the mugs to the woman. She declined and declined his offer to join them for a meal, blandly stating that she had already dined and just wished to observe the party for awhile longer. He went back to the others and shared what had been discussed.

Not long after, the woman approached the table and asked if she could speak with the party. They, not surprisingly, agreed. Rowena Greyraven explained that she often resided at Hell’s Haven and, pulling out an ornate key, said that she was looking for the door that this key opened. Her research suggested that an item she was seeking could be found beyond the Moon Door. She was looking for a topaz about three inches in diameter but relatively thin. Yes, it is magical but no, she is not aware of its powers. She is looking to acquire the gem so that she can continue her research on the item. Her voice and mannerism remained neutral and emotionless throughout the entire conversation [and subsequent conversations.]

[I may have the order of events slightly off here but you get the gist.]

The party began to bicker a bit amongst themselves. Rowena left, indicating that she was going to go and see if another adventuring party had arrived. She, apparently, found the intra-party arguing to not be conducive to the task that she had at hand. It was not long, however, before she returned as no other groups had arrived. Rowena agreed to continue to work with the party unless a better option arrived during the night.

Continuing to explain, Rowena stated that “the doors” in the valley–such as the Dragon Door that the party had already discovered–would change locations. There are numerous doors throughout the valley and each has a special key that unlocks the door to a different place. More importantly from Rowena’s perspective, the Moon Door would change the location that it would lead to based on the phase of the moon. This meant that she needed a group to find and go through the Moon Door in the next two days to go to the location that she believed the topaz had been taken some 300 years ago. Otherwise, she would have to wait until the moon reached its current phase again.

Other than providing the party her “Moon Key” and the promise of a rich reward based on what they brought back, she had little other information to share about the location of the topaz. The party agreed to take the task. Although Ulfgar did question if this was the right thing to do or not…the party had no idea what Rowena’s intentions were. He also found her mannerism to be a little less neutral and a little more evil.

The next morning, the party got to meet the cook who had provided the buffet the night before as well as an amazing breakfast spread. The dwarf, Keplaw, spoke for a bit with the group. Although he claimed that he wasn’t supposed to talk about his past, he pretty much told the story of how he came to work at Hell’s Haven. A former cook for a dwarven royal court, Keplaw had poisoned his king for a nice sum of money. When he learned that it had been discovered that he was responsible for the murder, he ran and ended up here. It actually was the best thing that happened to him as now he could cook for others who were about to die. It was almost like poisoning people legally as it essentially had the same result…his meal would be the last thing they ever ate. He even claimed that he left his mark by carving his name on tiny bits of bone that he left in the food.

His boundless enthusiasm over all of this was almost too much for some of the party Anders. His glee about having packed some lunch for the party’s adventure of the day was also a little too much for some of the party also Anders. With full bellies, the party set off for Chumley’s cave to ask the ogre about the valley’s doors.

[I think I’ll stop here and finish up the rest of the session in a later post.]