We were missing two players during our prior session. Those who were in attendance had shifted their focus from searching for Lamm (who is known for his ability to simply “disappear” when needed) to investigating the gruesome deaths of “empties” in Old Korvosa, following up on the information that Detective Divo Figus had provided. After spotting a creature that clearly has been responsible for the “cookie cutter” killings which evaded their pursuit AND encountering a known thug who may make the investigation more difficult, the trio headed back to Mac’s place to rest and recover.
As a few days had passed in game time in the prior session, I started with asking the players who had missed the prior session just what their characters had been up to in the meantime. We will pick up this session with that after the break.
All of the players were able to join us for this session.
My GM comments are in italics.
27 Calistril
- In addition to working his normal day job at the Gold Market, Aimar spent some time listening to the “buzz” around the market, specifically hoping to learn something (anything?) regarding the Queen’s missing brooch that they had found. He learns a couple of (possibly) relevant pieces of information.
- One of the rumors going around the market is that the elder of the Luto daughters, Flaviana, is having an affair with Field Marshall Cressida Kroft and this is why the Queen and the Field Marshall are on the outs.
- The second bit of information, that is readily evident, is that Fedro Luto has employed the Hellkinghts to investigate the theft of the Queen’s brooch. The Hellknights have provide a Lictor and a small detachment to pursue the investigation. Many in the Gold Market are worried that, even though they had nothing to do with the missing brooch, the Knights will turn up some other crimes or infractions. The Market as a whole is on edge.
- Isabella spent the past few days learning more about Harrow decks and how to do readings.
- Mac magically messages Aimar and Isabella both that the group is going to meet that evening at the Happy Halfling. (Side note…the sending complex cantrip seems very poorly designed to our group. A cantrip that can communicate across planes and to anywhere in the world is just too much. It appears that the Pathfinder equivalent which is a 4th level spell was just made into a cantrip whole cloth. We’ve rewritten it for our game to tone it down a bit.)
- Pop decides that he’s going to check out the Sanctuary, Korvosa’s asylum (with a rather poor reputation) that is in Old Korvosa near the locations of the killings. (The players started to speculate if this location and its inhabitants might be involved in some fashion.)
- Pop finds that there is a package that needs to be delivered to the Sanctuary (delivering packages is his day job).
- He stops to chat with Mudpuppy, Pop’s new friend from the prior night, and learns that Sergio (the thug they had encountered also the prior night) was unhappy that outsiders were poking their noses about and had offered a reward (bounty?) for reports on them.
- At the Sanctuary, a single man answers the main doors when Pop knocks upon them. Pop hands over the small package and can hear faint screams coming from deep within the building…at least that’s what he thinks he heard. (The brief encounter did seem to a bit unnerving for Pop…perhaps because he had almost ended up in the Sanctuary himself years prior.)
- Gathering for dinner at the Happy Halfling, everyone brings everyone else up to speed regarding the going-ons of the past few days. The group decides to keep investigating the murders in Old Korvosa despite it being obvious that a local criminal element is NOT happy with folks like them poking around.
- Dressing down for the occasion, hoping to blend in a bit better, they make their way back to Old Korvosa and the locations of the murders. This area is primarily in Bridgefront and the oldest of the Shingles of Korvosa. This area of the city is where the poorest of Korvosa’s poor reside. (For those familiar with the city of Sanctuary from the Thieves World anthology, I picture this area much like the Maze of Sanctuary…probably not quite a crime-ridden and cutthroat. It is a location where the Korvosan Guard do not go lightly. A place where a cramped alleyway can quickly lead one into a maze of tunnels given that shacks and other structures are built many levels above. Many of these passages can abruptly become dead-ends…both literally and figuratively. Even outsiders who are dressed to blend in may stand out as they are not known to the residents and can easily get lost in the maze of passages and structures. Lost individuals who will quite likely become prey for the more dangerous human and not-so-human residents.)
- The party first searches about the area where the second of the torso bursting victims had been found. This one had a trail that led away to near a wall from Fort Korvosa centuries ago. Divo had shared that this trail ended in a small hole that had burrowed in ground (and which the Guard had filled in rather than doing further exploration). Looking about, they find no other indications of a burrowing monster.
- The group heads back to the area of the “cookie cutter” attacks in Bridgefront proper and begin to look about. Darcy hangs back, keeping to the shadows, to help guard the group…who clearly do not stealth or blend in all that well. The group is trying to see if they can spot any location where the “spider-eel” might be able to hide. Unfortunately, that describes a LOT of this area. Much of it is little cubbies and hiding places or small passages (easily defended) leading to a home or other location.
- Despite the commonality of such things, Isabella does notice one location that has a couple of strands of spider silk hanging out of it. The silk glinted just right in some nearby light to draw her attention to it. This particular “hole” is about seven feet off the ground and maybe about 3-feet square in size.
- With a boost, Pop crawls in and finds a short tunnel going back about 10-15 feet before turning up. There is a makeshift ladder that leads up. It goes up about 15-20 feet and leads to another horizontal tunnel. Pop can just spy a pair of feet hanging out of this upper tunnel.
- The silk lines also go up and into this tunnel.
- In the meantime, Darcy has spotted two individuals watching her friends. The pair of toughs split up and go different ways. Darcy follows. (I think Rachel was concerned that they might be going to report to Sergio and to bring back more allies to attack her party.)
- Pop climbs up the ladder and sees that the body has the cookie-cutter wounds and has blood oozing from the wounds. He hustles back to let the group know and to get Aimar, hoping that he could do something to help this person.
- Darcy hustles to try and head off both of the street toughs. As she catches up to one of them, she hears a noise behind her. The second one somehow gotten behind her and she was trapped between the two. Both pull long knives and insist that she come with them…just to talk with someone. She tells them to walk away. (I don’t think she actually said “while you still can,” but I think that was kind of the intent.)
- Aimar, Mac, and Pop all ended up in the tunnel by this point while Isabella remained in the alley to keep watch. (We were jumping back and forth between this main group and Darcy so I might have some of the sequencing wrong here.) Pop made it back up the ladder to get the body down. The spider-eel was in this tunnel and Pop could make out its eyes just at the edge of his light. Its dozens of eyes were swirling about in its “eye sac” in an almost hypnotic fashion. Pop almost was lost in those eyes, but he was able to snap out of it.
- Darcy, of course, is not really keen on going with these two. As the one behind her approaches, she “parkours” off of the alley wall to flip and land on the shoulders of this approaching goon, hoping to land on his shoulders/back with her dagger at his throat. (Pulpy action taking into account the situation, location, and strengths of the character, heck yeah! I tossed it to the group, or I suppose I did call out RJ specifically, to ask how to rule this. He suggested an Athletics check with a raise to fully succeed. Seems reasonable and Rachel agreed…plus Darcy has the Acrobat edge so she’d get a free reroll).
- The trio in the tunnel quickly retreat out while Stan (who has the wall-walking Eidolon ability) held his shield against the opening at the top of the ladder to prevent the spider-eel from pursuing. Once the others are safely out, Stan grabs the foot of the body and then drags it out with him.
- Once out, Aimar attempts to call up some magical darkness to cover the opening out to the alley. Although successful, he can immediately tell that he’s lost control of the magic. (Adam rolled a critical failure and I goofed. I immediately started to think of what happened, forgetting that a spellcasting critical failure is just a level of exhaustion. Adam was totally good with something bad–and interesting–happening so we decided that we’d go with that instead of the fatigue loss. That’ll be a house rule going forward…take the fatigue or we can come up with something interesting instead.)
- The second tough flips his knife to throw at Darcy who is now riding his companion’s shoulders. Darcy drops down, using her prior ride as cover. The knife goes high as Darcy slits the throat of her cover.
- Stan makes it out through the tunnel and the darkness with the body. It is immediately obvious to Aimar that the individual is already dead. Some sort of wounds as the other victims had. He estimates that maybe three pounds of flesh is missing. There is speculation that this doesn’t seem like much if the victims were food for the creature. The individual most likely died from blood loss and was already very stiff. Aimar also spots some necrosis around the wound edges, specifically around the six fang like wounds that surround the large cookie-cutter wound.
- The other ruffian engages Darcy, but she quickly kills him. Darcy then heads back to find her friends.
- The whole party decides to depart the area before they call too much attention to themselves. Aimar’s darkness still remains as they head out.
- After making their way back to mainland Korvosa, Darcy realizes that someone is following them. The party ducks into the Laughing Wave Inn to have a drink and, hopefully, discourage an additional tailing.
- One of the servers slips a note to Darcy. It says, “Go home already. –G” It is from her mentor Gero. So Darcy heads back home and Gero is waiting for her and lets her know that he has news for her.
That’s where we ended the session.
(I think we built some nice tension in this session between the somewhat hesitant exploration of the little passageway and the ambush of Darcy.
We got to learn a little bit more about Aimar too. He did not seem to be too keen on investigating the murders. What would be the point? As a priest of Asmodeus, and this is putting a bit too crassly but gets the point across, what would be in it for him? Adam was playing in character and looking for the others to give Aimar a reason to want to investigate the murders. We talked about this a bit to help everyone else to understand this. It didn’t need to be much…the possibility of having a detective (Divo) of the Korvosan Guard owing the group a favor was enough…but it was an element of the “roleplaying” that Adam was pursuing. Hopefully, everyone understands where Adam was coming from and understands it now.
I think we are also still sort of adjusting to really leaning into impromptu gaming. It isn’t like I don’t normally do this, but I am really leaning into it in this campaign. The players and dice are driving this game just as much as (if not more than) I am. Take the strand of spider silk. Nope. Not planned. The players wanted to find some sign of the spider-eel in their “exploration” of Bridgefront. They got one. I think Isabella rolled a high Notice check…letting the dice decide part of playing to see what happens.
The spider-eel…which is also not yet fully fleshed out in my mind…is now more fleshed out. Am I evil to mention this where the players can see it? Nah…it is just being honest and transparent…and maybe a little evil. The premise I started with for the cookie-cutter killings has begun to solidify quite nicely and we’ve all contributed much more equally to this than if I had prepped it all. I like that.
So the players certainly have more information than they did before. They may even have a lead…or a strand…to follow in terms of where the spider-eel might be hiding. Assuming that the two street thugs are part of Sergio’s gang, they also know that that particular issue is probably not going to go away. What are Sergio and his group up to anyways? What about the Sanctuary and the screams that Pop heard coming from within? Does the Sanctuary have any role in all of this or is that something else completely? Is the spider-eel somehow related to the torso burst victims? Are they completely unrelated? How many spider-eel victims are there that the party do not know about? What about the torso killings? Are there more of those than the three known to the party? What news does Gero have for Darcy? Will Pink ever get to see Aimar again? When will Lamm restart his miscreant malice and mayhem? Are Canta and the other children from the Old Fishery safe? Has Darcy remembered to check to see if Canta has left a signal that he needs her help? What might the Hellknights turn up around Gold Market during their investigation of the missing brooch? Will Mac get his rowboat back from the bottom of the river? Will he just buy a new one instead? When will Isabella’s father realize she has returned to Korvosa and start interfering in her life again?
We may learn the answers to these questions and come up with so many more next time.)
