Savage Korvosa Session 7

At the end of our last session, Mac got a rude awakening on 4 Pharasma with a magical message from Detective Figus (aka Divo). A new “cookie-cutter” victim had been found and brought to the attention of the Korvosan Guard. Divo was now getting pressure from his Captain who was getting pressure from above to get this handled…still unofficially. The Detective had no additional information to share other than he would be very grateful to Mac and his crew if they can handle this.

At the start of this session, Mac messaged “his” crew that there was another victim and all agreed to meet that evening at the Happy Halfling and touch base.

Everyone was in attendance this session and we pick up with the group gathering after the break. As always, my GM comments are in italics.

4 Pharasma

• The group all gather at the Happy Halfling. Happy Hubert greets everyone as warmly as always. Pop is already at a table and talking to himself as usual and the nearby tables are all empty.
• Aimar and Isabella fill in the group on their activities over the last few days and the others fill them in on their activities.
• All agree that they should head back to Bridgefront this evening and continue their investigations into both the Cookie-Cutter Killings and the Shiver Killings (where the victims were all shiver addicts and had missing eyes and burst open torsos). If the Shiver Killings pattern continues, the next victim will be tonight. Each has been on Oathday a week apart.
  • (The increased pressure about dealing with the killings has the players wondering what has changed. It didn’t seem like the Guard had any interest in the killings when Divo first reached out to Mac. Now their is pressure to have it addressed…still unofficially. What has changed? Did Divo just not share what has sparked the change or does he not know?)
• In Bridgefront, Pop and Mac go to visit Mudpuppy. They find him in his little cubby-hole near the Thrift Store. Sharing their relative wealth with Mudpuppy, they learn some new information.
  • Pop (or Mudpoppy as Mudpuppy calls him) asks if their have been any strangers around the area. Mudpuppy shares that Sergio is really interested in finding some female outsider dressed in black leathers and her friends. The reward for information has increased quite a bit over the last few days. Pop says he doesn’t know of anyone like that. (I wonder if Mudpuppy believed him. So I gotta ask…is there like some player guide somewhere that says to always ask if there have been any new, different, strange, and/or suspicious people around?)
  • Mudpuppy shares that there have been additional killings…Cookie-Cutter Killings. There were three victims each of the last two nights and four victims the night before those. At least that’s the word on the “street.”
  • Also, Mac asks if anyone has noticed any shaking or rumblings of the ground. (Mac is dubbed Macpuppy.) A guy that Mudpuppy knows said he heard some rumbling near The Sanctuary. Mudpuppy agrees to show them the location…and does a bit later. It was in a corner location where a smaller building butts up against The Sanctuary.
  • Mudpuppy also agrees, after some more coins are exchanged, to gather some information on where the Shiver Killing victims get their shiver.
• After this, the group elects to wander about Bridgefront in the hopes of finding something. Isabella, Mac, and Pop stick together as a group. Aimar stays a bit away from them and Darcy trails the party from the shadows as has become her normal approach.
  • During their patrol, a woman and, presumably, her daughter are spotted up ahead. A pair of ruffians step out to demand that the woman pay them to travel the street. Two more ruffians also step up to block another route.
  • Darcy remains hidden while the rest of the party neutralize the ruffians and encourage the woman and her daughter to proceed on their way. Three are knocked out while the fourth (their leader) tries to run. He is caught and questioned…answers in exchange for his life. He shares the following:
    • Sergio is panicking about all of the killings happening in his territory. He has lost men and people are leaving. He’s been looking for some woman in black leathers and wants to talk with her.
    • Davius is the name of the gang boss who controls the territory of the where the third Shiver Killing victim was found (the one that Mac pound). This guy says that he can arrange a meeting, but he’ll need to know they are willing to pay Davius to meet. The party offers ten vials of shiver (they still have the vials they found at Lamm’s place). He agrees to arrange the meeting between Grod (that’s the name that Aimar gave) and Mac. He’ll leave word at the Sticky Mermaid once the meeting is arranged.
    • This ruffian departs.
    • Aimar slips a shard of a gem on one of the unconscious ruffians. This is essentially a “locator tag” for one of his spells.
• The group then elects to go to the location where they first encountered Sergio.
  • After some typical criminal behavior (making the party wait, leaving their weapons behind), they are taken to see Sergio.
    • As they waited to get in to see Sergio, Aimar spotted a group of men carrying a coffin shaped and sized box into the nearby Sanctuary. He is quite sure that he could someone pounding from within the box. He did not yet share this information with the rest of the party.
  • Sergio shares the following:
    • The number of victims is quite a bit higher than the party had known. Instead of the 7-8 victims that they know about, it is 35-40. Every few nights, there were the same number of victims followed by a night with no victims. Then, the following night, the number of victims increased by one each night for the next few nights followed by a night of no victims. (The only night this pattern changed was the night the party killed the spider eel…which reduced the count.)
    • Additionally, Sergio has lost a lot of men trying to deal with this issue. (These are not part of the victim counts.)
    • Every body has been found with a web leading away from it…or one nearby. All of these webs lead deep into Sergio’s territory in the Shingles.
    • He has sent men to locate and take out the spider eels with no success…none of them ever returned.
    • Sergio offers one of his men as a guide. He can lead the party deeper into the Shingles where these creatures might be.
  • Sergio also shares some information about the 1st Shiver Killing victim as it happened in his territory.
    • The victim was named Tobi. He was a regular at one of the Shiver Dens that Sergio runs. On the 4 Calistril, Tobi was at the den when, according to others in the den, some sort of smoke thing came in the den and burrowed into Tobi’s eyes. Everyone panicked. By the time Sergio’s guys arrived and restored “order,” Tobi was gone.
    • No one saw him again until his body was found on 11 Calistril.

And that’s pretty much where we called it a night.

So this is not meant to be a criticism or judgemental. Instead, it is intended to offer some insight into how a GM (or at least this GM) sees player actions. When the players elected to wander around Bridgefront in the hopes of finding something or having something happen, that is a message to me that they are giving up agency. They are, intentionally or not, telling me that I need to seize their agency and make something happen to them rather than something happening in partnership with them.

It is probably a fairly thin line, but there is a distinction to me between wandering about waiting for something to happen and wandering about to attract the attention of the local criminal element in the hopes of arranging a meeting to discuss the killings and where victims may have gotten shiver. Or exploring to find locations where a creature doing the killings might lair or travel. Or meandering about to find local shiver addicts to ask if they’ve seen anything. Something with a specific intent or even multiple intents. Something specifically stated and communicated.

When that intent is stated, it communicates in a much more clear fashion what the players are trying to get out of this particular moment of the game. It still lets the GM do a “yes but” or “yes and” or “no but” (to throw in some popular buzz-phrases) because I know what they are trying to do. When it isn’t stated, it tells me that they have no real intent and thus you are giving up their agency. Obviously, players don’t have full and totally free agency in all situations. The context of what has happened previously in the game (as well as the current context) puts definite “guardrails” on where the agency can lead as does the initial premise that the GM may have established. The latter, to me, is actually less of a guide in potential agency than the former, especially if that premise is relatively vague. (Guardrails that guide the “yes but/yes and/no but” type responses.

I do have a premise for what is going on. It is really more of a background for what has sparked the Shiver Killings in the first place. I took the descriptions from the players to establish some ideas of what the spider-eel (and other creatures) resulted from the Shiver Killings. Those, however, are also evolving as we play. I had not yet thought of having the spider-eel leaving web trails to its victims. That came about as a result of Jen stating the intent to find locations where a spider-eel may have traveled or could be hiding. In that moment, the spider-eel as an ambush hunter of some type solidified. Similarly, there was some questioning of how the victims were being “incapacitated” by the spider-eel in a manner that they could be eaten in the fashion that they’ve been found. Paralytic poison was already in mind (they are part spider after all), but now the idea that the swirling eyes can mesmerize or something kicked in…the players don’t know exactly how that works yet. Even the sort of off-hand interest in The Sanctuary has made it “important” to the game. I think it is safe to say that the players think something is going on that is related to the Shiver Killings and maybe the creature “created” by the second such killing. I had no thoughts on what was going on with that particular creature. Now I do…based on their interest and action.

It is similar to the idea of telling the GM why your character is doing a specific action instead of just saying what they are doing. For example, instead of asking if there is a rock lying about, ask if there is a rock that you can switch with the idol that are trying to get. In the former, I could just say that there are a few pebbles or a big boulder or whatever and it can appear that I’m simply blocking the player. I’m not. I can’t because I don’t know what the player is trying to do. If I know the intent then I respond that there is a rock that might work (but your not sure it is the exact correct weight) or you recall a rock in the past corridor (but that means going back into a trapped hall to get it) or that there is a rock sticking out of the wall that would be perfect (but why is there such a perfect rock for the task right here) or there are not any rocks but there is a pile of sand (do you have a sack to gather it in). When you inform the GM WHY you are doing something, it allows me to respond accordingly. If you don’t, I may not adjudicate with the same assumptions or context that you have in mind.

When the party makes plans to do things, if you don’t share the intent, it is the same sort of thing, but you are also giving up your ability to express your agency and shape where the game goes.

And that makes me a sad GM, plus I’m lazy and I’m trying to make you all do more of the work.